Limbo

I know, its been a long time since I have put something up, but I have good reasons. Really, I do. I have been waiting for a few things to be taken care of with the city and the bank that required me to be a bit quiet about the fact that we have moved in. It seems a bit silly, but if I went into the details of how this process has gone all the way along, it would make more sense. If you add in the circumstances surrounding the carpenters, we have really been in limbo these last few weeks, and just trying to work through getting each room put together as best as we can. Just in the last few days we have been able to get a few of the lingering pieces put together so we could finish these rooms. Its been a major challenge.



What I love about this picture is that its going to be a background if photos of the kids for years to come. I am excited about the prospect of that. Its somewhat hard to tell in this shot, but the accent wall has been completely finished and has a very high gloss white paint on it. The painter used a type of paint that is used on cars and gives off a very high shine. Its really become an art installation with the amount of time and effort that went into putting this up.

Here is a shot of the finished bookshelf on the first floor. I couldnt be happier with it. As you can see at the bottom of the picture, the dogs have claimed the space between the two chairs as theirs. Whats funny about this is we had a pile of books in the room next to this under the tv that looked like it was going to be 30% then would fit in the shelves. When all was said and done we ended up having a bit of unused shelf space. Thats good news to me as it means we can continue reading books and not have to worry where we are going to start storing them next.

I am hoping to post a whole litany of photos this weekend. We are still working on getting the front an back doors replaced, getting the final electrical items cleaned up, and getting some paint up on the last few spaces where its needed.

The Big Day

Here we are, the day of reckoning for the house. Its pretty much done, and we are moving in one way or the other : ) I haven't dedicated a ton of time to this space for the last few days as I was working pretty hard to get the house in shape to be moved into. We officially started moving stuff over last night, and its nice to see the house with stuff in it. Its easy for it to look small and hard to utilize when there is nothing in the house. The above picture is of my second favorite light fixture in the house - the scotch light. They were ridiculously expensive, but they are proving to be exactly what I hoped - very dense but bright lights for the stairway.


Wider shot of the first floor before the final coat of paint went on the fancy wall yesterday. I am going to regret taking pictures of the house empty, but I think its been well documented enough that I can remember what it looks like.


Shot of the unpainted bookshelves and the fancy wall before the final coat of paint. Our kitchen table and chairs are in the background.


The finished stairway going into the basement. I am really happy with the way the second round of the handrails came out.



The steel guys did a great job stripping all of the paint off the handrail and polishing it to a finished steel look. They look SO much better then they did a week ago. Its exactly what I was thinking of when I originally envisioned this.

I just want to take a brief second to extend my deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Nick Figaro. Nick died very suddenly yesterday morning leaving a wife and young daughter to carry on his legacy. Nick was an acquaintance of mine and a very close friend of both carpenters Gene and Mike (building the bookshelves) as well as several of my other close friends. He will be sorely missed in this world. He was a kind person who meant well with everything he did and its really sad to think he is no longer around. Rest in Peace Nick.

Postponement

I just love taking pictures of this. Its just so pretty and unusual. I was over at the house yesterday afternoon doing some work and noticed that people were stopping on the sidewalk to look in the house - you can see the wall at night since there arent blinds on the windows yet. I am just glad to have our painter Verchelino working on this wall. He was able to do a lot of touch up work on the wall yesterday filling holes and sanding spots where the drywallers were unable to get it done. I have to say, where I have seen some of these other walls installed, I am really not sure how they got it to look as perfect as they did.....its near impossible. We are giving it a shot, and it looks good, but I can still tell that its 20 individual wall tiles were used to make this wall. I am looking forward to seeing this fully painted with the treatment Verch is using on it. I am sure its going to look awesome, its just going to need a bit more work to get it there.

Here is the massively awesome bookshelf that Gene has been working on for a week or more at the house. This is one of the most important pieces in the whole house, and Gene has built an absolutely beautiful bookshelf. This is not the finished look at all, its going to be finished on the outside with a flat wood trim, and the whole thing will be painted a high gloss white. I got the idea for the bookshelf from a company name Poliform which makes high end stuff sold at the Merch. Mart and Gene has created something that looks incredibly similar. When this is finished its going to be an amazing piece of the home.

