door hardware - any ideas?

The cabinet installation is done! Well, almost... two cabinets arrived without their glass, so that's been ordered. We also need to choose cabinet door hardware. I'm really pleased with the row of cabinets next to the fireplace - they utilize the dead space perfectly.

We moved the island out a little further than we had originally planned but there is still enough room by the back door and it works.

We used Hanssem Somerset cabinets in here, in "frosty white." We had planned to use "crystal white" but the color looked more creamy than we wanted under our lighting. We also used IKEA PERFEKT FAGERLAND wine shelving down the length of the wall to the right of the refrigerator. There are three units stacked and the cabinet installer did such a great job you'd never know it wasn't ordered with the Hanssem cabinets. I was a little nervous about this because I labored over the problem of needing at least 6 inches next to the fridge for the doors to open properly. Hanssem did not have anything under 12 inches in width (too big for the space) so as always IKEA to the rescue. We're not big wine drinkers but I thought it would be handy when I can't resist buying those cases of Pellegrino at Costco.

We still have to paint in here, build a half wall around the dishwasher and back of the sink cabinet and move our poor doorbell before we can pop in those lights and get the countertop installed.

My Dad stopped by yesterday and hooked up the stove, washer and dryer, put doors on the bathroom and our bedroom (yes!) moved the toilet upstairs and re-installed the curtain rod so we can shower. I hate baths here because the tub never warms up and no matter what we do, baths are freezing. We're working on weather stripping all of the windows and doors but the house is still pretty cold. Our bed is a mountain of blankets!

The snow yesterday left a pretty blanket over our back yard and bamboo forest:

sneak peak!

Fernando just sent me this quick shot of the kitchen progress.

I feel incredulous - I really was beginning to think I'd never have a functioning kitchen again!

2009

Happy New Year!
So far it's been a very happy one for us - we've finally moved in and now we're living amidst chaos. Check out the dining room:

Those are BOXES. I think we had around 250 packed up from our last move. There's even some furniture too:

It's not staying like this (I promise!) Some things are going and others will be moved around. The aluminum group chairs are not good on our floors - they've made that patch of floor over by the desk a mess. I don't know if it's because the floor was recently refinished or if it's because they are old or if it's just the type of wood they are, but they are soft.
We've been doing a lot of painting and most of the trim is done. Check out the stair risers:

More work was done to the bathroom. That's my Dad doing touch up to the plaster:

My Sister has been working on patching and sanding the bathroom window. It just needs a coat of paint. I still haven't decided on a wall color!
We now have our IKEA HÖLLVIKEN sink hung on the wall:

The plumbing is currently hooked up - that was taken just after it was hung.
And here's the new bathroom faucet:

All of our kitchen appliances have been delivered. It was hard getting them into the kitchen and after the first attempt failed, another date was scheduled, two doors (on our mud room) were removed and the appliances are now in the kitchen. All of that and only one huge scratch down the front of the left refrigerator door. Another door has been ordered and is on its way. Nothing ever goes smoothly.

Speaking of nothing going smoothly, I don't think I mentioned the footprint. There was a footprint in the final coat of poly right in the middle of our living room floor. The floor people have been back 3 times since then to "fix" it and it now looks like a weird 1 1/2' (yes foot) square patch in the middle of the living room floor. They are scheduled to come back and completely re-coat the entire living room and dining room next Wednesday. This means that all of that stuff you see in the first photo of this post has to be removed and found another home in the interim! And that the toilet from our miniature bathroom has to move upstairs this weekend (yay!) and that we won't be able to put furniture in those two rooms for at least another week after they are finished. :(

We also have our new washer and dryer in the basement. When they were delivered we realized that the ground was too uneven where the plumbers put the hook-ups. We've also been getting water again in that corner when it snows. Everyone we've consulted seems to think it's ground water. We will eventually have to add a sump pump in the future to end the water issues. As for the washer and dryer - we had to move them over, under the basement stairs and that meant longer hoses (not readily available at most plumbing suppliers.) We finally found 8ft hoses at Sid Phillips. They are not hooked up yet.

Our kitchen cabinets were delivered at least two months ago and are being installed TODAY. I'm very excited to see the results...

snow day

So the title is a little misleading... this post is not about snow even though it is snowing outside. Just thought I'd show off the extent of our Christmas decorating this year:

Yes, that's all.

Here are a couple of photos showing the bathroom's current state:

We actually don't have swine bathing in our tub. That's grout, joint compound, plaster dust - all kinds of icky stuff that's fallen in there during the work. I haven't scrubbed it yet because it's not finished being filthy yet.

The tiles still have haze on them from grouting here - this was just after the grout was finished. We're showing you the current status of the bathroom. It's sort of like reality TV except here you actually get to see reality. The walls need more skimcoat, the baseboards and trim need patching and painting, the overhead lights are not in yet because we need to paint the ceiling first (and can't decide on a paint color.) Reality.

This is our new soap dish embedded in the wall:

It was designed by my Father and Fernando and the nice people at the place where we bought the wall tile (Monumental Marble) made it for us. It's carrara marble and was cut to mimic the shape of the tub. On top, there are two small indentations for soap. It's quite heavy and partially sits on a beam about 2" inside of the wall for stability. If we are lucky, it will never fall out. ;)

Happy snow day!

It is official.

I neglect my blog. I could blame the holidays but I'm going to blame the house. The house is eating into my blogging time but I blog about the house. It's an endless cycle.
Here's the latest photo of our subbasement (sub-basement, sub basement?)

It's currently moonlighting as a wading pool. We must have a crack somewhere down there and that last rainstorm flooded the little room. Fernando tried to bucket it out but gave up after about bucket number 25. I hope it doesn't freeze. It's not a huge deal because we can't really use that room (formerly a coal chute) at the moment for anything. It doesn't have electricity and usually holds the day job of spider farm. It's just another project to get too - hopefully before it freezes and more cracks develop.

Our floors and stairs are finished!

I do love them. The finish is not glossy and just like I expected a satin finish to be, even though it's semi-gloss. This photo was taken at night and the flash penetrated the layers of poly, showing it to be more brown than black. It does read black when you see it in person. I can't wait to paint those baseboards and am actually looking forward to a little time off to get to paintin'.
As for the bedroom paint color - I think the swatch was lost in the clean-up. I know I should remember the name but we debated over two, the other being BM's "Calm" and this other color won. I need to have more mixed for the baseboards so I'll ask the name of the color when I get to the store.
We've also had some exciting (for me) things delivered - more on that later. I promise to add more photos of the refinished floor, painted bedrooms, and yes the forgotten upstairs BATHROOM hopefully soon...

get to fixin' on NY1

St. George Properties Offer Great Views For A Great Price

Check it out - that's our house!

We can't go inside.

We have been patiently waiting. The first two coats of poly are down. It shouldn't be this shiny in the end - they first use high gloss poly for a harder surface and then they will finish with either satin or semi-gloss. This is what it all looks like from the front door:

Really makes the unpainted stuff look super crappy huh? I was feeling like this was one of the final steps - but IT'S NEVER GOING TO BE OVER. I keep thinking of all of the things that we still have to do but we can't do anything until the floors dry. Not being able to do anything is making my head want to explode.
Why didn't I take the yard tools out of the basement before they started to put the stain down? And what will we find growing in that coffee cup on the windowsill?

oh sandy.

Living room paint color in action:

The medallion is not sealed yet in this photo - we have to add a bead of caulk since the old ceiling is a little wavy in some spots.

Oh and the floors have been started! This is our bedroom with the paint color whose name I still can't remember. It's a faint, pale-like thing. Check out the sanding transformation:

I really like the pale wood and almost have the urge to just seal it. The thing is - it's pretty stained up in some spots. Let's just say there were dogs living here before and they were not given the chance to catch some fresh air.

This is the room adjoining our bedroom aka: the office (what we will be using it for,) the nursery or the room with the bay window. My Father freaks out if we call it a bedroom. When asked why he calmly explains that bedrooms don't have bay windows. I don't get it either.

Those bags are filled with sawdust from our floors! We intend to paint this room the same color as our bedroom.

This is our kitchen! I knew there were decent floors under all of that gunk!

We're having a bit of patching done in here - on the right side where there was an intake vent. The vent currently leads to nothing and is no longer useful. I'm not sure what we're going to do with the former hearth though... perhaps use some leveling compound? We can't add wood over the concrete so it may be our only option. The stove will be covering most of this area.

What gunk you say? You can't see the gunk? Have look around the kitchen's first sanded patch:

Yuck.

newly stripped

Fernando spent 3 days on this messy project. The banister and newel post needed to be stripped. Everything was covered in thick layers of flaking varnish and dirt resulting in a sort of burgundy color. He used denatured alcohol and everything from steel wool, to sandpaper, to paint brushes, to metal brushes and so many paper towels - it was hard to get that junk off! Now we can stain it all to match the floors. I thought white trim paint would be nice but I almost had my head torn off at the suggestion.

Completely stripped and a peak of the new ceiling paint here:

In other news, the floors are finally being refinished today! Well, the project is supposed to take about a week to complete... I'm happy it's finally begun. We've also put up the ceiling medallion in the living room, painted the foyer ceiling Lido Green by Benjamin Moore, painted the living room walls and ceiling a pale grey called Iced Cube Silver by BM, painted our bedroom a color that I can remember off the top of my head, replaced a few cracked windows, had a new home security system installed and added some blinds to the downstairs windows (finally.)

The upstairs bathroom is almost complete. I purchased the Axor Montreux Short Two Handle Lavatory Mixer faucet by Hansgrohe in chrome for the bathroom sink. It looks like this:

We had to order more subway tile (I wish I had a photo because the tiled wall is looking soooo good) because we decided to stop a few inches from the ceiling and so we needed bullnosed tiles to finish up. We also ran out of floor tiles because I apparently don't know how to use a tape measure. More have been ordered and after the wood floors are complete my Dad should be able to finish up. Here's a photo that's almost not worth showing but you can see how the floor is coming along:

I'm sorry, I know I need to post a big photo update soon...

black as night, black as coal = too much to ask for

As you may know, we really wanted our floors stained black. It's a hard color to achieve on most woods without straight up paint or aniline dye. We've been working with a floor company to try to get our floors as dark as possible. After they had come by and put a few samples down they offered to do an entire room so that we could see how the color was really going to look. You can see the before and afters here:

The middle shot is one coat of "Cabot Penetrating Interior Oil Base Wood Stain" in Ebony and the right shot is 2 coats. It's pretty close to black but there is still some brown peeking through here and there. They seem to think it will be even darker after the coats of poly are applied. I don't know if that's true... I do like it and after having 4 floor companies come over, this is the closest to black I've seen! One of the companies even promised that their specially mixed black stain was black "like a crayon." On our floors it looked more brown than Minwax. The Cabot Ebony is definitely more black than Minwax's Ebony - so that's what we're going with. I'm guessing that if we had the time (and money) for 3 coats of stain we might actually achieve a true black but I'm also thinking that my floors are going to stop absorbing stain at some point - right?
I'm relieved to see that all of the mess left on our floors after the walls were skim coated came up no problem. That room in particular was really bad - it looked like someone dumped an entire bucket of joint compound in the center of the room!