Master Closet

With the painting of the master closet completed...

...they  began installing the heating.

 While that was underway, we ran out and bought the shelving units.

I was planning on getting the pedestal bases and having them sit on the floor.  But then we thought that wouldn't be the best idea with the heating, so we ended up hanging them- a little more work, but now there's storage underneath as well!

Left side of closet

Right side of closet:

Of course, our set up wasn't the same as the "kit", so we had a lot of cutting and customizing to do. Plus, there weren't studs where we needed them, so that took a bit of extra work. It took about 10 hours for assembly and hanging.

Exterior siding- 75%

They are approximately 75% done with the siding on the exterior of the house.

He also swapped out the square vent for the triangle in the peak of the house.  

It looks much better!

Unfortunately, he didn't order enough clapboards and now we have to wait for more to arrive.

Rub-a-dub-dub

They moved the tub!  It is 650 lbs, and took 6 men to bring it up the stairs!
It's now staged in our bedroom until the plumbers are ready for it in the master bathroom.

They had to take the door off the room to get it in.

Not much other progress in the master bathroom...  

Countertops installed!

We're very excited that the countertops have been installed!  It feels like real progress!

View from back door

Island

We LOVE this stone!

 The "Absolute Black" looks great too...

Friends were visiting and exclaimed that they had the same faucet as we had originally picked out, but then told us all the trouble they had with it.  So, we quickly went and picked out a new one, before the holes were drilled.  It was a good thing too, since the new one only required two holes rather than three...

The only issue we noticed was that the backsplash of the counters on the stove wall were supposed to be cut about 1 foot short.  You can see the boxes for the upper cabinets drawn out on the wall...

We had given them instructions and marked in red on the wall... but they didn't understand.

In order for the cabinets to be installed, we popped them off.

The granite guys will come back and cut them & re-install after the cabinets are finished.

Dining Room Demo- more stone walls

The plaster was in such bad shape on the old exterior wall, that we had to take it down.  Behind the plaster was more rock!  We just left it in place... they will sheetrock over it.

Framing was put around the pipes... they will get the same treatment as the pipes in the family room.

The other side of the room looks slightly better!

View from next to the radiator

Reverse- view from hall doorway

 We had to remove the top piece of the baseboard moulding.  The drywall guys got super thin sheetrock that they will put right over the plaster.  We'll then replace the top piece of moulding with a thinner one.

They need to patch the hole in the ceiling from where the cabinets were.

And they need to replace the section where the water damage was...

Master Bath & Closet- a little progress

We've gotten a little bit of progress going on in the master bath & closet!

First, we painted the closet...

It is a shade lighter of the purple in the bathroom, although in photos it looks almost identical.  It does look lighter in the sunlight that comes in from the closet window (we still don't have lights hooked up in there, so we'll see how it looks when those have been connected!)

The plumbers spent half a second in the master bath... mostly complaining that we had selected a pedestal sink.  They "have never, ever installed anything but vanity cabinets in a master bath" and voiced his concerns about lack of storage.

Grrrr.... I understand that more modern houses usually have big vanities with double sinks, but these guys obviously don't do much old house plumbing. There are tons of master baths with pedestal sinks on pinterest or in Old House Journal & This Old House magazines/websites!  Not to mention we have a master closet less than a foot away for storage, plus we'll have an antique dresser in there about 4 feet from the sink!

I wish they'd stop commenting on the design choices and just get it installed! (sigh!)

Framing Bedroom Ceiling

With the upstairs tiling complete (and that equipment out of our master bedroom), they were finally able to make some progress on the framing of the ceiling so that new drywall can go up!

Happily, they got rid of the old ceiling fan.  I love having a fan in the bedroom, just not that one!  We have picked out a new one that has lights.

Doorway into new master bath

It's been over four weeks that we've been crammed into the boys bedrooms, so I'm excited to see some progress here!

New Dining Room- more demo

Since the remainder of the kitchen cabinets couldn't be installed until after the countertops were in, we still had a number of boxes in the old kitchen.  We moved these into the hallway, old dining room, and kitchen.  This allowed more progress to begin on the new dining room (old kitchen).

The cabinets are now all out (and we're now stove-less & dishwasher-less, with no sink functioning on the first floor)...

From the hallway door

Happily, after getting under all the linoleum & plywood, the wood flooring looks good!   There are a few areas that could use patching where the pipes came through under the sink.

Reverse- from the window

Of course, there are more heating pipes that will need to be boxed in...

The plaster is in pretty bad shape on the wall between the old & new construction...