Here is a somewhat dark shot of the carpet on the stairs that has been put in over the past few days. I had the idea that I wanted to do carpet tile on the treads only as I dislike the way that carpet rolls over the edge of bullnose hardwood - I think it makes the stairs look bulky, and its not a contemporary look at all. Most contemporary homes you see do not have carpet on the stairs at all - which is not an option for us (its a Jen requirement). As a result, I was looking for a way to still put carpet on the stairs and to eliminate something I wasnt a very big fan of and something help solidify the design concept. I really wanted to used carpet tiles on the treads of the stairs only, but I was having a hard time figuring out how I could secure them in a way that would keep them from peeling up at the edges. My good friend Gaelynn of Edge Design works with Tandus carpets and had a great idea for the way to deal with it - she found an aluminum trim piece that we ended up using to frame out each piece of carpet tile. I am extremely happy with both the look and the feel. I was concerned it was going to look / feel loud and commercial and it feels anything but that. It has a nice soft feel to it, and the aluminum trimming makes the stairs feel thin and very minimalist - exactly what I was going for.

Jack from Jax Glass installed the mirrors on Tuesday and I am just getting around to getting some pictures of them up. We chose to go with basic beveled edge mirrors that have back mounts as we couldnt afford the fancy backlit mirrors. I am really happy with the results, and as before, Jack did a great job with both quality of the cut / bevel, and the installation. We also used this type of mirror for the girls bathroom and the powder room.

Last up for today is the pendants that went in over the peninsula in the kitchen. These have been a bit of saga as I ordered the wrong wattage (who knew that anyone would sell a random German 277 volt item to someone in the US?) and having to have those go back to get the right wattage in there. Well, they are in, and despite the need for a replacement bulb right away - they look good and are the right amount of light for the space. These two pendants may be the lights I had the most trouble with from a decision making standpoint. I was having a very hard time finding a light that I thought would provide enough light to the space (this is where the kids will innevitably eat breakfast every day) and something that was small enough to not obscure the openness of the kitchen. Enter the Tech Lighting Pendant.

Bookshelf, basment floor, and fancy wall are being finished today. Version #2 of the railings is being installed today. Duct cleaning is happening today. Comcast is supposed to show to do their infrastructure install, and blinds are hopefully going to be delivered today for an install tomorrow.

Busy busy busy busy busy.....Oh yeah, we are not moving until next Wed, it just was pushing it too tight tomorrow.

Fancy Wall

Well, here we are at the big moment. I am sure everyone is just bristling with anticipation for what this is going to be. The mystery product is called ModularArts wall panel systems (http://modulararts.com/#3), and I have put this up where the fireplace used to be as an accent piece for the house. I have been dying to see this up for almost three solid months now, and its finally up and pretty ready to be painted.

The installation of this tile was a point of concern over the past month or so. Much of the reason why it was so delayed going up was that I was not sure I had the right person to install it. There are not any specific directions for installation in the sense that it really is meant to be installed a lot the way drywall is. There are 8 pre-drilled holes in each tile and they also come with pre-notched edges that allow them to connect together when they are intsalled. In the end I chose to use the finish carpenter (thanks Gene) to do the installation, and the drywaller (thanks Lorenzo/Omar) fill in the spaces between the tiles and sand it down. Whats really nice about the product is that it came with everything I needed to get it put together and looking like one solid unit all the way down to the sandpaper they wanted me to use to sand the spackle they provided. Pretty interesting stuff.

ModularArts calls this a dimensional wall surface, and I think this picture shows thats it definitely has a ton of depth and variation. One of the main reasons that I decided to do this on this wall space was that it looks like drywall. The wall panels are 32" x 32" and are made of the same thing as drywall - pressurized gypsum. This entire idea came about once I realized that we were going to have to take out the fireplace and chimney. We have been dead set on not having the TV be on the wall space in the middle room due to the relative thin size of the room and the fact that it alienates the front room of the house effectively making it useless. SO, we decided that it made sense to have the front room be the TV room for the main floor and to have the middle room be a library of sorts.

