 | The doors are all installed and they are so cool. I am in love with
the doors. We Mark installed one of the egg-shaped
door handles with the rectangular rosette (base plate) and it looks soooooo
good. Lovin' it so much. |
| Mark has been working on the window and door trim and doing a fantastic
job. I watched him construct some of the pieces and he's paying such
attention to the details and being meticulous about finishing them off
nicely. |
| This weekend Mark's sister Sylvia, Dave and 3-yr-old Jakob, and their
friends Kelly, Wendy, and 2-yr-old Cameron came down from B.C. We went
to the Mariner's game on Sunday and then 'entertained' them on our patio
with fare we'd all purchased at Safeway. It was our first 'dinner
party'! I promise it'll be a little more posh next time, and that
we'll have better facilities to offer than just the Honey Bucket. They
also assisted us in getting my tub and the WaterHaven shower upstairs.
I got to sit my my tub! It's such a nice fit. And, it's the
beautiful Tea Green color. <Sigh!> |
| We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary on the 23rd, and we had our
first real meal on the patio at the house. Mark made his fabulous
Caesar salad and crème brûlée. Yummy! We then went out to El
Gaucho on Friday night, El Gaucho was were we had our wedding reception and
we hadn't been back since that day. A very nice meal. |
| I'd gone back and read the diary entry from our 2nd anniversary and it
said "We
celebrate the beginning of what will probably be our hardest year together."
This turned out to be a fairly true prediction, but the toughest part has
been concentrated into the last 2-3 months. |
| And here's what I mean with the tough part. It's all the finish
details. First the kitchen sink. Part of what I liked about the
kitchen sink was that it didn't have to look like so many of the apron
sinks. I'd envisioned that the cabinet would cover all the front of
the sink, except for the top lip that sticks out. That doesn't work
with the sink and the cabinet. So I'd expressed my frustration about
the sink not being how I'd wished it to be and we had a long discussion
about possibilities, and trying different things to make it work, and in the
end, it needed to be the way it is. And after working through all
that, I'm OK with it. I see that what I pictured isn't really possible
or realistic, so I let that go. And it works. I know that the
sink is the way the sink is supposed to be, and I can't have what I wanted
because it won't work. And by going through all the possibilities of
fixing it, I see that it can't be fixed or made to the way I originally
wanted it. So that's cool, by working through it, I got to the point
of acceptance about the sink. It just took some talking and ideas and
suggestions. |
| So, then Saturday Mark and I had probably our strongest
disagreement/discussion/almost fight about some design details. Over a
week ago, we decided to add more molding at the top of the
windows/doors. Mark found a piece, we put it up over the window in the
kid bath. It looks good, I give it the thumbs up, Mark orders the
special-order trim, builds all the pieces (two mitered corners, glued,
nailed, flat edges sanded with the sander, and then the 90° cut edge
hand-sanded with a sanding block). Friday we finish putting them up
over most of the windows. Lots of work for Mark.
And then, I changed my mind.
I keep looking at the classic Craftsman trim example that I showed before here.
The trim we put up over the living room windows just isn't looking right to
me. There is already a strong horizontal piece across the top of the
window and the additional trim piece is adding more of that horizontal to
it, and very little of the 'crown' and it's just all of sudden not looking
right to me. I keep going back to the trim example and I think we need
a different trim piece. But one in the kid bath still looks
good. It's bizarre. So we have a period of anger, frustration,
tears. I really angered Mark, and I rarely do that. Mark is very
frustrated with me, and rightly so, I completely understand that he's angry
with me, and he should be. I gave him the OK, he worked hard, and then
I changed my mind. I was surprised that he didn't get madder at me
than he did, rather, that he didn't express his anger more strongly toward
me than he did, because frankly, I deserved all of it. I agreed with
the design, he worked hard all week, and then I change my mind. So we
decide to go try and find a similar trim piece to the one in the
example. Lots of talking, lots of discussions, I tried to cave in a
one point, but Mark said, no, if you're gonna make a stink, we're gonna
follow through on this. When stuff like this comes up, we keep saying
"is it something that's going to bug you?" and if it is, we work
on it, because we can, if it's not, then no worries.. At this point,
we don't have to settle, we can still fix things, albeit always keeping the
factors of time and money in mind. So we go to Home Depot.
