Cabinets Ordered!

We waited until they were running the Memorial Day sale, then ordered our kitchen cabinets!  Although it didn't make for the most exciting way to spend our holiday weekend, it saved literally thousands, just by waiting until that weekend!

Here's the print outs of the plans... the windows aren't the right proportions, and the walls aren't going to be green, so disregard that stuff! 

View from the seating area, and just to the right of the back door.

The main thing we wanted was for the hood & stove area to look like a hearth.  The hood has a ledge that I can put platters & decorate .  We also loved having the small upper cabinets for storage in our last house's kitchen.  They were so useful, so we knew we wanted to do that again.

In the far back corner, we put additional cabinets.  We were thinking we'd use the antique butler's pantry cabinetry here, but since that will fit in a U shape, in the area behind the stove wall, we had to pick something else for this nook.

More funkiness with the computer program for the photos below, but it gives you an idea...

View from the refrigerator

That empty area on the right will have our table (corner banquette?)... we still have to find & purchase that.

View from the kitchen sink

To the left of the fridge will be the door to the basement.  To the right of the cabinets is the doorway into the dining room & butler's pantry.

It normally takes 4-5 weeks for the cabinets to be made, but we won't be ready for them so we put a delay on the delivery.  They are going to give us a call in another two weeks to see how it's moving along.

We still have to pick out the countertops. We have a good idea of what we want, but don't need to order that for a while yet.  (I'm hoping we can wait to see if there's a good Independence Day sale!)

Windows!

Just when I thought we couldn't wait any longer, we came home to find the windows had been installed!

It makes such a difference!

They still have to add the half circle window at the top.  You can see it's in the box sitting inside...

More inside photos:

Half bath

Butlers Pantry
We decided to not put a window on the left- our cabinetry will cover it.

Master bathroom

Master closet

There aren't any windows in the laundry room, but they did a little work in there... clearing out the mud/rocks where necessary.

This section of wall was more mud than rocks, and with the torrential rain storms, it was getting all soggy and crumbling.

Shopping for New Bathrooms

I was scouting out deals for the past few months, and found some great ones!

On a local community board I scooped up two sinks.


The first is an old pedestal sink for the master bath...

It was a bit dirty, but in excellent shape otherwise!  Mike is a little hesitant about it- he is concerned that there won't be enough space on the top for his shaving stuff (which is kinda my point- I hate having that stuff out on the sink counter!)


My next sink find was also on a local community board, but this one was brand new!
It will go in the half bath downstairs- was exactly the style that I was thinking of...

 I'm not 100% sure about the fixtures on this one- might need to swap them out... we'll see!

To go with the half bath vanity, we found this mirror at Lowe's...

I purchased the tub for the master bath online.  crate in the barn.  Here's a photo from the website I purchased it from:

It was my splurge (and I still have to buy the hardware for it, since I want it to match the pedestal sink faucets)... but it's cast iron and I LOVE it!  I figured that it isn't too bad if I consider the money I saved on the sinks!

I'm a little worried about how they are going to get it up there- the crate says it's 650 lbs. (thank goodness for free shipping- wouldn't want to pay for that one by the pound, ha ha!)

The two commodes have also been purchased, but they aren't anything exciting so I didn't bother with photos!

Roof Progress

I'm thrilled to write that the roofers have arrived!
They came early Saturday morning and got right to work...

They were back on Monday to finish up the other side.

I love the little snow/ice guards!

The standing seam metal sections of roof still have to go on, but our contractor wants to wait a little bit so that the gutter & siding guys aren't standing on them as they work (potentially denting them).  

We've had several torrential rain storms in the past two days, and I'm happy to report it's mostly dry inside.  There's a little bit of leaking where the metal roofing meets the house, but the contractor is going to put some flashing up to hold us over until the metal roofing is completed.

Next up should be the windows!
They've been ordered and should arrive in a day or two.

Staging the Butler's Pantry

Still no progress on the roof... but in the meantime...

We had to decide how we were going to use the Butler's Pantry cabinets that we had purchased three years ago.  Here's a photo of a section of it from when we purchased it...

It was designed to be a "U" shape, but our original thought was to straighten them out to a straight line of cabinets along the wall (in the back of the photo below).  

Now that the walls are framed out, we could measure and come up with a plan...

They are a touch too tall to flip them over & stand up in the garage, so we had to take them out onto the driveway.  As you can see, we put them into the intended U shape to measure.

The doors & shelves were taken off to protect them when we moved them, so they're safely tucked away in the upstairs of the garage.  (Matching them back up will be a challenge, although we did label them, so that should help!)