This gives you an idea of the size of the wall in the space. The wall is 11' long and 9' high. One of my biggest concerns about this product on the wall was that it was going to make the wall look big and bulky and make the middle space in the house feel constrained. I was happy to see once it was installed that it was not in fact bulky at all and has a very nice streamlined feel to it. In the coming days we will be priming and painting this. The current thought process is to paint it a very glossy white to really help showcase the contour of the wall. I am interested to see what this looks like without the paper on the floor etc....soon enough we will see.

Room By Room

We are nearing the revelation about the "mystery product." Here is a shot of said item laying on the floor of the house. It was installed yesterday and is being finished up today. Other then the people who I have told, nobody has come up with a guess to the actual product or use. Granted, it is quite obscure, and not well known in the mainstream building world (so far), but I would have thought someone would have found it on the internet by now. I think this picture gives it away, but since we are a day or so from seeing it fully installed, whats the difference?

The floors received its second coat of polyurethane on the floors on Saturday morning and is ready to be finished up. The floors look fantastic and its amazing just how much character was brought out by this second thick coating of polyurethane.

One of the other things I did on Sunday when I was getting the house ready for the last week of work was to take up all of the plastic protecting the countertops. So this shot is really the first time we have seen the counter tops. They look fantastic. I have been sure from the very beginning that I wanted a white counter top for the kitchen and this confirmed that I was right with my decision - it really looks clean and contemporary which is what I was looking for. There really isnt a ton of work left to be done in here, just to put on the cut down cabinet doors under the sink (thanks Gene) and to put on the kick boards and clean things up.

Another shot of the kitchen. Here you can really see the differentiation in the floor boards. Using #1 grade lumber is probably one of the best last minute decisions that I made through the course of this process - one of the worst? Tiling the powder room wall with glass tile I wasnt going to use might be up there near the top.....

This is the opposite wall where the bookshelves are going. We have to have a custom register cover made for that air return....ordering something fabricated in Metal is too expensive, so it will be done in the same white oak finish the rest of hte floors have.

Here is a good shot of most of the first floor. You can see the floor has a nice semi-gloss shine to it. This was Sunday morning about 24hrs after the last coat of polyurethane was put down. Shortly after I took this picture I put down more paper in anticipation of the final week of work in the house. When I got home today it was covered in dust and debris again.....I will be looking forward to not cleaning this house up every single day when this is over.

On to the bedrooms. This is the west wall of the master bedroom. You can see the closet and the inset drywall shelves that are going up above them. This is intended to be good long term storage for us on things we don't use all the time.

The east wall of the master. One of the few rooms with some color on the wall. We decided to go for white in a majority of the house for now as a result of knowing we can paint any of these rooms down the road. We figured it was better to start with a blank template and see how things are looking down the road.

Unlike the rest of the house, the girls rooms are quite colorful. I think I have said in this space before that the girls picked out their own colors. This is clearly a Nora color, and she is really happy with the way it looks. We don't have a problem with the way it looks either, just more interested to see how the new (new to us) bed, which is yellow-ish, looks with the pink walls....oh yeah and a fuscia rug.....only in a 4yrs olds room.

Leave it to Astor to choose a completely conservative purple color for her room. I really couldnt think of a color that better suits her then this. In both this picture and the picture above I am really pleased with the variance in color in the floors. It really gives the house some character.

ADT finished up today. Drywall is complete, painters are finishing up and the artist will be starting on the basement floor seal and finish tonite.

Racing to the finish line

One of the things I love about living in the city is the pace. There is something about it for me that just fits with who I am and what I am looking to get out of life. So, when I say that the pace of things right now is hard to keep up with, things are incredibly busy. I feel like my head is going to spin off at certain points throughout the day. I am making so many decisions that will be visibly permanent for this house right now that its mentally taxing. Through this process I prided myself on making switft decisions for things in the house, and I find that its quite difficult to not second guess myself in certain situations now that I am nearing the end.



The other thing I need to get off my chest for anyone out there that might look to this for experience for their future project: It is flat out impossible to not have have to fight problems and mistakes through the entire process. I thought that once I passed through the rough construction phase and was done peeling the onion, that things would calm down and they would be fairly straightforward. This has been anything but the case. Over the course of the last two weeks there have been on average one major problem each day that required me to take a step back and figure out how it was going to be possible to correct the issue without opening a wall or re-doing something. Its just the nature of the beast. No matter how diligent you are, no matter how detail oriented you are, no matter how much you pay a tradesmen, you are going to have issues that you cannot foresee, and they are going to come en masse for the entirety of the project. Maybe this wont surprise some people. I felt like I had done enough homework and talked to enough people to level my expectations on how this process was going to go. Apparently that was not the case, therefore, I am going to be the person saying it - this is a ton of work if you want to be involved...please know what you are getting yourself into.

