House Update
Today was our weekly site meeting. It was also invoice day - those are the days I dread the most because it reminds me that we actually need to PAY for all this house construction stuff ;-) Heh. I still have a slight heart attack every month on invoice day, and every month I have a bit of a panic attack and the lyrics of one of my favourite Talking Heads songs plays non-stop over and over again in the back of my head all day - "My God, what have we done". You'll see that has pretty much been our theme song for the duration of this project if you read back through all of our house building blog entries. It's just automatic now. I wake up with it in my head. Very Ally McBealish :-). But - we'll survive. Tim told me so this morning while he consoled me after my latest bout of panic. "Everything's going to be ok". And it will I'm sure. Still. It scares me. More than having the baby, actually!
Anyway, on to the updates. According to our builder, our cabinets are getting installed this week - we actually saw them sitting there waiting to be installed at our site meeting today. They look great. As Tim said, "They better"! Yeah - we're at that point in the project now ;-). Hardwood flooring has also been delivered and will start getting installed end of this week/early next I think. The tile guys were there today too installing the wonderboard, and I believe they'll be laying the slate down shortly in the bathrooms and entry ways. Painting will be done close to last to minimize the chances of marring the paint job while the rest of the finish work continues in the house. Exterior painting should start soon though!
Yesterday, before heading off to the Mariner's Season Opener we had a successful trip to Ann Sacks Tile in downtown Seattle. What a fun place! If you ever have a need for tile, start there - even if it is just for inspiration and/or some friendly advice (while their stuff is absolutely incredibly totally gorgeous, a lot of it is also pricey! But their staff is extremely helpful, and as I mentioned it is a great place to get inspired!)
There we made our final tile selections for the Master Bathroom shower floor, and for the kitchen backsplash. The shower floor tile we picked fit neatly within our budget. We went a bit over for the kitchen backsplash though (and that was after going with our 3rd choice, since the first two, although absolutely to die for, were completely outside our price range. sigh!) but because the area is so small we figured out we could get away with spending a little extra.
I tried to take some photos of the combinations we picked out for a few of the spaces in the house and had varying degrees of success (that being a fairly subjective statement). A professional photographer I am not, and there really isn't any place in our house with adequate lighting for taking pictures of this kind of stuff, so this is what I ended up with.
Master Bathroom
The photo doesn't really show the richness and warmth of the browns in the tiles that we selected - it makes everything look more yellow and rust. But we're pretty excited about how this is going to look together.
Large Left Square - Crossville/Colour Blox 6"x6" Ceramic Tile in "Treehouse" A114 - for Shower walls, vanity backsplash, and tub backsplash
Small off-center Square - Sonoma/Tantrum 1"x1" Ceramic Tile in "Pewter" - for 2" high feature strip around Shower wall, vanity backsplash, and tub backsplash
circles - Ann Sacks Paris Pennies Ceramic Tile in "Barley" - for Shower Floor (will give more traction than the larger tiles).
Center Square - Silestone quartz surface in "Capri Limestone" with gloss finish for vanity top and bathtub deck.
Upper and Lower Right Squares - OTM 12"x12" slate tile in "Yellow Rustic" 634G (same as what we are using elsewhere in the house wherever we have slate floors).
Lower left rectangle - clear finish fir for vanity cabinetry.
Kitchen
We really loved the contrast between the pretty green of the tile with the copper flecks throughout, and the reds in the brazilian cherry floors and the clear finish fir cabinets and the paint colour we selected for the walls. Again you can't tell in the photo but the green is really rich, and the colour along with the flecks of copper vary from tile to tile - no two tiles are the same. I think it's going to look awesome.
Upper left square - Ann Sacks Nottingham 4"x4" ceramic tile in "Verdigris Copper" for kitchen backsplash
Center rectangle - clear finish fir for vanity cabinetry
lower left square - Silestone quartz surface in "Ebony Pearl" with gloss finish, for kitchen countertops. All of our appliances are in black as well.
Bottom center square - C2 paint colour in "Tiger Lily" C2-2309 A - for kitchen wall colour
Right rectangle - Brazilian Cherry for kitchen floor (actually, this will be the flooring used throughout the house except for the entry ways and bathrooms and laundry room)
Laundry Room
Left rectangle - C2 paint colour in "Shine" C2-3163 P for wall paint colour
Right square with cutout - Marmoleum in "Whispering Blue" for counter top and floor. The cabinetry will be white melamine and the tile in the dog shower will be white as well. Can you think of a happier combination of colours for a room in which you'll be doing a lot of laundry? The idea was to make it cheerful (to distract from the stinky diapers we'll be washing in here ;-)). Marmoleum comes in such fun colours it was tough settling on just one. I'm thinking when we finish the basement (some day in the very distant future ;-)) we're going to have to find an excuse to go with some fun marmoleum colours down there too ;-)
Dining Room
The dining room is my favourite. we chose the paint colour for the walls after selecting the fabric we'll be using to cover the dining room chairs. I think it's going to be pretty gorgeous.
left rectangle - our dining room chair fabric
upper right rectangle - C2 paint colour in "Amontillado" C2-3086 M for the wall colour.
Lower right rectangle - Honey finish maple - the colour of our dining room table, chairs and china cabinet
I think this will all look so beautiful with the brazilian cherry floors.
Entry and Stairway
The entry and stairway wall colours will be C2 "Outback" green - as suggested by Rob, our architect - it goes nicely with the colour we chose for the living room, and it also looks really nice with all of the outdoor scenery that you see immediately as you walk in, through our back french glass doors and windows.
Nursery and Guest Bath
The Nursery and Guest Bath will be done in C2 "Pod" green. The guest bath shower tile and backsplash will be a pretty cream coloured ceramic tile - Crossville/Color Blox "Sandbox", with a 2" high features strip in 1"x2" glass tile in "Lily Green". The same Capri Limestone as in the master bath will be used for the vanity top in the guest bath, the cabinets will be the same clear finish fir, and the floor will be the same slate tile.
All in all, we're pretty darned excited to see the end product of all of this! We had some great guidance from Rob our Architect on colour and tile selection but I'm proud to say that we also seemed to have our own good instincts and ideas and everything going into the house is very "us" - Rob just made sure we had "the right tools" as he puts it :-)