You can see above that the fridge is missing... that's been moved into the old dining room, where we have our "temporary kitchen" set up.

Fridge Cabinet Dilemma

As mentioned, the wrong cabinet was ordered for above the fridge.  It was too deep... the floor plan showed the little alcove for the fridge, but didn't show that there was a framed out box above it.  Now we had to come up with a remedy, since we knew we definitely didn't want it sticking out so far (the whole reason behind recessing the wall!)

You can see it sticking out on the
left side of the photo

Our options were...
1-pay over $500 for a new cabinet.  We couldn't return the wrong one because it had already been installed (one reason you should be at home when the cabinets are being installed... but unfortunately, neither of us could take off from work that day).  They said they could put it on rush order and we could get it in about a week.
2-remove the sheetrock & framing above the fridge and use the "wrong" cabinet, just sliding it back to where it was measured for.  I was a little worried that there was a big beam or something behind there, which may have lead to the decision to frame it out that way, but luckily I had photos on the blog I could check!  There wasn't a photo of the exact section we were wondering about, but this post had photos of the coat closet that is on the opposite side of the wall.  It looked clear of huge beams.
3- not have a cabinet over the fridge at all.  This would require not even exploring option 2, or else we'd need to re-sheetrock.

We took the plunge and went with option 2.  Mike was able to do this himself.  After knocking through a hole underneath, he confirmed that there weren't any big beams.  Then he carefully sliced & took away the sheetrock.  He needed to put some framing in, so that the cabinet guys would have something to anchor the cabinet to.  They would then rip the long sides lengthwise, so they were the right size.

Of course, we discussed all of this with the head cabinet guy before doing anything.  He was on board with this, and I'm happy to report that it all worked out really well!  We now have a nice deep cabinet above there (that was one of my concerns with ordering a new, more shallow one!)

Countertop Selections

Going to the warehouses to look at the countertop selections was a lot of fun- and a bit overwhelming!  We had a pretty good idea of what we were looking for, but I can see that if you were open to anything- you could have a really hard time deciding!  There were so many beautiful choices!

We knew that we wanted a dark gray for the outer countertops.  I wanted it to look like soapstone.   (We had researched doing soapstone, but it sounds like there's more maintenance, and it isn't as durable as granite).  We landed on "Absolute Black".

I didn't realize that there are different finishes that you can get- honed, antique, leather!  We knew we did not want a shiny finish for the outer counters, since soapstone is typically more of a matte finish.
The leather finish was too much texture... I felt like it would be tricky to clean and grime could get in there.
The antique had a very little bit of texture to it, was a matte finish.
The honed was very smooth, just not shiny.  It was also a matte finish.

We took some samples home to decide between the honed and the antique finishes.  After some voting with the kids, and test on fingerprint resistance... we decided on the antique finish!

Really hard to take a good photo to show the texture of the finish!

For the island, we were thinking we wanted a marble-look, but again wanted less maintenance and more durability than marble itself (knowing that the island will bear the brunt of the wear & tear of the kitchen!)  So, we looked at a lot of white with gray & black stone.

When we saw the "White Forrest" slab, we knew immediately that we loved it! It had the light gray that would go with our cabinets, and streaks of very dark gray that will match the outer countertops.

We knew we did not want any texture to the finish on the island since that's where homework & other writing will likely get done.  We went with the usual shiny finish, since it will be an accent piece.

The day after the main cabinet installation, the granite company came to template for the countertops.

The following evening, we had an appointment to pick out the exact portion of the stone that we wanted for the island.  We also could have selected the slabs to use for the outer stone, but "Absolute Black" is so consistent, that we didn't see the need.  However, the island had so many variations throughout it, it was hard to decide the section we liked best!

We decided to use the bottom right because of the dark gray band that runs through it.

A week later, the countertops were installed!  (Yes- I'm still over a week behind in posting the progress.  Thankfully, there's a lot getting done in the past two weeks!)

Master Bathroom Tile & Paint

We left off in the master bathroom with the tiling slowly moving along...

He got the tile in the master closet started as well.

Two days later we were able to get in to prime and paint it!  Since our bedroom is gray with purple accents, I decided to reverse the color scheme to have purple with gray accents in the connecting bath.

We're keeping the floor covered in here while they are still working on all the fixtures.  They put the toilet in place, but it's not completely hooked up yet. The heating will be going in soon too.

I don't know why, but I love purple walls in bathrooms.  We have them in the old master bath (which we'll be re-doing sometime down to road- far down the road!) and even had them in the first floor bathroom in the old house.