In two days this house is going to look completely different on the inside. That huge pile of wood flooring in the center of the photo above will be mostly installed and the house will begin to really take the shape that we are hoping for. The unknown in the process is how long it will take to level and patch the first floor, but Andy (of Andy's flooring) thinks that we are looking at 3-4 total days in the house. He should end up doing the stairs as well (same type of wood, different type of installation), so it could end up being the whole week. Nevertheless, the process will begin in earnest tomorrow in the kitchen. The kitchen area has to be done by Wednesday when the IKEA installers come to put in the kitchen cabinets.
This is a shot of Nora's room. Nothing major to report here other then her room looking quite small right now with no furniture in it. I was in there today doing a bit of cleaning up and thinking that it looked tiny. I have to constantly remind myself that its basically the same size as her current room, and she has a queen bed, a dresser, and a table and chairs in her current room. One funny thing I figured out today about Nora's room: her closet is bigger then the closet in the master bedroom. Funny.
At the paint store yesterday we let Nora choose her own color for her room. The color choice she made is a very subtle pink that is almost white. I think its going to look quite nice.
Here is a shot of Astor's room. This gave me the same feeling as Nora's room. SMALL. While Astor's room is smaller then Nora's (2ft less wide) its still basically the same as her room now where she has a laz-y-boy chair and a table. Her closet is not as big as the master closet, but its darn close. I think that we are going to be able to have the girls suffice in their rooms for many years to come; especially if we get the closets done right from the beginning.
This is a shot I have repeated many times over the past few months. I keep coming back to this shot because it shows the vent and two of the angled cans as well as the windows. See how in this shot the primer wasn't sprayed around the windows? This is because we will be putting trim around the windows and doors and as such, the drywall guys don't get too close to the window for fear of spraying the glass. The trim for the windows and doors should be in by the end of the week, and we are hoping the carpenter will be able to put all of those items into the house next week. Then the house will really start to look finished (even if I don't have door hardware yet).
Here is a shot of our now emasculated master closet. We will be using both the space on the left of the doorway, and the space inset on the right in the doorway as closet space. Its pretty simple to plan out the main closet, but setting up the other closet so it functions properly in conjunction with the main closet is going to be important. Also, this is the first time Jen and I are sharing a closet in at least 10yrs, so its going to be interesting to see how much space we both really take up when we are forced to use the space wisely. Could be very interesting - in the end, I think I know who is going to win this battle.
Here is an off angle shot of the master bathroom fully drywalled. This space is going to be the absolute last space to be finished in the house, and not by choice.....we ordered some very specific tile for the shower, and its taking all of the projected 6 weeks to produce. As a result, we are not going to be able to start on the master bathroom until the 2nd week of November. At that point I would suspect we will just be tying up some loose ends on the house and working on finishing the garage.
Notice the large hole up at the top and wondering what it is? Its going to be a set of clerestory windows that will help bring some much needed natural light into the bathroom. This will essentially be 1-3 pieces of half inch thick tempered glass framed out with painted black trim. When its done, its going to look great, and help the space feel more open.
We had the painters in the house over the weekend to give them a chance to paint the ceilings when their wasn't any flooring down. This makes their life much easier as they don't have to worry nearly as much about the paint splattering all over the place. They painted all of the ceilings in the house with 12 gallons of paint and did it with two guys in less then 8hrs. They also painted the kitchen with some no VOC white eggshell paint in preparation for the kitchen going in on Wed and Thurs. This way we will have a nice solid base down behind the cabinets which is always nice to have.
One of the better things we did in the house is this tube. I am not 100% sure I talked about this before, but I am going to now, so I am sorry if I am repeating myself. With the way we designed the home, we plan on the girls spending a lot of time in the basement as this will be their designated play area. Because of the way the first floor is laid out, if one of us is in the kitchen and the girls are downstairs it will be a bit hard to communicate. So..... I had a PVC pipe run from the wall in the kitchen to the wall in the basement at the base of the stairs. This PVC pipe is meant to be a communications tube. It may sound silly, but the PVC does a great job of amplifying the sound going either direction. Once we are all set, I will have them trimmed to the wall and put some speaker covers over each end (to prevent it from becoming a slide for a toy) and we will not only have a way to communicate between the two floors easily, but we should be able to hear what is going on down there to some degree as well.
Last but not least....the gas line. Good ole People's Gas did everything they could last week to make me turn every shade of red during the process of having the gas service for the house "activated." I am not going to spend a ton of time on this, but in the end we had to run a gas line from under the porch around the corner of the house, and to a point where a meter can be hung for the gas service. This is not the way it was planned, and surely wasnt what People's Gas told me they were coming out to do. I had a whole network of gas line installed in the front of the basement wall that was running to the outside from where the gas service comes into the house (notice the hole in the wall where the pipe used to be?) and we aren't using it at all now.
While I don't hate the way the pipe looks coming out of from under the porch, it was very frustrating figuring out the solution with a company that has absolutely no idea what communication or customer service is. If there are any readers out there that work for People's Gas, I am sorry, but I absolutely cannot stand the company, and would love to have an alternative for my gas service. However, as the worker on Wed clearly pointed out to me: "we are Chicago area Monopoly, you don't have a choice about what to do, its our way or no way." Wonderful way to run a company and service the public huh?
Here is to energy efficiency and finding ways to using as LITTLE gas as possible.
Lots of updates coming this week as we get the floors, power, tile, kitchen, and potentially the one thing on the house that I have not been talking about.....
No comments:
Post a Comment