Nothing. We go to Dunn Lumber. We find the exact molding in the
picture. They have a display from that company, we can see and feel
the trim. So we get some of that. We pick up an idea on how to
do another part of the trim. Then we notice their display of railings,
and decking, and end up getting price quotes on their Trex, their Timber
Tech decking, and their railing systems. It ends up being a very
productive shopping trip. So we go back to the house, and put up the
new trim and we both agree that it looks good, and that it's the trim that
we should be using. The trim we'd already put up comes off cleanly, so
no damage there. We come up with a use for the original trim if we're
unable to return it (remember it was special order ). The new trim is
just a bit more expensive (nothing crazy) than the original stuff, so all is
OK. We worked it out. Neither of us has to be right, we just
want it to be right for the house. In fact, I really don't want to be
right, because that makes Mark wrong, and that doesn't help us, that doesn't
build us up, that only tears us down. No yelling, no ugly words, no
snide comments; just words, discussion, listening, give/take, understanding,
communication. This is why this project isn't going to ruin our
marriage. We can work it out. We're a good team, we work well
together, we work through stuff together. And it's why I can talk
about it. |
| The garage has been poured and finished. Boy did the finishing
substance stink. |
| The finish carpenters installed the pantry cabinets and some of the
doors. There is a problem with the upper pantry cabinets. Check
out the pics to see what's
wrong. Easily fixed. Same fix as the corner cabinet. But
you'd think they would've noticed that something wasn't right. |
| Painting is continuing, it's going slowly. |
| The electricians came and continued to hookup lights and other various
electrical elements, including the outside lights. |
| Mark put together the cabinets in the kitchen island. Along with the
bar sink. |
| So we are now just shy of 30 days out from the new close date of September
15. As we discussed it, we both agreed that we should probably get a
2nd extension. So we don't start rushing things, cutting corners, etc.
in order to get it done. In order for the bank to be happy we have to
get an occupancy permit and have the house 95% done. The occupancy
permit will be no problem, it's the 95% that we may have a hard time
reaching. So we called the bank to ask about it, and there is no extra
penalty, other than the extension fee if we don't make the 9/15 date.
So we can go for the 9/15 date, and if we don't make it, no extra penalty,
other than what we'd already figured we pay. The fee is .5% of the
loan amount, which isn't cheap, but if that amount is going to make or break
this project, we shouldn't have done this in the first place. It's our
dream house, we're not going to screw it up here at the very end. |
| Friday we ran around again, and Saturday we painted the front entrance
hall. No easy feat to edge the corner between the wall and the ceiling when
the ceiling is 20' feet up. Mark did a wonderful job on the tall ladder, and
I contributed support by handing him things. Having no finished floor makes
things easier so you can drop things without worry. |
| We're trying to work out painting the finish trim around the windows. Do
we paint it before the walls? Do we spray it, and have to mask off
absolutely everything, including the already painted walls? Do we roll/brush
it, and still have to carefully mask off just the edges? Do we spray and
then give the walls their 2nd coat in case there is any over spray? Should
we do a 2nd coat on the walls before the final trim is in place so we don't
get it on the trim? Then to make this logic puzzle even more fun, the 'how'
is only half of the equation, the other half is the 'what' - the paint. The
really expensive stuff that hides the brush marks ($40/gallon) has a satin
finish and the color matches really well, but it's too expensive to spray,
cuz there is a lot of waste with the spraying. The not so expensive stuff
that is good, but doesn't hide the brush marks as well ($17/gallon) has a
satin or semi-gloss finish, but can be sprayed, and we can make the color
match. I'm thinking we spray with the less expensive stuff in the semi-gloss
finish, and just mask off everything. Then come back in and do the 2nd wall
coat, and just be really careful of the finished trim. |
| So I decided to try color #2 on the front door, Persian Violet, a deep
purple from Ralph Lauren. I'm really liking it. I think more than the
Canterbury. I think it goes well with the exterior colors of the house. I
may try color #3, a brick red version, just to see... but check out the pics
to see color #2. |
| We met with the concrete guy about all the outside concrete (pathways,
pads, the patio) last Tuesday and they were scheduled to pour this upcoming
Tuesday. But they haven't even set the forms yet. Plus, all the concrete
suppliers in King County are on strike so no concrete. The good news is that
our concrete guy gets his concrete from Rinker which is in Snohomish County,
but I'm sure they're overwhelmed with orders. The timing on this isn't
critical right now, but it's something that needs to be done for our final
inspection. We won't pour the 'apron' in front of the garage until we leave
for Hawaii so it will get to 'cure' for nearly a week and a half while we're
gone. |
| Have I mentioned that a while ago the inspector found a problem with one
of our windows not being tempered glass when it needed to be? The large
window over my tub accidentally got ordered without tempered glass (long
story, it was missed by both us and the window company), but the glass is
in, and is ready to be installed. One more thing on the 'needed for final
inspection' list. |
| We've got almost all of our light fixtures in hand, just missing a few. We
picked up the exterior lights and you can check them out in the pics. |
| Our finish carpenters have installed about half of our kitchen cabinets
and they look really good. They started in the corner with the 'Super
Susan.' He put it the corner, got out his level, checked one side, checked
the other side, then sat back with a puzzled look on his face. Mark asked
him what was wrong. He said, well, OK.... I guess ..... it's .. uh....
level. The floor was perfectly level, so the cabinet was level, so he didn't
have to shim it. This is rare when it comes to cabinet installation. Once it
was installed, Mark noticed that the door on it didn't quite match up with
the cabinet next to it, so he opened the door, and noticed that there
weren't any turntables in it. Until he looked closer and realized they'd
installed it upside down. Oops. They fixed that right away. They've also
started work on the staircase railings, and installing the crown molding in
the dining room. |
| Cabinets: Two of the doors and one of the cabinets were broken, so we'll
get them to replace those. My upper vanity cabinets in the spa were supposed
to have spaces for glass, but they don't. We have to check if that was our
fault, or their fault. The corner cabinet for the dining room is not right,
I wanted to have all glass doors, but we needed to compromise and have solid
doors on the bottom and glass on top (so it wasn't special order and mucho
more $$). But the bottom doors come up to about 5', when they should only
come up to counter height, about 3'6" and then the are uppers would be
glass. The proportion is all off. So once again we have to see if the fault
is with us or with them. I may reconsider the glass on the spa cabinets. We
used a the same simple shaker style door, with the 3" raised panel all
around, all white. But the doors are much narrower than those in the
kitchen, so the amount of recessed space between the raised panel is really
small, and wouldn't have much room for glass, so I'm thinking maybe no
glass. That or we'd have to change the door style, which I'm not thinking is
a good idea as it wouldn't then match the lower vanity cabinet. So many
details to consider!!!!!!!!! |
| The house see-saws back and forth between 'it's clean,' and 'it's a mess.'
We got it cleaned up and organized, but now it's all a mess of cords,
equipment, sawdust, tools scattered about, and house pieces randomly left
around all over all again. ugh. |
| Remember the sink from the Camlin hotel that we built the house around? We
knew that when they renovated the hotel in 2003/2004, they found the sinks
and stoves covered up by drywall, but we didn't know why they were covered
up. Well, one of our finish carpenters worked on the demolition and was able
to tell us the reason that they were covered up. The hotel opened in 1926
and had kitchenette units in 40 of the rooms with a sink, stove, and icebox.
