day 154

Another quick update...wish I had time for something more lately!

Things were super busy at the house on Saturday.  The finish carpenter was on site to finish up the trim, install the mantel, hang a replacement door, finish the master bath vanity, install the porch columns and hang our bathroom mirrors.  He was all over the place!

 
The new mantel does not have an inset back like the old one did, so we were unable to mount the outlet on the mantel itself.  I was a little bummed, but I've always planned to have a large mirror or artwork sitting in the middle, so the outlet should be hidden.  I feel like our original mantel had a chunkier top, but I haven't bothered to find the photo to compare it.  If anything, we can always add trim to beef it up later.  More than likely, I'll forget I even thought to do that.

Also, while wondering the aisles of Target on Saturday, I think I might have found curtains for the two windows that flank the fireplace (and overlook our backyard/porch).  I want something that will allow light through, isn't horribly expensive and is at least 8' (our ceilings are 10').  Enter these:

[Nate Berkus Heathered Herringbone Window Panels from Target]

In other news - the master vanity is finally done!  I can't wait to see it all cleaned up and with the hardware installed.  The electrician hung the scones next to the mirrors today, but they're currently facing upwards and we'd asked for them to be installed downwards.  It's slowly coming together.

And, you can't really tell from the photos, but the columns look fantastic.  The carpenters did a really nice job.  I think the only things left to complete on the exterior of the house itself are staining the front door and painting the trim.

The electricians were also on site Saturday wrapping up the network connections and installing the rest of our bathroom and kitchen fixtures.  Hubby and I were discussing our favorite contractors the other night and the electricians were easily number one. We're trying to figure out a nice way to let them know how much we appreciate their help.  Any suggestions?  I've only come up with a couple of my very favorite screwdrivers.  But surely they have their own favorites.

Anyway, I'm dying to see the kitchen with the protective paper pulled off the floor!  And eventually with a tile backsplash and crown molding.  It's crazy that the "once we move in" project list has already begun.

But back to what has to get done immediately.

The painter came back on Saturday to do touch-ups, as well.  I'm much happier with everything now that the ceiling lines have been refined, walls have been touched up and the trim is much more crisp.

And the plumbers were also there.  They made quite a bit of progress running pipe in the basement, but were unable to get started on installing fixtures.  Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication with someone at the builder's office and all of the wrong fixtures were ordered.  They straightened everything out today (I hope - the Designer never called me back to verify) and we should now have new fixtures and the correct pedestal sink tomorrow or Wednesday.  Another delay.  

While we were all there together, though, they made a point to bring the tub up from the basement so we could let them know how we wanted it placed.  I'm in love!

And, more than ever, I'm glad we decided to go with the wainscoting around the tub instead of tile.  The tile looks great in the shower, but I really like the mix of materials.

Today, a crew worked on patching the drywall and getting ready for the rest of the touch-up paint.  It sounds like they also started cleaning out the basement.  I'm just glad that progress continues, since we're in such a time crunch to get out of the condo and into the house.  I'm on such pins and needles this week.  Ugh.

In exciting news, my father-in-law is making awesome progress on our dining table.  I can't wait to see the finished product, in person!

Note - I think the table legs are sitting upside down in this photo, but you get the idea.  It's large.  And gorgeous.  And amazing.

Hopefully more good news tomorrow... like painting and carpet and new plumbing fixtures.  One can hope!

day 152

1. It's quarter end and I work in accounting.  Enough said.

2. The condo sold.  We found out Monday night when our landlord called to say there was an inspection scheduled for Wednesday.  The sales contract says tenants have to be out 15 days prior to closing, which means we're supposed to be out on April 15.  10 days from now. (insert mini panic attack)

3. Our Construction Manager's last day with the company is this coming Monday -- April 8.  We found that out on Tuesday. (insert second mini panic attack)

4. On Wednesday, we had a painter come out to paint the master bedroom, powder room, living room/foyer and E's room.  I'd intended to do it myself, but we're running out of time. With the condo selling, I won't have a gap between the house being done and being able to move, so we just hired it out.  I was unimpressed with the work.  (insert third mini panic attack)  He's coming back tomorrow morning to finish touch-ups and clean up his lines.  Crossing my fingers he's able to meet my expectations.

5. We found out Thursday that the hood vent we received (which was actually an upgraded newer model) does not currently have an extender being made for it.  And, without the extender, it's not tall enough for our ceilings.  After lots of back and forth with the appliance company, they found us a new hood (which is the older model) out of California, along with an extender.  Hopefully it arrives next Thursday (April 11) as expected.  The installer is slated to be there first thing Friday morning to get it in.

