Simple seats

We've had a counter but no seating, until recently. My parents gifted us this set of bar stools at Christmas, and I recently surprised Tai by completing the set:

These are, admittedly, a pretty egregious knock-off. While we sort of wish that ours were the real designer thing, if we were waiting to save up for the real thing we'd be standing around for years. These work just fine, and I've seen them (or near-twins) showing up at Tulie Bakery and my work.

The Kitchen

We've been in for a while and are slowly getting settled in. There is still much to do, but we thought we would share the finished product as it currently stands. Over the next few days we'll post pictures of each room. So for today here are some photos of the kitchen and dining area.

The cabinets are Ikea in the Nexus Brown-Black with Klippig door handles.

The faucet is from the Danze Parma line in stainless steel.

The range is by Bosch and the range hood by Broan. We had to mount it lower than normal to get by some of the plumbing in the wall to vent it outside. That's why the chimney extension doesn't reach the ceiling. We'll probably get around to buying an extension kit as soon as we don't feel so broke from building a house.

The standard Ikea cabinet sizes makes the fridge situation tricky. We went through two other fridges before we had to redo the cabinetry so that this Bosch counter depth would fit. As you can see I need to do some modification to make the gap between the top of the fridge and bottom of the cabinet less noticeable.

The countertops are quartz from the Cambria Quarry Collection line. We had originally picked out a white quartz, but it wasn't in stock and we were on a deadline. So we picked another, which wasn't in stock, so we picked another and then picked this one based on a 1 inch square photo online. It actually turned out to match everything quite well.

The dining room light is a George Nelson Bubble Lamp.

Rufus, our favorite dog to dog sit was a nice addition to the house for a week.

Pantry door on sliding hardware.

We used Ikea Gorm shelving inside the pantry. We love having so much space for our food stuffs. Maybe now we can work on some food storage.

Glut of Photos

We've been in the house for a few weeks now and are still working on getting things put away and completely finished, but we are loving it and it instantly felt like home. We haven't really taken any photos since we moved in, but here are a bunch of photos taken from mid November to mid December that shows the process.

Weekend update

Things that have happened at the house recently:

• backyard graded (landscaping waits until spring, but our mud waits for no one)
• siding continues to go up on the exterior of the garage, in prep for our appraisal this afternoon
• final plumbing went in, including our kitchen faucet and hooking up our stove:


• we gave imaginary gold stars to our family members who spent the day Saturday helping us clean the kitchen and clean and prep the concrete floor
• finished up the last of the baseboard detailing
• Tai and I sealed the concrete floor with a clear sealant that adds the tiniest bit of shine to the floor and brings out all the gnarly variations in the concrete
• cleaning, cleaning, cleaning

We have a major fridge problem. The fridge shown in my last post sticks out from the cabinetry about 9+ inches, which is a huge bummer because we love the bottom-freezer option and that was about the only one available (it also took two weeks getting here). So, we need a replacement asap.

Our limiting dimensions are the width of the space (30") and the depth that feels good in that space (roughly 28", excluding the handle); height is as flexible as we need it. I have run through salesmen at Lowe's and Orson Gigi looking for something that works with no luck. Suggestions welcome. Oh, and we need something as soon as possible so that we're not fridge-less during the holidays. Argh.

Kitchen countertop arrives

In all its dusty, unkempt, unfauceted glory:

...

Forgive us the posting drought. By way of brief announcement, I was pregnant this fall, and over Thanksgiving I went into pre-term labor and gave birth to our stillborn son. We will be mourning for quite some time, but we have been so grateful for the love and support of our family and friends through it all. Pouring ourselves into finishing this house has been a great comfort to both of us — we are clinging to the happy anticipation of a finished house as a way to soothe the grieving process.

We are close. Yesterday our staircase and landing rail system arrived and was installed in a matter of hours (you can also see our finished, exposed duct work):


You can see the blue that we settled on for the large north wall, too. Many, MANY thanks to the our weekend volunteer crew: Judy, Greg, Nancy, Laura, and especially my father-in-law Tainui who couldn't be dragged from helping by wild horses. Tainui: we owe you our baseboard, our painted walls, our light fixtures, our tile floors, our sanity and our love.

