Steel Roof and Fire Code

So much has happened in a month. Our roof is almost up. Here's a picture of our roof in progress from about a month ago. By the way, note that the joists are made of steel. We are also using steel decking. Huh, you say? Why the heavy duty materials? Wood not good enough for us? Well, steel costs more so we would have preferred to use wood but we couldn't because of the fire code. We have to have a steel roof because we don't have parapets on our roof. This was mostly an architectural decision. You'll see in the subsequent updates that eliminating parapets gives us a very clean streamlined roofline with a visible green roof. But the consequence of that decision was making our roof non-fire cumbustible. Anyway, I saw Cian, Dennis and their crew working with the steel joists and those suckers seemed heavy!! I'm sure they're happy that this is finished now.

Internal Finishes: Kitchen Island Extension

It's been a month since I last posted, but I've been away 14 of those days. Traveling so much has not been easy, but it makes me happy to think about coming home to a beautiful and comfortable space back in Chicago. We recently went to Ikea to start thinking more about our internal space, and we saw this. We thought that it was a nice idea for our dining room solution. We currently have a kitchen island that opens in to a dining/living room. By extending the island like this (but maybe with granite or some other solid countertop), we gain a built-in solution to a dining room table and some additional counter space. I'm going to run this by our architects and contractor.