It's been a while since I've posted pictures of house progress, so get cozy - this is a long one!
It's been a bi-polar month. Generally if you had asked me how things are going any Friday in the past month I'd gush about all the activity going on at the house. Our construction manager tends to schedule a lot of trades all at once on Fridays, and since we have a recurring lunchtime meeting with him every Friday, we've gotten to see the flurry of trades rolling in. It's VERY VERY exciting to see this many trucks parked in your backyard, and as many in the front!
The problem is - you know where I'm going with this - is if you asked me any other day of the week I'd be discouraged that nobody has showed up for days, and the concrete that was supposed to be poured a week ago still isn't poured... the plumbers were supposed to be here everyday last week and still haven't shown up. A team of 20 guys show up to do the tile and it's supposed to take "a couple days" and when we check back in 4 days later, the tile is in the same condition as it was on day 1. And not only unfinished, but unfinished with mistakes! So it's a real roller coaster ride building a house.
Almost none of the stuff I'll be updating you on today is finished unfortunately, but the house has changed enough that it's probably worth a peek for you now.
I posted a sneak peek at the painted ceiling a couple weeks ago, but the interior paint is complete for the most part. There are still a couple pieces of wood that need to be stained by the painters, but more or less the paint is done. We went with "Silver Dollar" by PPG paint on all the walls (for now), "Delicate White" by PPG paint for all the trim and ceilings, except in the coffered squares of the main living area, where we chose "Hamilton Blue" by Benjamin moore, though it was color matched to PPG paint. We will be painting walls in a couple rooms once we get occupancy. I should also mention, in most of these pictures, we still have a double layer of blue plastic on the windows for protection so the colors are not super accurate.
TILE
The whole right side of our house is mostly tile. The "dirty hallway," guest bath, hobby room and storage closet, pantry, mudroom, and game room are all tiled. Plus all the bathrooms and showers on the left side. Since neither of us are from parts of the country where it's normal to have giant tiled spaces we were wary of tiling the game room, but we drew the budget line there, especially since the kids will probably enjoy tearing that room to shreds for the next several years. So we decided to jazz it up with a checkerboard pattern. I'm so glad we did!
Here's a shot of the doodle's bathroom all tiled. Slightly disappointed in the variation between all the sample tiles we saw and this tile delivered in terms of color, but I'll get over it. I'm hoping the blue plastic on the windows is messing with me. Just basic white tile in the shower but it looks nice and fresh!
On the flipside, I'm so disappointed that our master shower won't be finished until Mid-March because the accent tile we ordered (in October) is now on backorder and they've already installed the matching accent on the shower floor so it's a done deal. They also put a soap dish where there shouldn't be one, and tiled right over all the wall markings that say "Start accent tile here" so lots of work to go on the shower. Some of my design friends didn't get our accent tile choice with the sliced pebble saying it doesn't relate to our other choices, but we had no doubts, and still love it! I think it will win everyone over in the end. :)
Also, for whatever reason - I will never understand the inefficiencies in building practices - our construction manager decided he had to move something "electrical" for the vent hood, but he waited until they finished tiling our backsplash up to the ceiling before making that move. So he told them not to grout, pulled off a couple tiles to have the electrician add/move something, and then who knows when they'll come back to finish the backsplash again. The reason I'm so petty about this particular item is because our backsplash is so freaking beautiful and I just can't wait to see it finished. :)
Here are some unfinished photos in the meantime, though none of them do it justice. This is Ann Sacks 4x4 Savoy field tile in Cornflower blue. That's not just empty space you see between the tiles, but rather a darker blue edge which will be more noticeable when they grout it.
UPDATE: Mom was feeling left out. :) Here's a shot of her kitchen backsplash before the grout.
