Opening to Rave Reviews

Ta-da! They started putting up the red siding on Friday and it looks great! We ran into some friends from the neighborhood at Rocco's last night and they gave it rave reviews, as did Gerry and Judy who are here to see it in the flesh. The white trim looks nice and crisp and the color is rich but not overpowering (sounds like a wine review and it is sort of a win-ish color)! Anyway, after months of angst and much gnashing of teeth, I am relieved and delighted to see it going up on the house. I love the idea of being the Big Red Bungalow on the Block!

Roll the Credits!

I got my husband to the tile store this morning and I have admit, begrudgingly, that he was really helpful. He liked most of what I had tentatively picked out but had some great insights and suggestions that improved upon the original plan and really moved us toward final decisions. So giving credit where credit is due...Kudos to Brian! I'm not going to try and post pictures here because they won't do the tiles justice. The main level tiles (fireplace, mud/laundry room and powder room) are all in the same slate family but a variety of tile sizes and patterns will be used to mix it up. It gives the house a coordinated feeling without being matchy-matchy!

The baths upstairs both have lighter, creamy-colored tiles that have natural stone look but are porcelain, both cheaper and easier to maintain. In the basement, I decided to forego the black and white bath. It just really doesn't 'fit' with the more muted tones of the rest of the house. We picked out a really cool tile that has little specialty tiles that I just love. I'll still order a furniture look vanity, but something in a wood tone.

Now I just have to finalize the vanity tops and the granite and we're well on our way. I'm going to hold off on choosing a backsplash until everything is in. I'm leaning toward pulling some of the fireplace tiles into the backsplash to tie those two areas together but we'll have to see how it all works.

Horror Film

Ok, yesterday our house looked like something out of The Blob! They were foaming the interior walls prior to installing the pink fiberglass insulation and it really felt like something was oozing into the house. Kind of creepy! The foam provides an extra layer of protection and fills in a lot of the nooks and crannies so that there are fewer leaks in the house. It was an option that I felt wasn't so optional in this climate. Have I mentioned that it stays cold here for a long time?!? In an effort to make our cozy-looking house FEEL just as cozy, we opted for the foam insulation as well. Conor really wanted to watch them apply it but he was at lacrosse camp at ND. I went over while they were there, but forgot the camera. It goes on almost like paint and then expands. You can see some of it in these pictures where they haven't covered it with the pink. And won't Conor love his pink bedroom?? I'm glad all this mess will be covered up with drywall starting tomorrow! I like knowing it's there, but I'll love not having to look at it anymore!

The other temperature control feature that was added yesterday is the whole house/attic fan in the upstairs hallway. Brian's mom still has one in the house in Livingston and it does pull a lot of hot air out of the house. We're hoping we can minimize our air conditioning use by using the fan instead. So far, we haven't had our air on much this June and there's almost always a breeze here in Indiana so I'm hopeful. Although I'd never build a house without air (except maybe in Alaska), I'm always cold when it's on and prefer a cool breeze anyday. We're also putting ceiling fans in all the bedrooms.

Set Design

The cabinets are ordered - hurrah! Bunny has been very patient with me during this rather lengthy process that started months ago. I still have to deal with the sink tops and hardware but those don't need the same lead time as the cabinets so I have some time. We ended up with Decora cabinets in the kitchen. The style/finish is very similar to what I had in Vienna. It's a natural maple cabinet with a coffee glaze. Here's pictures of a kitchen done in the same cabinet. Our floors will be dark to draw out the color of the glaze and have a random pattern of 3 different width planks like this example.

I am also including two views of the kitchen layout. The island has room for seating on 2 sides - we'll have 3 stools. There's also molding along the top of the cabinets that didn't show up on the drawing. There aren't too many 'specialty' cabinets: just a trash pullout, a tray base and a lazy susan corner cabinet. Otherwise, just lots of drawers and, of course, the spice drawers for mom's knobs.

The maple cabinets for the two upstairs bathrooms are Aristokraft. The master bath (right) in Landen in Saddle finish and Conor's is the beadboard called Roxburgh. I love beadboard but had picked something simpler for my ultra-modern son (this is a kid who wants a piano black and chrome kitchen someday!!), but he chose the beadboard. What a happy coincidence. Conor's vanity is pretty simple just two sinks on top and a bank of drawers on each side with double doors in the center. The master bath layout is this: There will be one more shelf on the top tower and a door on the top half of the tower. Should be enough storage I think! I'm ordering that black vanity for the basement and the pedestal sink will be in the powder room. The laundry room has your basic white laminate cabinets. We ended up ordering only base cabinets and we're going to put in Elfa shelving from the Container Store for additional storage in there.


Tomorrow is tile day for Brian - oh boy! We're whittling down the decisions and October will be here before you know it.

Lights, Camera, Action!

It's been a busy week for decisions and it's an awfully good feeling to move so many things over into the 'completed' column! Brian and I finalized the lights for the house this morning. T the right is a picture of the exterior light. There will be 7 of them altogether. They are black with white opaque glass, which means we can use the energy saving light bulbs since you won't be able to see them. (I know they are better for the environment but they are kind of ugly). The interior lights on the main level are all also wrought iron with white globes, but I don't have pictures so you'll have to wait for them to be installed. In the baths, the fixtures are satin nickle to coordinate with the chrome faucet, but it's a softer look than the bright, bright chrome would be. We also picked out fans & light kits for all the bedrooms and the front porch.

Similarly, when I picked out the doorknobs earlier this week, we ended up with satin chrome (more silvery than the satin nickel) standard round knobs for the upstairs and the basement to coordinate with the bathroom hardware. The main level hardware is all black, however. The Wilshire handle to the left is for the front door. It seems kind of massive, but the door is 8' and extra-wide so it needs something sturdy looking and the square lines match up well with the lights. The interior knob is actually a lever and that's what will be on all the doors on the main level (see Milano lever below right). We had planned to do the french doors in levers so it just seemed to make sense to be consistent. There aren't that many doors on the first level anyway. I am ordering the same kitchen knobs I had in Vienna in black and all the exterior knobs are black to coordinate with the lights.

Other decisions include the 'accent' color for the house. This will be on three attic vents and the window box by the garage for sure. Once we see how bold it is we'll decide if we're also going to paint the side porch door and the 2 garage access doors the same color. I'm leaning toward yes and Brian is reserving judgment until he sees it. The color is another Benjamin Moore Historic Color called Yorktowne Green. In some lights it looks pretty green and in others it has more of a blue cast. I have seen red houses use both green or blue, so it's almost like I didn't have to choose! I get both.
Yorktowne Green
HC-133

I've got to run out and sign the paperwork to order the cabinets, so I will do another post later on those decisions. Next week, it's time to finalize the tile choices (big GULP!). But it's all good!

We Need the Key Grip on Set!

Accounts vary as to who is to blame, but it is obvious from this picture that we have had a furniture malfunction! Yes, the chair IS a recliner but this is a wee bit extreme. I put this in the blog not just to mock my husband (all in good fun) but to note that this probably means we are going to be shopping for new basement furniture, much to Conor's delight. He didn't think the plaid was quite 'mancave' appropriate! These chairs were the first REAL furniture Brian and I bought for our condo in Georgetown and one of us thought they still had another decade or so of life in them. However, they couldn't hold up to a tickling-induced spasm so who's to say.

And in a supporting role...

One more decision down! We picked out the exterior stone this morning. It's actually a manufactured stone that 'sticks on' to the side of the house but looks very realistic. We picked Michigan River Rock. In looking around the neighborhood after we made our selection, we noted that most of the houses actually have brick. The big blue house though has the same stone we chose. It works well with our house because it's light and actually has some red stone mixed in with the lighter grays. There were a couple others we liked in more of a stacked stone look but they were too dark given the rich red of the house. Neither of these pix is completely color accurate but it gives you an idea of what it will look like (the one above is probably closer to what it looks like in person).

Cut!

Jim's puttin' up the trim! Given the 92 degree day, the siding crew is loving our big garage so they can stay out of the sun as much as possible! My trip to the lighting store (see today's other post) was well-timed because they need to know the dimensions of the backing for the exterior lights. They mount them on trim pieces and since the lights I liked come in 3 different sizes, we were able to figure out pretty quickly which ones best fit the space and scale of the house. There are 7 outdoor coach lights and I think they'll all be the same size which makes it easy for Jim.

One piece of reassuring news is that, although the siding comes prefinished in the color of your choice, the trim actually gets painted on site. So that means if the white trim is too stark against the red, I'll have an opportunity to have them paint it a different color right from the get go and it won't be an upcharge. That makes me feel less anxious about the red. You're probably wondering why I didn't pick another color since this red is giving me such fits, but I really do want a red house. I just want it to be the 'right' red house! I ran into one of our new neighbors who said "I heard you're going with red and I have only one issue with that." (Gulp!) But she continued, "I wish your house was across the street so I could SEE it!" (We're behind and two lots down from her). So there is neighborhood support for bold colors. I just need to relax.

We're going to pick out our stone this weekend that will run along the basement and support the columns on the porch. I also need to drag Brian to the appliance store and the tile store to make sure we're on the same page. Stay tuned and I'll try to stay more current!

Backdrop

Wow! Sorry for the long silence. They've been busy at the house, but most of the work isn't really 'photo-worthy'. Not to disparage all the hard work being done, but wires, pipes and vents are not going to win any excitement awards, as critical as they all are. The vents for the heating/air cond. were completed this week. It's funny that when you move into a completed house you sometimes think "now why would you put the vent there?" What I'm learning is that sometimes you don't have a lot of choice as to where stuff ends up. It depends on how the house was framed, where utility room is located relative to the rest of the house, where the utility companies are willing to put their hook-ups and whether a vent or pipe is exactly where you wanted to put your lights!! Of course, most options can be worked out, but many of them will cost more! So....sometimes you just shrug and say, "I can live with that."

With respect to the HVAC vents we lucked out a little in the basement as most of the vents that fell below the joists are in the guest bedroom so we'll have full 9' ceilings in the rec room part of the basement except for this one small area near the stairs (see left) where they needed to run a vent from the microhood. In the bedroom, we dropped the whole ceiling to 8' to cover up the vents rather than try to piece around them. It's a cleaner look.

Most of the plumbing is in. There's still a cache of very valuable copper piping in the basement, but the house is all locked up and has a temporary security system in place so it's pretty well protected. The plumber should finish up by early next week. Dux, the security/stereo guru, is done until they close up the walls. The picture below is all the wires for the security and entertainment systems. We prewired several rooms for future stereo speakers so we can live in the house for awhile before we decide if we need/want speakers everywhere.

The electrician has been working like a madman, but there are a lot of wires still to run. We went over the basement and exterior layouts with him on Tuesday so there's a plan, it just takes a lot of time. I finally went up to the lighting place this morning and think I have all the lighting picked out. We're doing a lot of recessed lights so there weren't as many fixtures to pick out as there might have been and Judy was really helpful. Once I get Brian's ok, I'll try and post some pictures. The exterior fixtures are black and very much in keeping with the Arts & Crafts style of the house. The rest are more of the style that Brian likes to call "What Alison Likes!"