[36" Stainless Chimney Hood by Best]

6. Our new Construction Manager continues to assure us we'll be in by April 15 (the completion date per our contract and now the day we have to be out of the condo we're renting).  He's tentatively scheduled our occupancy inspection with the Village for next Thursday.  Like 6 days from now.  Day 158.  I'm not totally convinced it's going to happen.

7. W'e're hoping to be able to do our final walk-through and punch list on Friday (day 159) and then be able to move over the weekend.  It gets us out of the condo on time, but it also means we'd be living in the house while they're doing the finishing touches.  Not ideal, but it's going to have to work.

8.  Speaking of the painter coming, I had to pick out more paint colors.  Because of the craziness at work, it involved my Hubby grabbing paint samples from Sherwin Williams and me spreading them out over the kitchen table at 10 pm, trying to pick paint with tired eyes via poor overhead lighting.  While I didn't like the paint job, I like the colors.  One small victory!  Our house palette now looks like this:

Master Bedroom - On the Rocks

Main Bath - Nantucket Dune

E's Bedroom - Versatile Gray

Master Bathroom - Perfect Greige

Kitchen/Dining Area - Gray Clouds

Living Room/Foyer - Gray Clouds

Powder Room - Copen Blue

9. Our master shower is finally tiled!  I love the tile work.  But I'm not sure how I feel about the granite seat and ledge.   I thought it was all going to be tile.  At first I was insistent that the granite come out but the Designer talked me out of it.  He assures me I'll be happier with how the granite holds up in the long run.  I still don't like the look, but practicality wins out again.  I really hope the granite grows on me once everything else starts to be added to the bathroom.

The missing tiles have since been installed but I haven't taken a photo for some reason.

10.  The fireplace tile has also been installed.  I like the wall tile, but I'm a bit undecided on the floor tile.  Does anyone else notice the front right tile?  I know it's natural stone and the colors will vary, but it's the only tile that light.  And I think it looks odd.  The tile guy's solution was to pull a few of the darker tiles out and replace them with a couple leftover tiles that were lighter.  But, because the tiles were wet when I went out to see if I liked it, it still looked the same.  The replacement (and larger) mantel has also arrived and been primed.  I believe it will be installed by the trim carpenter tomorrow.

11. The electricians came out and installed a few more of our lights.  They'll be out again tomorrow to wrap up.

12. Our appliances were delivered last Saturday (day 146) and were installed on Monday (I think?).  The pictures below were taken on Easter, pre-installation (and mid egg hunt!).

13.  We celebrated Easter with an egg hunt at the house.  E was glad the Easter Bunny found him!  And we were thrilled to start making family memories in our new home.

 

14.  Tomorrow is going to be a crazy day!  The painter, electrician, trim carpenter and plumber will all be there.  I think the biggest items left to complete are: paint touch-ups, finish trimwork, install mantel, finish hanging lights, hang mirrors, install carpet and transition pieces, plumbing, complete front porch columns, rough grading, put in temporary driveway/sidewalk and then CLEANING.  It's a tight timeline!  Hopefully more updates tomorrow once everyone has gotten in there and worked their tails off.  I stocked up on Gatorade, water and am baking cookies to drop off in the morning.  I'm hoping a little bribery will go a long way!

day 142

Lots of changes and little time to update can only mean one thing - it's time for an iPhone photo dump!

1. Tile work in the master bathroom shower has begun.  I think they started last Wednesday and currently have the floor and half the walls complete.  The photos below are from Sunday.

Since these were taken, they've laid the floor (rectangular mosaics) and hung the diagonal square tiles above the small pencil edge tile.  Can't wait to see it finished!

2. Granite was installed in the master bathroom last Friday.

[Vanilla Ice granite counters]

And I don't totally love it.  Which makes me sad.  I'm hoping that once the additional shelf is installed in the middle of the vanity and the plumbing, mirrors, lights, etc. are added, I'll like it much more.  I had really wanted a neutral granite that didn't make a big statement and, right now, this is a bit bolder than I had originally hoped for.  I'm sure the fact that it's currently the only pattern in the room does not help.  Nor do the cardboard-covered floors.

Also, we had to make a last minute change on our faucet locations.  They were originally supposed to be offset, at an angle, on the outside corners of the sinks.  We received a call from the granite folks the morning they were to install, letting us know they'd just gotten a complaint from the last vanity they did that way.  Apparently, water keeps splashing out of their sinks.  In favor of function over design, we decided to mount the faucets as normal, centered along the backs of the sinks.  I'm just bummed now that we didn't go with the rectangular sinks.  Unfortunately, by the time they'd received the complaint and called us, the sink holes had already been cut for the oval bowls.  Oh well.  I was just grateful to find out about the splashing issue before they'd cut the faucet holes.