FIREPLACES
The masons showed up on the same day to work on our indoor fireplace. The outdoor fireplace was almost complete and sitting with just a few stones missing at the very top for weeks which was driving me nuts, so I was thrilled to see them working on the living room fireplace and then super disappointed when another week went by before they came back to finish the hearth. Totally worth the wait! We drove our builder nuts with the stone. It's the one item we changed a bunch of times. We didn't mean to. When we were trying to nail down the contract in the beginning, we just did a placeholder stone selection to get pricing for what we thought would be the priciest option available just to cover us. When we went to choose in person, there wasn't a single stone color and style available locally that suited us. After going to lots of stone vendors we realized that even cultured stone is made to resemble stone available locally, and that was the nature of our problem. We don't like Texas stone. :) We like our old stone from home. So we had a whole bunch hauled in from Boston. It more than doubled our stone costs. Our builder thought we were nuts and wanted to break up with us. You'll never hear him say it out loud, but now even his eyes twinkle when he looks at our fireplaces. Totally worth it!
FLATWORK IS READY TO GO
It's been a couple weeks now since we flagged all our flatwork - the driveway, lead walk in the front, and our newest addition - the back walkways connecting the houses. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in the early days of the blog, but originally our houses were planned as the mirror image of the way they were built and laid out on the lot. At the permit stage we got last minute "oopsy" news about an unknown 30' rear lot setback specific to our tiny little town, and the houses didn't fit. So we had to mirror image everything. That means that for the first 3-4 months, I couldn't wrap my mind around everything being backwards on a plan that was the offspring of my brain, and which I knew inside out. Unfortunately I didn't know it backwards. It also means that the tiled hallway with a back door that was intended to go out to the pool and serve as a wet feet entrance became irrelevant since the pool will stay where it was originally planned when the houses were reversed. Since the pool isn't going to be tucked between the houses, we feel like we need the walkways, and I'm psyched with this decision. Concrete isn't cheap but even before it's poured I'm feeling like it was a great investment.
LIGHTING
Ahh, the lighting. I'm exhausted from lighting. God said "Let there be light" on the first day and I don't know how He ever made it to day 7 before a rest.
Our builder has a lighting vendor and typically puts an allowance on the contract for us to go pick our lights there. They rant and rave about how much easier it is to go through their vendor. But we were so over budget on stone and all our material selections that we negotiated some freedom in purchasing a lot of our own lights. The goal was to get exactly what we wanted, but to hopefully shop around for deals. I did pick up a bunch of lights around black friday and the holidays and saved a lot of money. We also had access to more retail and e-tail brands that we wouldn't at his lighting vendor. It was NOT trivial keeping our lighting needs straight. It was a lot of work just to audit the electrical plan to understand which fixtures we needed and where, making note of any code restrictions. We did choose our ceiling fans at his lighting vendor because they'll come out and balance them, where the electrician will just "throw it up there." (builder's words, not mine) Unfortunately, even for our small order, his lighting vendor couldn't get their act together. We went and the sales rep helped us make our remaining selections for both houses. As we received the order proposal back, we noticed the fans came with halogen lights, which seemed fishy to us because we're building green. Locally, that just means building for energy efficiency, which means all our fixtures have to be energy star, and we have to use CFL or LED bulbs. So we confirmed with the builder, and sure enough, their trusty sales rep forgot they only build green and she sold us fixtures that are not energy star rated. So we started over and picked again. On round 2, she told us mom and dad's fans were discontinued and she said our fans are not energy star. But....???? Minka's catalog says they're energy star, and Minka phone reps say they're energy star, so that's good enough for me. We ordered them anyway, and when delivered the boxes low and behold say they're energy star.
Also, our order from this place has 4... yes FOUR... notes on it at the top that says "Homeowner to supply bulbs. Builder to supply bulbs. No bulbs needed. Homeowner requests to remove bulbs." No joke. Four line items. And then mixed into the order are all the bulbs on their own line items. I did everything short of driving to the lighting place with a picket sign to get them to fix it, but nonetheless they delivered all the bulbs with the fixures. *sigh* The lighting vendor ONLY offers energy efficient bulbs in the very blue operating room color tone. Recess can lights were also included on the electrical contract, but we had them removed by change order so that we could choose our own color. They would have included "warm white" bulbs and we wanted something less yellow. Goldilocks wanted 3500 kelvin bulbs throughout the house! Is that so much to ask??!!! Not blue and not yellow.
Let's talk about bulbs. Whatever money we saved buying our own fixtures, I wasted in my time to shop for bulbs. CFLs and LEDs are tough when they're new to you. There are color temperatures to learn, wattage conversions, shapes, lumens, ugly-ness... So now I'm not only auditing our electrical plan to make sure we have all the fixtures we need, but auditing all those fixtures for all the different types of bulbs required. And you have to get it right because these new energy efficient bulbs are so expen$ive! Seriously, between both houses, we spent about $900 on bulbs. So we found out last weekend that the electrician would be at the house installing fixtures this Friday (2/28) and that they would need all the lights delivered promptly at noon WITH all the bulbs clearly labeled, else the trained professional electrician might try to jam a standard base flood bulb into a candelabra base. :) So I went along and scrambled all weekend to get the bulbs. They beat it into our heads that timing the delivery of lighting is critical so that we're not slowing them down, but also have no time where lights we purchased are sitting idle because nobody will take responsibility for lighting fixtures that "walk off the jobsite." So we did our part. We got all the lights and bulbs labeled with idiot-proof labels, placed in each room where they were to be installed by noon Friday. Noon came and went. Then 2pm came and went. Then 3pm. At 3:50pm the electricians casually strolled in. And guess the first thing they unpacked from their truck... BULBS IN THE WRONG COLOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I need to stop. I'm mad and tired just from blogging about it.
In the end, well, not really the end, but after a full day of work the electricians made great progress. They used the right color bulbs in each house, which was surely confusing since we brought bulbs, they brought bulbs, and the lighting vendor sent bulbs. They got all fixtures except 1 hung in the right rooms. We definitely need to adjust the height of the chandelier in the master bath, and the island pendants. The dining room chandelier is just temporarily high so nobody walks into it. The island pendant on the far left is at the correct height. And, now seeing the fixtures hung, we need to change out the type of bulbs in some cases, like our hallway lights. :( But we love almost everything and they're almost done, and the lead electrician was a sweetheart and patient with my steady interruptions and nagging.
Here are some shots of electrical mid-process:
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UPDATE: Ask mom the "I told you so" story about these pendants in her kitchen! mwa ha ha ha Don't they look great?
.jpeg)
ONE STEP CLOSER TO FINISHING OUR HARDWOOD FLOORS!
We have FINALLY FINALLY picked our hardwood stain color(s). I went all mad scientist months ago mixing different stain colors, and after 5 or 6 attempts I gave up because it became evident that the red oak I was using was not going to be comparable to the floor boards they'd install in our house. We had the floor guys make us a couple samples, and none of them were quite right, so I went mad scientist one more time using their sample boards that I sanded down to bare wood. This time we thought we got it right, so we passed that combination along to our construction manager who had the floor guys out to do a sample on site for us. Yay! Except they misunderstood and instead of mixing the 2 colors, they just put one sample of each pure color on the floors. Fail. So our construction manager did the custom blend and sampled it for us. And we LOVE it! The image below has no poly on it, so that will warm it up a little bit more and make the grain pop a little more, but this gives you an idea. The floors will be handscraped with the grain, then water popped to bring out the grain. None of that is done on the sample, which also makes a big difference in the final color. We're using DuraSeal stain and doing 3 parts weathered oak to 1 part classic gray, and finishing with a matte poly instead of the traditional glossy poly. Just to be clear, we were NEVER considering the pure gray floors. We just like how the gray stain kills some of the heavy gold tones in most stain colors.
Here's the magic mixture we landed on:
MISCELLANEOUS
They also got our garage doors on, painted, and the decorative carriage hardware on! And I'm not sure which crew, but someone came out and built all our shutters and cedar window headers on site. They'll be stained towards the very end when the painters are there to finish touchup work. The shutters are going to be solid color stain in "Aqua Smoke" and I'm drawing a blank on the stain color for the headers, but it's a dark gray. :) Also, our thermostats are in, and the AC units and vent covers are all installed but that doesn't make for great photos.
Coming soon, or so I'm told:
*Finish plumbing, but I've heard that before
*Concrete flatwork, but I've heard that before too (and cold wet weather monday!)
*Gutters and decorative downspouts
*Hardwood floors to be finished next Friday, but I'll believe that when I see it!
*Our landscape plan has been nearly done for a couple weeks. We're just waiting on some minor details to be put in writing so we can sign but our HOA has been known to take a long time to approve, so I'm getting worried that it's going to hold us up.
Time will tell. It's hard not to get frustrated and discouraged when there are mistakes and when people don't show up when you're expecting them. But it's also hard not to be encouraged and excited by each milestone, especially when you still love all the choices you've made. Hang with us - seems we're in the home stretch!
It's been a bi-polar month. Generally if you had asked me how things are going any Friday in the past month I'd gush about all the activity going on at the house. Our construction manager tends to schedule a lot of trades all at once on Fridays, and since we have a recurring lunchtime meeting with him every Friday, we've gotten to see the flurry of trades rolling in. It's VERY VERY exciting to see this many trucks parked in your backyard, and as many in the front!
The problem is - you know where I'm going with this - is if you asked me any other day of the week I'd be discouraged that nobody has showed up for days, and the concrete that was supposed to be poured a week ago still isn't poured... the plumbers were supposed to be here everyday last week and still haven't shown up. A team of 20 guys show up to do the tile and it's supposed to take "a couple days" and when we check back in 4 days later, the tile is in the same condition as it was on day 1. And not only unfinished, but unfinished with mistakes! So it's a real roller coaster ride building a house.
Almost none of the stuff I'll be updating you on today is finished unfortunately, but the house has changed enough that it's probably worth a peek for you now.
I posted a sneak peek at the painted ceiling a couple weeks ago, but the interior paint is complete for the most part. There are still a couple pieces of wood that need to be stained by the painters, but more or less the paint is done. We went with "Silver Dollar" by PPG paint on all the walls (for now), "Delicate White" by PPG paint for all the trim and ceilings, except in the coffered squares of the main living area, where we chose "Hamilton Blue" by Benjamin moore, though it was color matched to PPG paint. We will be painting walls in a couple rooms once we get occupancy. I should also mention, in most of these pictures, we still have a double layer of blue plastic on the windows for protection so the colors are not super accurate.
TILE
The whole right side of our house is mostly tile. The "dirty hallway," guest bath, hobby room and storage closet, pantry, mudroom, and game room are all tiled. Plus all the bathrooms and showers on the left side. Since neither of us are from parts of the country where it's normal to have giant tiled spaces we were wary of tiling the game room, but we drew the budget line there, especially since the kids will probably enjoy tearing that room to shreds for the next several years. So we decided to jazz it up with a checkerboard pattern. I'm so glad we did!
Here's a shot of the doodle's bathroom all tiled. Slightly disappointed in the variation between all the sample tiles we saw and this tile delivered in terms of color, but I'll get over it. I'm hoping the blue plastic on the windows is messing with me. Just basic white tile in the shower but it looks nice and fresh!
On the flipside, I'm so disappointed that our master shower won't be finished until Mid-March because the accent tile we ordered (in October) is now on backorder and they've already installed the matching accent on the shower floor so it's a done deal. They also put a soap dish where there shouldn't be one, and tiled right over all the wall markings that say "Start accent tile here" so lots of work to go on the shower. Some of my design friends didn't get our accent tile choice with the sliced pebble saying it doesn't relate to our other choices, but we had no doubts, and still love it! I think it will win everyone over in the end. :)
Also, for whatever reason - I will never understand the inefficiencies in building practices - our construction manager decided he had to move something "electrical" for the vent hood, but he waited until they finished tiling our backsplash up to the ceiling before making that move. So he told them not to grout, pulled off a couple tiles to have the electrician add/move something, and then who knows when they'll come back to finish the backsplash again. The reason I'm so petty about this particular item is because our backsplash is so freaking beautiful and I just can't wait to see it finished. :)
Here are some unfinished photos in the meantime, though none of them do it justice. This is Ann Sacks 4x4 Savoy field tile in Cornflower blue. That's not just empty space you see between the tiles, but rather a darker blue edge which will be more noticeable when they grout it.
UPDATE: Mom was feeling left out. :) Here's a shot of her kitchen backsplash before the grout.
FIREPLACES
The masons showed up on the same day to work on our indoor fireplace. The outdoor fireplace was almost complete and sitting with just a few stones missing at the very top for weeks which was driving me nuts, so I was thrilled to see them working on the living room fireplace and then super disappointed when another week went by before they came back to finish the hearth. Totally worth the wait! We drove our builder nuts with the stone. It's the one item we changed a bunch of times. We didn't mean to. When we were trying to nail down the contract in the beginning, we just did a placeholder stone selection to get pricing for what we thought would be the priciest option available just to cover us. When we went to choose in person, there wasn't a single stone color and style available locally that suited us. After going to lots of stone vendors we realized that even cultured stone is made to resemble stone available locally, and that was the nature of our problem. We don't like Texas stone. :) We like our old stone from home. So we had a whole bunch hauled in from Boston. It more than doubled our stone costs. Our builder thought we were nuts and wanted to break up with us. You'll never hear him say it out loud, but now even his eyes twinkle when he looks at our fireplaces. Totally worth it!
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| This is how it sat for a week - hearthless. :( |
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| Sorry for the ladder! They had just finished when I snapped this, which is why the mortar looks so dark on the bottom. The mantel is uncovered here, but not yet stained. |
FLATWORK IS READY TO GO
It's been a couple weeks now since we flagged all our flatwork - the driveway, lead walk in the front, and our newest addition - the back walkways connecting the houses. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in the early days of the blog, but originally our houses were planned as the mirror image of the way they were built and laid out on the lot. At the permit stage we got last minute "oopsy" news about an unknown 30' rear lot setback specific to our tiny little town, and the houses didn't fit. So we had to mirror image everything. That means that for the first 3-4 months, I couldn't wrap my mind around everything being backwards on a plan that was the offspring of my brain, and which I knew inside out. Unfortunately I didn't know it backwards. It also means that the tiled hallway with a back door that was intended to go out to the pool and serve as a wet feet entrance became irrelevant since the pool will stay where it was originally planned when the houses were reversed. Since the pool isn't going to be tucked between the houses, we feel like we need the walkways, and I'm psyched with this decision. Concrete isn't cheap but even before it's poured I'm feeling like it was a great investment.
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| Driveway is all re-barred! You can also see they painted our exterior trim and dormers! |
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| Path from mom and dad's house to the back door, back door to the patio |
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| Plus a little pad for our grill. That's a gas line on the right so we'll never refill another propane tank again! |
LIGHTING
Ahh, the lighting. I'm exhausted from lighting. God said "Let there be light" on the first day and I don't know how He ever made it to day 7 before a rest.
Our builder has a lighting vendor and typically puts an allowance on the contract for us to go pick our lights there. They rant and rave about how much easier it is to go through their vendor. But we were so over budget on stone and all our material selections that we negotiated some freedom in purchasing a lot of our own lights. The goal was to get exactly what we wanted, but to hopefully shop around for deals. I did pick up a bunch of lights around black friday and the holidays and saved a lot of money. We also had access to more retail and e-tail brands that we wouldn't at his lighting vendor. It was NOT trivial keeping our lighting needs straight. It was a lot of work just to audit the electrical plan to understand which fixtures we needed and where, making note of any code restrictions. We did choose our ceiling fans at his lighting vendor because they'll come out and balance them, where the electrician will just "throw it up there." (builder's words, not mine) Unfortunately, even for our small order, his lighting vendor couldn't get their act together. We went and the sales rep helped us make our remaining selections for both houses. As we received the order proposal back, we noticed the fans came with halogen lights, which seemed fishy to us because we're building green. Locally, that just means building for energy efficiency, which means all our fixtures have to be energy star, and we have to use CFL or LED bulbs. So we confirmed with the builder, and sure enough, their trusty sales rep forgot they only build green and she sold us fixtures that are not energy star rated. So we started over and picked again. On round 2, she told us mom and dad's fans were discontinued and she said our fans are not energy star. But....???? Minka's catalog says they're energy star, and Minka phone reps say they're energy star, so that's good enough for me. We ordered them anyway, and when delivered the boxes low and behold say they're energy star.
Also, our order from this place has 4... yes FOUR... notes on it at the top that says "Homeowner to supply bulbs. Builder to supply bulbs. No bulbs needed. Homeowner requests to remove bulbs." No joke. Four line items. And then mixed into the order are all the bulbs on their own line items. I did everything short of driving to the lighting place with a picket sign to get them to fix it, but nonetheless they delivered all the bulbs with the fixures. *sigh* The lighting vendor ONLY offers energy efficient bulbs in the very blue operating room color tone. Recess can lights were also included on the electrical contract, but we had them removed by change order so that we could choose our own color. They would have included "warm white" bulbs and we wanted something less yellow. Goldilocks wanted 3500 kelvin bulbs throughout the house! Is that so much to ask??!!! Not blue and not yellow.
Let's talk about bulbs. Whatever money we saved buying our own fixtures, I wasted in my time to shop for bulbs. CFLs and LEDs are tough when they're new to you. There are color temperatures to learn, wattage conversions, shapes, lumens, ugly-ness... So now I'm not only auditing our electrical plan to make sure we have all the fixtures we need, but auditing all those fixtures for all the different types of bulbs required. And you have to get it right because these new energy efficient bulbs are so expen$ive! Seriously, between both houses, we spent about $900 on bulbs. So we found out last weekend that the electrician would be at the house installing fixtures this Friday (2/28) and that they would need all the lights delivered promptly at noon WITH all the bulbs clearly labeled, else the trained professional electrician might try to jam a standard base flood bulb into a candelabra base. :) So I went along and scrambled all weekend to get the bulbs. They beat it into our heads that timing the delivery of lighting is critical so that we're not slowing them down, but also have no time where lights we purchased are sitting idle because nobody will take responsibility for lighting fixtures that "walk off the jobsite." So we did our part. We got all the lights and bulbs labeled with idiot-proof labels, placed in each room where they were to be installed by noon Friday. Noon came and went. Then 2pm came and went. Then 3pm. At 3:50pm the electricians casually strolled in. And guess the first thing they unpacked from their truck... BULBS IN THE WRONG COLOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I need to stop. I'm mad and tired just from blogging about it.
In the end, well, not really the end, but after a full day of work the electricians made great progress. They used the right color bulbs in each house, which was surely confusing since we brought bulbs, they brought bulbs, and the lighting vendor sent bulbs. They got all fixtures except 1 hung in the right rooms. We definitely need to adjust the height of the chandelier in the master bath, and the island pendants. The dining room chandelier is just temporarily high so nobody walks into it. The island pendant on the far left is at the correct height. And, now seeing the fixtures hung, we need to change out the type of bulbs in some cases, like our hallway lights. :( But we love almost everything and they're almost done, and the lead electrician was a sweetheart and patient with my steady interruptions and nagging.