Last night's clean up project was to take all of the paper off the floor and get the house swept up. The purpose here is two-fold: 1 - We are starting the final inspections this morning, and the inspectors like the house to be in a presentable format so they can see whats been done and that everything works easily. From what I understand, an inspector is more likely to pass a clean nice looking home then one filled with trash and dirt. B -The second coat of polyurethane for the floors will be going down tomorrow morning and the paper had to come off anyway. The good news is that I don't believe I will be putting the paper down again as we are to the point where there shouldn't be too many people coming/going from the house. I am sure I will have some here and there, but not a ton as its massively time consuming to put it down and take it up.

Here is a shot of the sliding door and hallway going into the basement. Most of the trim and wall spaces here have been painted and are really looking finished. Its amazing how much the paper obscured the finished look of the house. I felt like I was unwrapping a gift last night.

Here is the kitchen nearing completion. All that is left to be done in here is to get the cabinet doors below the sink re-installed (they had to be trimmed due to the size of the sink), put in the kick boards, and install the pendant lights. Unfortunately I purchased the wrong wattage on the pendant lights so they had to be returned and then have a new set shipped out. The good news on that is the company that I purchased them from (through YLighting) turns out to be Skokie, so ground shipping gets here next day.

Another shot of the kitchen. Note: the fridge isn't blue, it just still has its protective coating on the stainless steel just like the vent hood and the stove. Its killing me to not take it off as I cant get a good idea for what the finished kitchen is going to look like until I do. I am impatient....this is nothing new.

The stove and hook combo is exhibited above. The hood does go all the way to the ceiling, but its currently in the retracted position to allow the HVAC inspector to see that the hood is properly vented out the back of the house.

Here is the lovely pendant hanging over the kitchen sink. I am still convinced this is one of the best purchases in the whole house. Its not an expensive light, and it brings so much light and character to the kitchen.

All of the glass work was done in the house this week as well. As you can see from the picture above we went with a frame less glass shower door for our master shower. It looks fantastic. Jack of Jax Glass did such a great job and is so affordable, that I have to mention him in person in this space!! He also did the basement shower as well (not pictured) which looks as good as this one.

This is absolutely the best find of the entire process of this house. Ever since I decided to "vault" the ceiling in the hallway and put a mount for a chandelier up there I have been looking for the right piece to hang. As of 2 weeks ago everything I had found that I liked was just too expensive and just wasn't "it." I decided that I was going to find an inexpensive solution for now knowing that I would be able to change out anything I put up now. So I decided to hop on Etsy.com and see if I could find either an older piece that someone was selling, or something that someone was creating and selling on their own. Low and behold this lovely chandelier made by Ms. Julianne Wallace. Not only did I know this is exactly what I was putting in the hallway, but its most likely the chandelier that will be there for years to come. I absolutely LOVE it. Its by far the best thing we have done in the house so far.

Can you tell what its made of? One of the best parts about this chandelier (other then the amazingly affordable price) is that is recyclable! This is made with plastic cups, so if we were to ever get rid of it (unlikely) we would be able to recycle it! I think this is perfect considering we have been trying to stick with the "green" mantra for most of this process.

Here is a shot of the windows on the stairway. I absolutely love these. We had a pair of 1/2" thick shatterproof glass panes inserted here, and it looks magnificent! I am sure the girls are going to really enjoy playing / watching whats going on through these windows.

Ah, the handrail. What a saga this has been. The guy who has been doing the fence also was contracted to create a steel handrail for the house as well. I had this created in an effort to do something different with the house and to keep up with the somewhat industrial design concept of the home.

This is a closeup of the final look of the railing. We started with black painted steel and it just didn't look right. So, we are going to strip all the paint off and buff it out to make it look like clean steel. I will be excited to see this when its finished.

2nd coat of polyurethane going down tomorrow....secret item is going to begin construction on Monday.

Movers have been booked for 12.11.....its going to be a close one.