Over time as hotel laws changed, you couldn't have the electric stoves in
each room. So instead of ripping them all out, the hotel simply covered them
over during a 1949 renovation. So during the renovation, they discovered the
kitchenettes and lots of other vintage goodies, one of which is now our
pantry sink. Very cool. |
| The cabinets look so good on the Plantation Green background. You can
really see it start to come together. Seeing the finish details come to
fruition, after nearly three years of planning is such an exciting thing.
Our design plan, all the details, coming to life. We've been looking at
drawings, and plans, and samples and swatches for so long that I'm kinda
back to that surreal point that I was back when they framed the house, and
we got to see the space come to life, created from nothing. Now seeing all
the finish details coming to life is taking me back to that same surreal
space. To see our ideas come to life, to see our home come to life. I stand
at the bar now and think what it will be like to stand there when the house
is done. To have guests stand at the bar while we entertain. When we were at
the house yesterday, I found myself constantly looking out the door, hoping
that someone would drop in so that we could show them the house, so that we
could 'entertain' if you will, as best as you can in house with no furniture
or chairs. And lo and behold, M&D & Garrett & Parker came by.
Dad needed to measure for the carpet, so we took a short break and
entertained them in the house and showed off all the details. The boys both
love the storage room. Some of the light switches work now so Parker is in
heaven. Everybody also liked the spa, but what's not to like? We didn't
worry too much about putting a full-size shower (other than the clawfoot tub
shower) anywhere else in the house because we knew that everyone would want
to take a shower in our bathroom. |
| Seeing the house this close to completion is bringing forth this weird
blend of calm and frustration for me. I'm frustrated that it's so close, but
not here yet. But I'm also calm because it is almost here. We're closer than
we've ever been. We're on the home stretch, it's just a matter of putting
all the pieces together. We're long past the 'can we do it?' stage. Those
stages long ago when we weren't even sure if we could do it, or even if it
could be done. Either from a realism standpoint, or a financial standpoint,
which are almost the same. We're at the 'we're almost done, we just have to
finish it' stage. We know we can get the permits, we know we can get the
insurance, we know the water main can be installed, we know we can get the
sensitive areas adjusted, we know that the hole for the foundation can be
dug, we know that the land is stable enough to support the house, we know we
have the money to build it. Just to get it finished is the easy part. We've
come a long, long way. |
| The finish carpenters have been working for the last two days and they
have finished framing all around the inside of the windows. Mark will
be finishing off the surface treatment. Our moldings will be similar
to this,
but without the crown molding on top of the windows. (if you put your
mouse over their pictures, you see cut-away views of the pieces,
cool.) Currently we only plan to have crown molding in the dining
room, as it's the only place where the ceiling/wall 90° corner goes all the
way around the room. |
| They have also installed about half of the kitchen. Oooo, you can
see it coming together in the pics. |
| The next two days are going to be all about painting. We'll also be
picking out our decking and railing materials, trying to finish up the order
on Mark's chair (issue with what type of leather we picked, what grade it
is, missing swatches, etc.), ordering more paint, running to Home Depot more
than once.... |
| Let me show you some of the furniture: our couch,
our dining
room table (in 'Buttermilk'), our dining
room chairs (also in 'Buttermilk' and with a fabric seat), our
Mark's recliner
(the Nouveau style), our bar
stools (in 'Glacier'). These are really the only significant
furniture pieces we needed to buy. We'll still need a coffee table,
and maybe two side chairs, but not too much more. With three
households between us, we had a fair amount of furniture. |
| Saturday was spent still getting ready to paint. We've been trying to
paint for something like two weeks now. We're running into the problem of
too much stuff in the house, and a lot of needed prep work (sanding,
dusting, etc). The cabinets are currently in the laundry room & pantry,
but some are in the kitchen. We need them out of the kitchen so we can
paint. The hardwoods are stacked in the kitchen/dining room against the
wall, we need them moved so we can paint, but not too far, as we need to
have the hardwoods in the great room for installing them. We can stage
certain things in the sewing room and kid bedroom, but not too much. It's a
juggling act. |
| Tuesday we spent painting (finally!) and got the entire great room done in
the Plantation. Looks great! |
| We did final touch up and spraying of the ceiling (yes a 5th time in some
areas), and it is what it is. It looks really good, it's just not 100%
perfect. I said to Mark, "we have to stop painting the ceiling!"
