Its happening so swiftly at this point that it really is impossible to keep up (with the work, and the blogging). Over the last few days there have been the following tradesmen working on the house: electrician, plumber, mason, flooring (wood), tile, metal work, and kitchen installation. The house is literally full of people inside and out each day. Its pretty intense. The good news is that it will be a little bit quieter today as the hardwood flooring is done in the whole house - except the stairs which come much later. Above is a picture of Nora's room fully finished. For the upstairs flooring, we chose to use 3.25" wood floor only upstairs - there just isnt a ton of space that wont be covered by beds and as such, there was no need to spend a lot of extra money on the flooring in the non-living spaces.
Here is a shot of both the girls rooms with the hardwood installed. Its amazing how much different the whole house feels now that the floors are done. I have been looking at the beat up, uneven, and inconsistent flooring for months now, and in one day it was replaced (or over-laid). The house is quieter and seems warmer from a color perspective now that the floors are in. I can only imagine how nice it will be to have power and doors on....
Here is a shot looking from Nora's room all the way to the back of the master bedroom. I took this as I wanted to give an example of how continuous the floor looks when you are up there. I am looking forward to when they sand the floors down and put on the polyurethane, its going to make the place look much bigger with the lighter color the hardwood floors will take on after sanding.
Here is a shot of the master bedroom. The first thing I thought when I walked into this room was that it felt bigger, which is nice. We arent that big on making bedrooms big as one really doesnt do much other then sleep in a room for the most part. However, with us having limited closet space in the master, its important for us to have a space to put a dresser or credenza where we can store items that dont make sense for the closet. This will also give us a place to put a TV if we so choose.
The majority of the girls bathroom was finished yesterday from a tiling perspective. There is no grout on the tiles as well as a few spots where the white tile will have to put up still...but the shower surround is mostly done and I think it looks great! Mostly I am really happy with the look we are getting from the white tile on all of the vertical wall surfaces. Its also giving me hope that the master bathroom design is going to look as good as the girls bathroom.....
Just a little bit closer shot of the contrast between the two styles of tile that I chose for the girls bathroom. Since they are both poreclain, they do have the same sheen, but the color and size difference is really working well together in my opinion. The guy who is doing the tile also has done a very good job of laying the tile tightly together to minimize the grout line and take advantage of the color contrast that we will get from the two tiles.
This was an empty space yesterday morning when the guys from the IKEA installation company started. The shot above is where we ended the day yesterday. As you can see, they got a ton of work accomplished yesterday and are right on pace to be finished today as the anticipated. There have been some bumps in the road related to the way the kitchen lays out and not getting a specific cabinet to the size that I ordered.... but we have figured out a way to make it work where I won't have to make another trip to IKEA (phew). I am excited to see how this all looks today at the end of the day as we will be finished with the kitchen cabinets.
This is a shot of the south wall of the kitchen where the stove and vent hood will be mounted. One the left you can see where the peninsula will be located. The official mantra of the house as it comes together is "its not big, but its functional" and this is embodied more in the kitchen then anywhere else in the house. This kitchen is not going to be huge at all, but we are going to have a lot of very efficient cabinets and all of the bells and whistles of a professional kitchen (pro stove, exterior venting hood, 33" sink). More importantly, because the kitchen is a little bit small, it makes everything within a step or two of each other, and thats useful for how much time is spent there.
One of the things you might have noticed from the shots above is that we really dont have many upper cabinets in the kitchen. This is something that we started back when we were designing the original house and it stuck with this one as well. We really like to feel the kitchen open above the coutner tops, and as such we only added two sets of these "flipper" cabinets. I am really happy with the look we are getting out of these, and they will be very good for the high use items like plates and cups. Whats better: you can open these and leave them open because of the way they open up, so if you are making food and only want to serve one plate at a time, you can just leave the cabinet open and it wont be in your way.
Here is a quick shot of the finish of the cabinets. This is called Abstraktt Grey by IKEA. I think that these cabinets in combination with the counter tops we have chose are going to have a great look and feel. I am really hoping that it looks as good finished as it does in my head.
The design of the garage is finally settled. The only reason it hasn't been settled to this point is because of me. From the beginning of this process I have been thinking of the garage as the place to pickup some extra space. Most of that feeling related to the architects knowing that I could technically build a "habitable" second story over the garage. What I don't think I really fully put together through the process of getting the 2 story garage approved and then designed were: If you are building a habitable space over the garage where you may or may use it every day, you must heat and cool it and build it just like a house. So we were essentially looking at building a mini house replete with radiant heating, insulation, weight bearing floors etc. This was not going to be affordable.
What it really came down to in the end was this - since the garage was not connected to the house, it meant that you had to actually endeavour to go to that space. As such, the space just isnt nearly as useful as it would be were it connected. Moreover, it wasnt going to bear the same sort of value to another buyer down the road either which means there is little to no ROI on the construction as it was.
So, we are doing a simplified version of the previous garage instead. By taking out the living space load bearing requirements of the second floor and the heating and insuation that would have been necessary for the space to be habitable, we have shave quite a bit of money out of the garage budget - making it affordable to build. When its done I think we are going to have a really nice garage that will also define a solid outdoor living space that I will detail a little bit later this week when I start laying it out with the mason.
I dont know why I felt the need to add this in, but there is a certain amount of finality to the AC units being mounted on the sidewalk. Once again I am please that we chose to lay the sidewalk in the way that we did as there is more then enough room to walk past these units on this side of the house, and we will be able to obscure them from the street view with the fence that is going up.
Tons more to talk about over the next few days. Just not enough time in the day. Hoping to get to more later today......stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment