Living Room/Entry/Stairs

It's probably about time that I continue on with the tour of our finished house. Keep in mind that when I say finished, I'm really just talking about substantial completion as I have a punch list a mile long to still complete. So if you see something that looks incomplete, I'm getting to it. Like the cedar slats in the front door canopy.

The door is a solid core birch slab. It has several coats of a marine spar-var finish on the outside. The painter said that we should never have to worry about it again.

The doorbell button is the True Illuminated Doorbell Button by Spore. We bought this and all of our light fixtures from lumens.com.

The mailbox is the Two Arcs Mailbox from Chiasso. I don't have a hammer drill so drilling the 4 holes in the concrete wall required to hang it took me well over an hour and lots and lots of elbow grease. And elbow pain.

Views of the concrete wall on the interior as well as Kersten's many knitting supplies and my prized possession, an Eames Lounge Chair and ottoman. We hope to someday have a really cool fireplace against this wall. We look forward to this day as winter nights will be very cozy and as it will also signify that disposable income has returned to our life.

George Nelson Bubble lamp from lumens.com.

Pay no attention to the slovenly fat guy on the computer in his pajamas.

Every time we move (4 times now) I keep hoping someone will drop my TV so that I can get a cool flat screen. Someday.

View of the upstairs balcony from the living room.

Exposed paralam beams that carry the second floor balcony and stairwell.

Before we finally got around to moving the piano out of our old place.

After we got around to moving the piano out of our old place.

1/4 inch stainless steel cable rail.

Pre-cast concrete treads.

Exposed paralam beam up close.

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.

Am I Bad at Blogging or What?

After the sheetrock was done, things on the inside were turned over to me for the most part. Originally we had planned on doing all the painting ourselves. I hadn't really thought through sealing the windows and doors and after looking into a few products we determined that it would be best to have them spray lacquered. We had a couple of painters that Davido has worked with give us a bid on it. Dave Miller and Dave Burleigh at Allstar Painting gave us such a good bid for that that we decided to also have them spray the primer and a finish coat of white on all the walls and ceilings as well. This saved us a ton of time. In the course of one week we had all the doors and windows sealed and all the walls painted. We still have some walls that we will paint an accent color on but I can't tell you how relieving it was to have the paint 90% done in one week. The painters were great to work with and let me do some of the prep to help keep costs down. They also did an absolutely great job. The combination of a really good paint job with an excellent sheet rock job make the walls look like a million bucks.

We went with a Kwal-Howell product called Envirocoat which is a no-voc paint and it turned out to be a really great product. The walls were given an eggshell sheen and the ceiling got a flat paint. With so much ceiling and no texture anywhere, a flat paint up there will keep light from glaring and make any irregularities in the ceiling less noticeable.

Between helping us prep for paint, Davido and his guys finished up the cedar siding. It looks really great. The mitered corners are a really nice touch. We just hope that they don't shrink up too much. Each board has two coats of sealer on all sides and all cut edges were sealed and all joints were glued, so we think it will do okay.

The painting was done last Friday around noon and as soon as they were done I got working on the tile work. Friday and Saturday morning I got the backer board down and then Saturday afternoon Kersten showed up and helped me start laying the tile down in the bathrooms and laundry room. She was actually really good at it. She's really a good baker and she said that spreading the mortar reminded her a lot of frosting a cake. Saturday we got all the laundry and second bathroom and about half of the master bathroom finished. I was back at it Monday night after work and finished the master bathroom. Then Tuesday night and Wednesday night my Dad came and helped me get the walls around the bath tub in the second bathroom finished. He was a huge help and once we settled on a plan of attack we were able to move pretty quickly. Friday I spent figuring out the rest of the shower pan for the master bathroom shower. Our plumber did the base slope and water proof membrane which had to be inspected by the city a couple of weeks ago but it still needed a mortar layer over top of the membrane for the tile to go on. I used a sand/portland cement mixture that goes in as a dry-pack application. Enough water is added so that it feels a bit like wet sand. It was pretty tedious getting the perimeter edges level and then sloping it towards the drain, but it's done now and I'll start working on the tile for the floor in the shower next.

We went with a 2x2 inch tile mosaic on the floor by American Olean in Ice White with a matte finish. The walls are 3x6 subway tile in the same finish.

Wednesday we got most of our finish electrical work done and even got some lights working. This makes working at night so much easier. We are just waiting for all of our accent lighting to come in and that will be installed. We've got some cool fixtures that we are excited about. Thursday they started installing the ductwork for our air conditioning system. We have radiant heat but really hate the heat, so we are going to have an exposed spiral duct running down the hallway on the first floor that will have registers to cool the first floor and trunks that feed registers in the floor for the up-stairs. We also put an exposed duct in the hallway upstairs to pull all the hot air that will gather at the top of the vaulted space out of the house and cool the house more efficiently. They should be all done on Monday.

Fiat lux

We are so pleased to have new lights up in the place — the early 1990s, French-country vibe from our all-white ceiling fan in the living room wasn't working for us any more:


Also not working for us? The slasher-hotel, bare bulb look in the entryway and kitchen:


And, who loves a nipple light? Not I, especially not in the kitchen. (Please excuse the horrendous metering and light level editing.)


We replaced the living room and entryway lights with this fixture, which puts off plenty of light through its three compact fluorescent bulbs, looks decent and ties together the front rooms with the same look:


We have a technical problem that prevented us from using this light in the kitchen — we're now in the market for something that will make the clearance from a cabinet door. Flat, modernish and not too expensive...

But our hall light went from this...


to this:


And the office light used to look like this...


but now it looks like this:

This little light of mine

It's been interesting to pull things off the wall in this condo and see what's underneath. I found two layers of wallpaper under the light fixture in the office — one was green stripes and the other was brown with cream leaves.

Other than being interesting, it's been plain fun to rip off ugly light fixtures from ugly walls. We happily said goodbye to this bathroom beauty: