Details on a Whim

I'm excited to say I have a little more hope today!  I kid I kid...Yes we are absolutely ready to get this all over with and move in and on with our life but no I'm not totally hopeless. 

But....when there are crews working on the casa it does make me feel like someone slipped me a pill of relief. Even if it was just half of one I'll take it.

Lets start with a pic of the kitchen progress shall we?  Again another bad camera phone pic but you get the idea!

Yeah we finally got the pocket doors fully installed AND the sheetrock went up over them!  This is huge people!  Typically only one thing at a time happens over here and this was a biggie.  You see the kitchen cabinets couldn't be installed until that stinkin wall was done.  Oh but wait...remember our cabinet issue in the last post?  Well you may notice a few cabinets are now gone.  Since every cabinet except for the one in the kids bath was wrongo the cabinet guy agreed to fix what was absolutely necessary and not charge us the extra 1,700 that he had decided to charge from he original quote.  So although they aren't like the plans (that we paid someone to draw up so this wouldn't happen) we agreed to just move on because time is $$.  I'll share some of the details on how all that works in a later post. 

O.k.  The details...On a whim

Well I'm not an on the whim kinda girl when it comes to well anything.  So when hubs called me and said the sub called and there is an issue with the door frames and trim I knew I would have to get out there to actually see the issue and figure out what would be best.

So here was the problem.

It's not a huge deal right?  Ideally You would just go with bigger trim but that isn't in the budget and the subs already had all of this size trim ordered and with them.  

So the alternative that we came up with was to slide a piece of the same trim right in between the top and side trim.

Here is a side view that will make sense of all that trim speak.

Then I had to decide if I liked the look of the trim all lining up along the outside..

Or with a little 1/2 overlap on the sides?

We went with the overlap because it gives it almost a craftsman look and looks a little less like a spur of the moment fix like it was.

I think it looks pretty good actually and adds a nice detail.

Now look at how the other side of the kitchen looks!

This is from inside the playroom looking into the kitchen and laundry room there on the right.

It looks so different not having those big openings into the kitchen.

This was the before from a different angle.

 Here is another grainy before picture form the master bath.

After:  The pocket door is all closed in and your peering into what will soon be our messy closet.

Almost all of the trim is up at this point.  I think it will be done today!  

Below you'll see we decided to extend the trim 3" outside of each window.  We did this because someday we would like to place trim all the way around the windows and we didn't want to have to redo the window sills.

We have 5 or 5 1/2 inch baseboards(I can't believe I can't remember) and they just so happen to butt up right against the window sill in the dining area.  We decided to make the sills continuos under the windows here because if we ever do get around to adding trim around the windows it would have left this teeny tiny area of wall between the pieces. (does that make any sense?)  Anywho it would have been odd but now we can really beef up the trim around the windows some day.

You may notice there are lots of little areas that will need to be cleaned up and patched.  I've already had the blue tape out;)  If you have every bought a new house or built you know they hand you a roll of blue tape and have you mark any uh oh's you come across.

This is how the open doorways look all trimmed out.  Your getting a sneak peek of the cheap and yet adorable light I found for our teeny tiny hall into our  master bedroom.

And that folks is my thrown together post about the happenings so far this week and it's only Wednesday!  Oh and if you follow on facebook you've seen my Hallelujah  picture below...

We have an electric pole!!!!!!!!!  Can you imagine the excitement running through my bones when I can flip a switch and see the lights come on?

Thanks for giving a rip ;)

Quality Control is a Full Time job

Hi there.  We have gone a little forward and a little backward in our construction progress this week. We thought it was all forward but some things just weren't "measuring up".

First off let me show you what hubs has been up too.  You may remember we had this glorious old hunk of oak that we were going to use as our mantle?  Well it didn't work out.  The builders guys didn't get it level and things would just roll right off of one side of it so hubs had to knock holes in the wall and remove it himself.  He decided he would just build something himself instead and we would use our little beautiful hunk of wood somewhere else.

I couldn't decide if I wanted this one to be rustic or sleek so he went with a sleek look and if we want to we will beat it up later;)  It may serve us well to take out our aggressions on it right now though;)!!!

Agression..Hmm.  That brings to mind things like this.

You see it right?

Way uneven pendant lights.

A pretty yet also crooked pantry light.

No picture of it but fan blades put wrong side up even though it was written and circled on the box.  Light switch put in the middle of a little wall at the end of the hall.  Remotes for fans just put in random places on the wall.

Lights not moved out of the way of the attic ladder like we discussed. 

Then little things like this can light below.  I'm positive that things like can lights not fitting just right happen all of the time in construction but man those pendants are way off!  It's so obvious.  

There were a couple of things that were correct!  Yahoo!  These fun west elm lights were put in the jack and jill bath as they should have been and they weren't crooked!:)  Happy girl.

This light was just right in the guest bathroom..Wahoo!

EEEEERRRRRRK!  We got to looking a little closer at the cabinets and got a little overwhelmed.  There were things like this where the wood is splitting.

Corners were not sanded well.  

I don't know.  I mean we have to say things about almost everything that is done in our house and it is so exhausting.  Sometimes we wonder if we are wrong by bringing up every little thing but you kind of have to.  It's a huge investment and these cabinets cost us more than the original quote yet they are all wrong.

There are big hunks out of pieces that will be very visible.

Now when I say they are all wrong I'm not talking about nicks and sanding and such.  The piece below and every single cabinet in the house except the jack and jill bath are not correct:(

I thought something seemed off with the master cabinets because they didn't go all the way to the wall like they should?  So we took the tape measure out and low and behold it is several inches too short.  The big drawers are deeper and wider than they are suppose to be yet it is still too short.  This changes where the outlet under the cabinet goes and many other things.  The large drawers are also suppose to open but the cabinet guy decided to just nail the top large drawer to the vanity instead of making them real drawers?  huh?

Then we decided we should measure everything.  Wowza's!  The kitchen is very different from the plans.  We had our architect draw up plans so there was no guessing:(  There was alot of guessing and no measuring done.  Cabinets are in the wrong places, doors that should be 1' 10" are 1 foot.  And..there would be 6 inches of open space where the oven sits.  There are many more issues with them but it will bore you and make my head explode so I'll stop there but if I had it to do over again I would go to my trusty IKEA and do my own kitchen again.  We would have already had it installed ourselves too.  

I'll leave you with this half positive note.  This process sucks but it's gonna be a great house someday!! We are going to have a huge party if we survive this but I've already warned our friends that it will have to be a potluck because of the sad state of our bank account these days!  Thank God for good and understanding friends!

The Deets on the Kitchen

 I've shared a few of the kitchen details before but now that it's starting to be installed I thought I would share a little wrap up of sorts.

If you've been following along with the progress on the casa you have probably seen our cabinet drawings.  This is the overall plan for the cabinets!

Below is the view of the cabinets and island from above.

I've been dreaming of a white and gray kitchen for sometime now.  Honestly I'm surprised that after 3 years of dreaming of it I haven't grown tired of it but I haven't at all!  I think that's a good sign?  You can read all about the struggles I was having committing to the colors in the old house because I was afraid it would turn potential buyers off.   You know how on HGTV's house hunters people are turned off by simple things like paint color?  We had to play it safe so we just stuck with our urbane bronze island and didn't do anything else.  Turns out I'm seeing this color combo everywhere these days and every time I see it I'm still in love!

So here is the lowdown.  I'm sticking with Sherwin Williams Urbane Bronze on the lower cabinets and went with High Reflectance White from SW on the uppers.  I lucked upon the white glass and stone mosaic tiles at Costco one day and bought enough for the wall behind the stove and all the way up behind the range hood.  The walls throughout the house were supposed to be a pure white.  White is so hard.  We ended up going with SW Extra white but once it was on it looked pretty gray:(  I mean it is a very light gray and we obviously like gray but it's not exactly what I was going for.  Oh well!  It's all over the house and we don't have the time or the funds to correct it.    The truth is I like the color it's just not exactly what I envisioned.  As far as we know the countertops with be Silestone's Lagoon.  Crossing our fingers that those work out but if not they will be white either way.  The appliances will be stainless represented by the lid to our dog treat bowl;) I think it's all going to pop pretty nicely with our dark brown concrete floors.

As for lighting...We have a ton of can lights but will have two pendants above the island.  We scored 5 of these 6 months ago at the pottery barn outlet for $20 buckaroos and just had to buy a light kit at Home Depot for like $16 I think.  These bad boys are $99.00 online

Wahoo!

My plan is to make the two over the island look like mercury glass and the other three will go over the dining table and we will leave them clear so we don't block our view at all.

 I've shared this double oven that I scored from a distributer that had it listed on craigslist.  It has a scratch on the side and was heavily discounted so we went for it.  I was hesitant about the black at first because I wanted all stainless but you know what it is such a pretty range that I don't care if it sticks out a little.  It's sitting on a palate her but has some pretty stainless feet to go with it!

Ok and call me crazy...I'm a little embarrassed about this one.  I was concerned that the double oven's bigger side wasn't really big enough for our large cookie sheets and turkey pans so we bought a floor model single oven and are tucking it away on the wall between our pocket doors.  I better get busy doing some major cooking and baking right?

Here is the stainless sink that was also a scratch and dent that I found on ebay.  We LOVE scratches!

 And here are the dark brown stained concrete floors that will go under all of that pretty stuff!  You can see more about those here.  

I was so anxious to see the cabinets going in. They were suppose to be done 3 or 4 weeks ago.  I've lost track of time.  I don't know I've just run out of any faith that anything will be done correctly.  It has been a roller coaster for sure.  Listening skills and integrity seem to be out the window.  Thankfully they started installing them on a day I was at work and the hubs would just send me an occasional text with a picture and assure me things were going to be ok.  We are so tired of having to say "um that's not how it was suppose to be".   There were some issues(mostly with bath cabinets) but they will be fixed.

So here is where we stood as of yesterday afternoon!

The floors are super dirty but can you picture it all?  Woohoo!

Peek in on the Master Bath Progress

In my last post about the stained concrete floors I mentioned how there are all of these things to post about but I can't find time so I am resolving to at least throw up some pictures of what's happening at our place.  Again if your on the facebook page  this is somewhat old news(but better pics!).

So.....Here she is in progress!

Le Master Bath;)

Our new stained concrete floors are REALLY dirty now.

Um...I didn't notice those to yellowish tiles before I saw this picture.  I am sure I will look at those on a daily basis and wish they weren't right next to each other.  It's a disease and I have it people:(

I'm standing in the master closet to get this wider angle.  I CAN NOT wait to get our plumbing fixtures in!

You wanna see them?

I'm not usually a sparkly kind a gal but I was drawn to a lot of chrome so I went for it.  

We did a pebble stone shower floor instead of a chevron Carrera mosaic that I had picked out because...well because they had it at at Home Depot and I didn't have time to go to the other side of town for the chevron.  I seem to only make decisions under pressure!

And that my friends is where we stand in the bathroom.  We have been told we will get the cabinets in the house on Friday, Saturday, or Tuesday?  Yep..those are the kind of answers you get when your building.  I'm so nervous to see them:/

Concrete Floor Progress

Hi there.  As you can imagine there has been a lot going on behind the scenes since my last post about our construction.  There are the smallest yet time consuming little decisions that are being made on an almost daily basis.  If I listed them out you would probably think...What's the big deal?  It's just the whole balancing life along with those decisions on tile and grout color, fans and lights, tile patterns and budgets that makes it a bit more challenging.  I've decided instead of feeling like I need a whole "post" about our progress and how we make decisions to do what we do I'm going to occasionally do a quick update with where we are with some pictures.  I already do this on my facebook page to quickly keep friends and family up to date on the progress.  I have just found it to be a bit too much to find to right up a post as things are happening.  As stressful as the process has been we do want to remember SOME of it though so this will help me preserve the memories while not feeling overwhelmed about needing to write up a blog post;)

Did you see this post about us trying to decide which direction to go with our concrete floors?

Well we decided to go with the richness of a dark brown concrete stain.  Our entryway shows just how dark it can look in some areas.

We came about this color after searching for dark brown concrete floors online.  This one actually has lines sawn into the concrete slab to make it look like wood!  How cool is that?

Source: stainandstamp.com via Jessica@ Hill Country Homebody on Pinterest

There was also this picture that helped seal the deal.  It just gave a bigger better representation of the variation in color.

                                 Source: stainandstamp.com

Not all concrete is the same and you don't really know what your going to get until you do a sample.  The concrete staining guy did this sample for us in little man's room.  I'm not sure why he did the other colors along with it?  The one on the top right is also Kemiko Black but it didn't have a wax finish like the one right under it and it was surprisingly lighter.

This is an important thing to note.  Apparently it's more expensive to do the wax finish instead of a rolled on (I can't think of the word for it) protection.  This makes since but if your contractor has concrete floors quoted for you you need to know if they had them quoted as waxed or not.  It cost us $1100 to have the darker deeper look. :(     A side note:  if you are thinking about building...the whole "it's gonna cost more" thing will happen.  ALOT!  It is sometimes because you want something better or different but sometimes it is due to mistakes or things being unclear.  

We went with the color called none other than Black by a company named Kemiko.  To us it represented the warmth that a rustic wood floor would bring into the house without having the budget for a rustic wood floor.  We went for a low sheen in hopes that it will be a little easier to keep it looking clean and we just like the look better than high gloss.  Note: I said "looking clean".

  

I think this picture of our living area is the best representation of the color on our concrete.

 

Here is how it was looking in the master bath.  You can see how the cracks are really pronounced.  I don't mind the cracks at all but the gray color around me really bothered me at first.  Well low and behold it actually wipes away! 

 I can't wait to get the floors all cleaned up and see how they really look.

Oops...I still wrote a post!  I told myself I wasn't going to take the time to do that this morning;)