No one else will notice except for us (although, since you're reading this,
you'll probably look for flaws, but I bet you'll be hard pressed to find
any). We're being so darn particular, Mark specifically. When I asked Mark,
"Are you gonna have your Mum help paint," he said, "No, and
you're lucky you get to paint!" (Said with much love &
sarcasm)
Update: since we put so much paint on the ceiling, it has a bit of a
slight crackle finish to it now. VERY COOL!!!!! |
| We did make progress on Saturday and painted the kid bathroom the Shale
Blue color, and it is gorgeous, a silvery slate blue-gray. It was too late
when we finished to take a good picture, but I'll get one up soon. Mark also
started with some of the confined areas (closets) and sprayed them the
Plantation color, and it is also gorgeous. Very, very happy with our color
choices so far. |
| We'd picked out the Rio Grande color as the accent wall color for the
master bedroom, and painted some on the wall. And it's a nice color, but
it's quite red, a direction we didn't want to go that wasn't reflected in
the paint chip. I don't know why we haven't completely learned the lesson
that you have to paint some on the wall, and not just select it from the
color chip. We only bought a gallon, so it's no big loss, but we're smarter
than this. So we went back and picked out two new darker brown colors,
Manchester Brown and Steeplechase (both RL colors). Painted them on the
wall, and Steeplechase it is! By a nose! It's a very dark brown, chocolate
color, that blends nicely with the Cappuccino color that will be the main
color of the bedroom walls. The dark brown will be quite dramatic as it'll
be on the wall with two windows with white trim and the art niche which
we'll probably finish off the inside with white beadboard. We also are going
to match the color on the walls in the spa to the slightly darker cove base
tile, so we'll have all the white tile with the creamy accents and wall
color. So, we took a tile to H.D. to match the color, matched it perfectly
to a color from Behr called 'Swiss Coffee' (thought it was poetic to
continue the coffee theme), but when we got the paint home and painted it on
the wall, you couldn't tell it was any different from the drywall primer
white, I was thinking that they hadn't pigmented the paint (but I could tell
from the spillage on the can that they had). So, we had them double the
amount of pigment in the paint, and that may do the trick. Not sure yet,
didn't get back to painting that on the wall on Saturday. |
| So we picked up the the Squak Mtn Stone on Friday and it comes in these
huge crates. It's a good thing we had the pickup truck! And if they're in
good condition, you can return the crates to the Environmental Home Center
and they'll get reused. You can see a picture of them in the truck. |
| We bought our bar stools on Friday, and had to pay full retail price! Ugh.
I think the only other thing that we've paid full retail for is the kitchen
sink faucet (the sexy faucet). Mark & I sat on every single bar stool we
could find, they had some at Bassett, but they creaked and I think one of us
(I'm not saying who) broke it when we sat on it. We're not small people, we
need a sturdy bar stool. We went to the 'bar stool' store, no luck. We
wanted a comfortable, hopefully ladder back stool to blend with our dining
room chairs. The ones from Ethan Allen beat every other bar stool we tried
out hands-down. And we paid for them. But, we know it's the right choice.
The seat is contoured to fit your backside, they are sturdy, the edges are
rounded so they don't cut into the backs of your thighs too badly when you
get off of them (I think all bar stools have this issue!), they have cross
bars for your feet at the right heights, they have a back for support, and
they are comfortable to sit on. And that was the bottom line. |