Here are some shots of electrical mid-process:
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| ugh, this photo does neither fixture any justice, but in person they're so pretty and glam! my little doodle is going to love her bathroom that will be ALMOST as sparkly as she is! |
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| nugget's room |
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| yeahhhhh, so all 6 of these lanterns will be getting a different style flood bulb instead of the spirals. oops! cha-ching! |
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| not what you might think when we say french farmhouse eclectic, but i love it! simple, clean and disappears into the ceiling. i hate ceiling fans but they're a necessary evil in texas. :) |
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| do you have ANY idea at all how many options there are for fans that are both outdoor rated and energy star? like a handful at best. then try to find a black one. then, try to find an outdoor rated light kit that's also energy star! yeah, no fond memories of that search. nice look at the finished fireplace though, and i think the fan looks great. those cedar beams will be stained, by the way. |
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| This will be adjusted down about a foot. |
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| The left pendant is good to go. The other two will be adjusted down. We caught him after 2 were hung. :) |
UPDATE: Ask mom the "I told you so" story about these pendants in her kitchen! mwa ha ha ha Don't they look great?
ONE STEP CLOSER TO FINISHING OUR HARDWOOD FLOORS!
We have FINALLY FINALLY picked our hardwood stain color(s). I went all mad scientist months ago mixing different stain colors, and after 5 or 6 attempts I gave up because it became evident that the red oak I was using was not going to be comparable to the floor boards they'd install in our house. We had the floor guys make us a couple samples, and none of them were quite right, so I went mad scientist one more time using their sample boards that I sanded down to bare wood. This time we thought we got it right, so we passed that combination along to our construction manager who had the floor guys out to do a sample on site for us. Yay! Except they misunderstood and instead of mixing the 2 colors, they just put one sample of each pure color on the floors. Fail. So our construction manager did the custom blend and sampled it for us. And we LOVE it! The image below has no poly on it, so that will warm it up a little bit more and make the grain pop a little more, but this gives you an idea. The floors will be handscraped with the grain, then water popped to bring out the grain. None of that is done on the sample, which also makes a big difference in the final color. We're using DuraSeal stain and doing 3 parts weathered oak to 1 part classic gray, and finishing with a matte poly instead of the traditional glossy poly. Just to be clear, we were NEVER considering the pure gray floors. We just like how the gray stain kills some of the heavy gold tones in most stain colors.
Here's the magic mixture we landed on:
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| Custom blend before the poly |
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| I'm posting this picture because "Weathered Oak" and "Classic Gray" are relatively new colors from DuraSeal and there are not many photos out there yet. These samples are on red oak with no poly. Hope that helps! |
MISCELLANEOUS
They also got our garage doors on, painted, and the decorative carriage hardware on! And I'm not sure which crew, but someone came out and built all our shutters and cedar window headers on site. They'll be stained towards the very end when the painters are there to finish touchup work. The shutters are going to be solid color stain in "Aqua Smoke" and I'm drawing a blank on the stain color for the headers, but it's a dark gray. :) Also, our thermostats are in, and the AC units and vent covers are all installed but that doesn't make for great photos.
Coming soon, or so I'm told:
*Finish plumbing, but I've heard that before
*Concrete flatwork, but I've heard that before too (and cold wet weather monday!)
*Gutters and decorative downspouts
*Hardwood floors to be finished next Friday, but I'll believe that when I see it!
*Our landscape plan has been nearly done for a couple weeks. We're just waiting on some minor details to be put in writing so we can sign but our HOA has been known to take a long time to approve, so I'm getting worried that it's going to hold us up.
Time will tell. It's hard not to get frustrated and discouraged when there are mistakes and when people don't show up when you're expecting them. But it's also hard not to be encouraged and excited by each milestone, especially when you still love all the choices you've made. Hang with us - seems we're in the home stretch!
Ah, delays. Sometimes we gotta deal with them, and sometimes you gotta ask what's keeping them. I hope the delays resolve themselves pretty quickly, so that you can test out your new home. You're still having the positive outlook though, so that's still a good way looking at things!
ReplyDeletePaddy Wright @ HarrisPlumbing.ca