They are 66 inches across, and when we measured that's going to be pretty much the exact width of our space, once the sheetrock is in!  Our space is going to be a little bit deeper, so we'll have to have to come up with a way to finish off the ends of the cabinets, since they'll be exposed.

We are so glad that we bought it and held onto it for the last three years!  When ordering our new kitchen cabinets (yes, that's done, & I will share the plans soon!) we figured out that it saved us thousands by getting this rather than ordering something new to fit the space!

I can't wait to load this up with stuff- I think it's one of the things that I'm most excited about!

Here's a view of the back of the cabinets, just for the record!

 

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

The amount of rain we've gotten in the past two weeks has been unbelievable!  They were supposed to start putting the roof on the Wednesday before last, but there was a delay in the roofing materials arriving from New Hampshire... and then the rain started- torrential rain!

It's made such a mess out of the place!

First floor-

Second floor-

Attic (this was the least wet, they had put a tarp over the main roof, so that helped), but it was still dripping down the stairs at times.

I was worried about the electrical wires that were out there, we were able to pull them into the basement stairway landing-

I'm most upset about the plaster ceilings in the main house.  The water travelled in and has stained/leaked in the kitchen (will be the dining room)

And the bedroom-

Looks like we'll be replacing those in the near future.  :(

Our contractor has been over a number of times over the past two weeks- trying to fix a gutter so less rain came in, and wet vac-ing out the first floor a couple of times.

Today was the first day that it was really dry enough for work to take place, but we came home and no work was done.  More rain is forecast for the weekend, so hoping they get the roof on there before then!  So frustrating!

Master Bath framing

Just a quick look at the additional framing that has been completed in the Master Bathroom.

The shower has been framed...

It will eventually be tiled, and have glass doors.

They also removed the rocks from where the door between the bathroom & bedroom will break through.  It's now just that coating of mud and the plaster on the other side.

They are leaving this wall intact for a bit longer to contain the mess as much as possible!

Attic Landing

We were super pleased when we came home and saw what they did for the doorway that goes into the new attic space... we were thinking that it was going to be a rather small door on the existing landing between the second & third floors (which has a sloped ceiling due to the roof line).

We thought doorway would go somewhere here

We came home to find out that they had framed out that whole landing, and it feels SO much bigger!

Here's the new view, taken from the same spot as above...

We were happy to see that the hardwood floors reach all the way back to that sill!

Here's the view looking up the steps from the second floor:

There will be a full sized door, and an arched window on that back wall.

There's even enough room to put a chair or little shelf or table on the landing in front of the new wall that will be to the left of the doorway!

Here's the reverse view from where the new window will be...

We thought it was going to be an under-eve, crawl space for storing bins, so it was a huge surprise to see how much space is going to be here!  It's now got me thinking of uses for it other than storage... sitting room? sewing room? library?  Who knows... finishing off this space is like #142 on our list of things we need to do around here!!!!

Enough daydreaming, back to the present... 

Another exciting thing for us was that we got a peek at the original shake roof that was under the existing slate roof.  

They had put a wood frame on top of it to attach the slate:

We love seeing the history of the house and how it was constructed!

So, this was our last great surprise before the rain... 

which was not a great surprise (especially since the roof is not yet on)!

More to come on that!

Break Through- Second & Third Floor!

The dust is now throughout the house, since there are holes everywhere.

Oh well- at least it's progress!

Here's what's going on for the second floor...

Main Hallway Opening

This opening will be into the laundry room

Master Bedroom Opening

This will open into the Master Bath & Closet

They have put the plastic up, but are holding off on braking through on this one.

Here's the progress up on the third floor...

Attic Opening

Looking up from 2nd floor landing

Ugh, these photos remind me of all that wallpaper removal & spackling we did!  

Looking across from between Media Room/Linen Closet doorways

 This was exciting because we got the first peek into the new attic space!

Break Through- First Floor!

Things are getting messy around here!!!

They're doing their best to contain the dust, but it's inevitable at this stage.

It's all incased in plastic for the time being, so hard to get a good sense of what it's going to look like!

Here's what we've got going on...

Family Room Opening

View from the "Kitchen"

View from the family room

 First Floor Hallway Opening

View from Foyer

This is going to become a coat closet, but they had to break through to move the basement door around to the back (it is located on the right under those stairs).  The reverse of this is where the refrigerator is going to be set back into the wall in the new kitchen.

This is the view between the sheets of plastic in the hallway.
The old basement doorway, and the new one is moving to the back, so it opens into the kitchen.

 Kitchen/Dining Room Opening

View from old kitchen

This doorway will be coming from the NEW dining room, and go into the butler's pantry, turning right to enter into the NEW kitchen.