3.  And granite was also installed in the main bathroom.

[Coffee Brown granite counters]

There is more brown in the stone than the photo is pulling.  And as nervous as I was about the dark color, I really like it.  Phew.

4. We finally got around to painting our Craigslist dresser this weekend.  After much debate, we opted to do a charcoal top with a medium grey base and drawers.  The contrast is definitely greater in person than the photos are showing.  More details to follow on this project.

5. After a ton of browsing, I think I finally found a shower curtain that will work for the main bathroom.  I really want something kid-friendly, but classy.  And it's been amazingly hard to find!

The shower curtain was found at Tuesday Morning ($16) and I think I'll need 2 yards each of the navy and green fabrics ($3/yd).  So, for $28, I should have a shower curtain I love.  Hopefully!

6. I also found hardware for the master bathroom vanity!  I don't know if they're new to Lowe's, or if I've just never noticed them before, but we finally decided on using a combination of knobs and pulls.

Knob: allen + roth 1-1/4" Polished Nickel Round Cabinet Knob

Pull: allen + roth 3" Center-to-Center Polished Nickel Bar Cabinet Pull

7. I found a mirror that I love for the main bathroom.  But I think it's a little too large.  And I think something rectangular would probably fit better.  The one below is from Hobby Lobby, but I'm wondering if we could make our own if we bought a plain beveled mirror and then trimmed it out with some painted and distressed molding?

8. We might have decided to wall paper the wall behind the toilet.  Or maybe the powder room.  And, yes, I swore I'd never use wallpaper in my life.  Especially after living in this highly wallpapered condo.  But isn't it pretty?

9. Weren't my boys handsome in their St. Patty's Day attire?

10. The electricians are coming out on Saturday to wrap everything up!  We're going to have them install one more light outside of the powder room/by the drop zone.  We've noticed it's a bit dark at night and figured we might as well have them take care of it now.

11. The new bathroom vanity cabinet should be delivered tomorrow or Thursday.  Can't wait to have it installed and to finally be able to check cabinets off the list.

12.  The plumber was supposed to start working Monday but we haven't seen him yet.

13.  Unlucky number 13.  We stopped by the house this weekend to drop off our kitchen faucet and a replacement light fixture that had been purchased broken.  In the time it took us to walk into the house and quickly drop off/check for updates, E discovered the latest project.  They'd filled our master shower basin with cement.  And it was fresh.  I'm sure you can imagine what happened next.  Hubby worked hard to smooth everything out while I cleaned up the kid and his less than two-hours old shoes.  Breath in.  Breath out.  

The countdown is on....20 days to go!

day 119

Hubby and disagreed on how long it'd been seen I'd taken real (e.g. non-iPhone) photos of the house.  I said a week.  He said two.  It kills me to admit that he was right.

Where have the past two weeks gone?  Oh, I know.  A week away for a work conference and then a week for month-end close.  Add in some unplanned (but super successful) potty training and time flies.  So freaking fast sometimes.  Like the fact that my son is now two and a half.  When did that happen?  I swore I just brought him home from the hospital and learned just the right way to swaddle him so that he kept at least one arm snuggled.  Now, he's parading around like a big boy, willing to share his latest bodily movements with just about anyone.

Anyway, I digress.

This past week, in particular, has been a busy one.  Flooring work continued, we met with the granite folks to do a rough layout, trim was delivered, lighting was installed and cabinet installation began.  Cabinets were supposed to start going in on Monday, but due to delays in flooring and trim delivery, the carpenter re-scheduled for Friday afternoon.  Everything is finally starting to come together and the place is looking more and more like a house.  And I think, for the first time Sunday night, I finally had the realization that it's our house... and we'll be making it our home.  It's not just a project we've spent countless hours working on, waiting to hand off to someone else.  Pretty exciting stuff.

I'm mostly going to let the photos speak for themselves.  But, I need to say this -- I love my hardwood floors.  Love, love, love them.  They're the Ponderosa line from Real Hardwood Floors and we chose Alamosa Hickory.  The color is just dark enough, without being too dark -- and just warm enough, without being too red.  And don't mind the dirt; I'll take better photos once the dust settles and the protective paper is removed.