Davido's crew has been hard at work on our garage. Over the weekend that meant putting up particle-board sheeting in sub-freezing temperatures. Today, it meant installing a garage door in the biggest blizzard of the year:



In the "insult upon injury" category, last Saturday night we discovered water damage in our kitchen ceiling. Turns out that a part of our master bath shower fixture had a slow leak that had been dripping onto our ceiling since it was installed. A late-Saturday-night visit from Davido, the plumber and my in-laws helped us pinpoint the location of the leak. The plumber repaired it yesterday, and today the drywaller was redoing the kitchen ceiling.


Part of the stairs delivery included the frame for our front door canopy, which will eventually have 2"x4" cedar planks to form the "roof" for our front door and approach:


So, we're getting there.

Kitchen and other finishing touches

I've been really busy working at the house. This last week I took a break from tiling to work on the kitchen. We assembled the cabinets on Saturday and Monday night I started to hang them. My dad came and helped me Monday night and we were able to hang most of the upper cabinets. Shortly after he left at 9:00 I realized that in my haste to get going, I skipped a step and we ended up hanging all the uppers about 5/8 of an inch too high. Not wanting to lose a day, I took them all down and re-hung them at the correct height. I finished around mid-night, which would set the tone for the rest of the week. Late nights. Kersten also started painting this week and got the mud room, office and master bedroom painted. If you've seen the pictures of our other places, you'll recognize some of the colors, but they work and we really like bright colors for accents. My brother Quinn came by on Saturday and helped her paint while I continued to work on the kitchen and picked up bamboo flooring. It was also nice to have some help unloading the 29 boxes of bamboo.

The metal siding also started in earnest on Friday and by Saturday afternoon much of the south side was up. I'm really excited and think it will look great. They also started prepping for the outside concrete, starting with the sloped entrance to the front door. It will have retaining walls on the sides to keep snow melt and rain from easily making its way to our front door. We have a drain in there as well to handle any water that does make its way towards the house.

Here are some pictures of what's happened the last week:

Early kitchen sketches

Here are a few sketches Tai did of a kitchen layout:


He drew these using Ikea dimensions and products — we have an Ikea kitchen now and are pretty pleased with the way it came together. Pleased enough, actually, that we're planning on using their cabinetry and few of their details again.

We're still working on those contract details and trying to get as much information about the lot as possible before we go to Australia. (So, yes, we're stalling on the posting!)

Washer and Dryer

It finally happened. After countless rolls of quarters and relying our relatives' generosity with their appliances, we finally, finally have our own washer and dryer:

That's a stackable (duh) Asko set. We had never dreamed of getting this high-end Swedish brand, but we have a designer friend who got us a hook up with a deal. We paid less than one-third of this set's retail price. The washer and dryer actually cost us about the same as a much, much lower end set would have, so we are pleased as punch.

One of the things that we absolutely love about this set is that they are super water- and energy-efficient. The washer spins clothes up to 2000 rpm at the end of the wash cycle (roughly the same rpm that you car's engine will have on a mellow road), and things come out nearly dry. That means much shorter dryer cycles. The washer uses about one-quarter of the water that a traditional top-loading washer would use, even with optional extra rinse cycles. It requires very little detergent and still comes in as an energy star appliance!

So, laundry is our new hobby for the new year. Happy New Year to everyone out there, and all the best in your 2009 endeavors!

Christmas came early...

That beautiful sight is a 220-volt plug for the dryer that will shortly be ours. I could have kissed the electricians who put this in for us.

(I am more excited about this than I have been about anything in a long, long time. So stay tuned for the VERY EXCITING pictures of our new washer/dryer set!)

The sad nook (and sadder checkbook)

No washer and dryer. In the meantime, I sadly shake my head to the kind inquiries of neighbors to whom we bragged about adding the W/D combo months ago...

We're stymied on a couple of things, both of which ultimately come back to the sad checkbook. Our power to this corner is a mere 110V, and the vast majority of washers and dryers require a minimum of 220V. The second is that we just don't have the wherewithal to purchase the W/D combo at the moment, so it's going to cost us in quarters instead.

In the meantime, it remains a junk nook:

Two steps forward, one step back

Tai finished the work on the tile for the washer/dryer nook this week, and I spent some time looking for appliances. We have very specific requirements for what can go in there: 30" wide by 30" deep by less than 78" tall for a stacked washer and dryer. The dryer has to be electric because we purposely didn't run gas to the space, and both the washer and dryer have to be able to run on 120 V.

It's the last condition that is proving the most difficult. Standard power for washers and electric dryers is 240 V. I went to a couple of different spots around town looking for something that would fit our criteria, and in each store, the salesmen showed me the same catalogue with the same, single option for a 120 V electric dryer. This type of dryer evidently also takes a really long time to dry because there's half as much juice running to the machine.

Another option for us is to purchase a combination washer/dryer, which I've only ever seen in Europe. They're tiny — built to fit under a kitchen counter like a dishwasher, and the one I saw the other night was a condensation dryer (no, I don't know exactly what that means). And, about 150% as expensive as a typical stacked washer/dryer would be.

But it's so cute, no?

We're hoping our friend The Google Search comes through with some more options for us, one of which may be running a gas line right through some drywall to the space. TBD...

Nook

This was the work on the washer-dryer nook over the weekend:


Before giving the beast of a tile saw back to my grandpa this fall, Tai cut all the tile we thought we needed for this little space, anticipating this very weekend and hoping that he could just throw down the cut tile. That cut tile has disappeared. He was able to lay these six tiles, and hopes to snooker some unsuspecting Home Depot or Lowe's employee into cutting the rest...sometime this week?

And this is why I keep saying bratty stuff like, "I want my kitchen back."

Washer/dryer nook

With the plumbing in for the washer and dryer the next step before sheetrock was to have something to plug the washer and dryer into. Fortunately there was already electrical in the back wall of the cubby supplying the power outlet in the living room.

After: kitchen

The kitchen changed the most, and required the most work. (Demolition pictures here, subfloor here and here, tile here, and cabinets here.)

Before:


The kitchen was divided in half by the peninsula in the photo above. The oak cabinets were nothing exciting, and the appliances were serviceable but ugly.




The parquet flooring was a mess. It bowed, waved, rolled and curled because it was rotten underneath.

After:


You've heard quite a bit about our grief with the floor. We used the same slate tile for the kitchen that we used in the entryway (and bathroom), and finished it with the enhancer that considerably darkened the color.


Cabinets are Ikea, naturally. Cabinet handles, backsplash system and shelves also are Ikea. The backsplash is composed of 3"x6" subway tile with regular white grout that Tai completed overnight two nights in a row (multiple gold stars for him).


We replaced both lights, adding a track in the work area and a basic Ikea fixture closer to our dining table.


We closed off the walk-through from the living room to the kitchen in the name of claiming a bit of useable space. We added a massive cabinet to the kitchen side of the new wall (with a bookcase on the living room side).


Still to come: this mess. This is the washer-dryer cubby hole that needs a plumber's soft touch before we can finish up. Right now it's holding our leftover paint cans, the tile for the cubby floor, some drywall and Miscellaneous Crap We Have Not Cleaned Up.


(We have an appointment with a plumber Thursday.)

Countertops

As Kersten said in an earlier post, I chickened out on the concrete countertops. Time was running short, and trying to learn a new technique on such a tight schedule was giving me panic attacks. Instead we opted for the Numerar countertops from Ikea (pronounced "eee-kay-ah" in our house because it's more fun that way).

Because the walls are as far away from being square as you can imagine, I had to scribe the ends and cut them at strange angles so there wouldn't be any gigantic gaps between the countertop and the wall.



Once the cuts had been made I dry-fit the countertops in place to make sure that everything fit right before moving on.


Now it was time to cut a gaping hole in the countertop for our sink. We had originally intended on doing an undermount sink, but with the change in countertop and the nearly impossible task of finding an undermount that would fit our 30" sink base cabinet, we ended up with a top mount also from Ikea.


Making that many cuts to the countertop made a big mess.


Final step was to fasten the countertop to the cabinets and call it a day (except I probably kept working until really late)