[wall color: Gray Clouds by Sherwin Willams - flooring: Ponderosa Alamosa Hickory by Real Wood Floors]

The tile in the main bath was the first flooring laid - and the one we were least excited to see.  That sounds so anticlimactic, but it's true.  It's a very pretty beige tile.  It really is.  But the tile in my master bath?  And the hardwood floors?  So much more exciting.

[wall color: Nantucket Dune by Sherwin Willaims - tile: Sandolo Acacia Beige by Daltile]

And while I prefaced the master bath tile with being even more exciting, we're still waiting for the best part to be completed.  The floor tile is in - and it's beautiful.  But, we're still waiting on the vein-cut tile to go up in the shower.  It's the tile I originally fell in love with, but ultimately decided to restrict to just the shower because it only came in the large 12x24-inch size.  Our bathroom is somewhat galley style (is it appropriate to describe a bathroom as 'galley'?).  With a narrow center walkway, we feared the large tiles would be overwhelming to the space.  Bummer.

[wall color: Perfect Greige by Sherwin Williams - tile: San Michele Crema Cross-Cut by Daltile]

[the good is coming... this is the bad and the ugly]

[wall color: Perfect Greige by Sherwin Williams - tile: San Michele Crema Cross-Cut by Daltile]

The electricians worked hard to install fixtures and complete wiring over a few different days.  We have been beyond pleased with these guys and I'm super thankful for their laid back manner and willingness to answer my ten thousand questions.  Examples:  Are you installing a doorbell? (A: Yes)  The hallway light seems to be in a really weird place - is that right? (A: That's the smoke detector - the light box was drywalled over)  Can you wait to install our dining room fixture?  I don't want it to get dirty. (A: Sure)  On second thought - can you wait to install the shades on the other drum lights?  I don't want them dirty either. (A: No problem)  On third thought - can you also wait on the kitchen pendants and vanity lights?  (A: Already planning to)  Seriously can't thank them enough for their patience with me.

[Harbor Breeze 44-in Bellevue Ceiling Fan in the two bedrooms]

[Hampton Bay Altura 68 in. Indoor Oil Rubbed Bronze Ceiling Fan in the Living Room] 

[allen + roth 12-in W Bronze Traditional Pendant Light with Clear Shade in the foyer]

[allen + roth 12-in W Bronze Traditional Pendant Light with Clear Shade in the kitchen]

The only bad part about all of these fixtures going up so quickly was our lack of planning in purchasing light bulbs.  When we got the call on Monday that they were ready for fixtures the next day, I had a momentary freak-out that we hadn't purchased any light bulbs.  Oooops.  We'd also forgotten to purchase the motion light for the side of the house.  Double oooops.

I immediately started making a list of the fixtures, required numbers of bulbs and ideal wattages and Hubby began scouring Lowe's and Menards for exterior motion lights.  I'm happy to report that between my diligent list making, Hubby's diligent shopping, and a properly-timed sale at Lowe's, we did end up getting everything out to the house by the next day.  And with only one mistake.  We decided to 'go green' and try LED lights for the first time in the bedroom ceiling fans.  Well, they were the wrong size...or the wrong shape...or something.  Lucky for us, the fans came with bulbs and we just hadn't noticed.  I'll mess with the LED bulbs later, and for now, will be thankful to return $60 worth of light bulbs.

[Harbor Breeze 60-in Saratoga Oil-Rubbed Bronze Ceiling Fan with Light Kit in the master bedroom]

[allen + roth Semi-Flush Mount Light in the back hallway]

[Hampton Bay Altura 68 in. Indoor Oil Rubbed Bronze Ceiling Fan in the Living Room] 

[allen + roth 12-in W Bronze Traditional Pendant Light with Clear Shade in the kitchen]

[Patriot Outdoor Double Glass Wall Light by the garage]

They really busted their you-know-whats to get most of the electrical done and I believe the following is just about all that's left:
- Install large drum pendant in the dining area.
- Install shades on smaller drum fixtures in laundry room, flex room and master closet.
- Install single sconces in master bathroom (flanking each pivot mirror).
- Install vanity lights in main bath (above mirrors).
- Install kitchen pendants above peninsula.
- Return LED light bulbs.
- Install exterior motion light.
- Pick up a replacement glass shade from Lowe's (so thankful only one fixture has been damaged - and luckily it's one we picked up in town).

The trim was delivered on Friday morning while we were at the house.  The delivery truck ended up blocking us in the driveway, so we spent quite a bit more time at the house than we'd intended.  Someone started to get a wee bit bored and started hiding in closets.  Adorable, no?

NOTE: This update  has been semi-drafted since Friday evening but I'm just now getting the chance to wrap it up.  Interested in what's happened since Friday?

Swoon!  More details to come.