Out with the old, in with the new...

I've heard of small work triangles, but this is a tad tight! LOL! This was what my kitchen work triangle looked like in the midst of our kitchen wallpaper removal/painting weekend. Did I ever say that we hate removing wallpaper and we hate to paint?
The last remnants of wallpaper are coming down in the next photo...ever so slowly...our plan was to remove the paper and get the kitchen painted, all on Saturday (plus we were going to get the lower half of the dining room wall painted). We removed the paper on Saturday (and a bit more of the border today) but couldn't paint until today because we ran out of time and steam (mostly steam, I think). I don't know what we were thinking when we decided we could do all the paper removal and paint 1.5 rooms all in one day!
Our new paint color is Valspar's Bay Sands. It looks like different colors depending on what it is next to and what the lighting in the room is at any particular moment. On the sample, it looks like a very gray-green paint in a light-medium hue. On the wall, it ranges from a light tan to a blue-gray to an almost purple-gray to the green-gray that it is intended to be. Anyway, I like it, and I think it will help the house sell faster than the plaid wallpaper and morning glory border that was on the wall at the start of the weekend. This photo was taken at night without a flash - the color is quite a bit lighter than this...
And I finally located the photo of the fan that we will put in the kids' bedrooms. I sent the photo to DD and she loves it, so I guess we did OK picking it out. I asked DS what he thought and he said "It's a fan." He doesn't care what it looks like as long as it keeps him cool. (Just exactly what I thought he would say - why did I bother asking him?) :-D

Needless to say, with all the wallpaper removal and painting going on, we didn't make it out to the house this weekend. DH is probably going to run wires for the security system himself and needs to get it done by Tuesday, as the plan is to start putting the insulation in the walls on Wednesday. So, we will head out to the house after work tomorrow or Tuesday. While DH and DS run the wires, I am going to take photos of the walls and ceilings in every room so that we know where all the electrical, plumbing, and heating "stuff" is located within each wall in case we need to find it later. Or in case we need to avoid it later. Or for whatever. I'm just taking the photos.

Moving in the right direction...

Things are moving along with the house. DS and I stopped out there yesterday. We were hoping to bring home all the empty boxes from the electrician so I could use them to pack up this house. Unfortunately, there were only 2 guys working yesterday and they were both plumbers. The electrician had taken all his empty boxes and wasn't even there. So much for my grand plan! I did leave a gallon ziploc bag full of cookies and a "help yourself" note, so hopefully someone will be there in the next few days to eat them up!

On Sunday we took DH's mom and a family friend out to see the house. The last time they were out there was Easter 2007 and we were still trying to decide where to position the house on the property, so a lot has changed! They thought we should try to rig up a pulley system in the open stairwell so that we won't have to lug all the boxes up the stairs when we move. Maybe we just need enough people for a "water brigade" line up the stairs and pass the boxes from one person to the next!
I've been busy trying to find housing for the 60 members of DD's Wind Ensemble from Shenandoah University in Winchester, VA. They will be playing a concert at the Fox Chapel high school on April 4th at 7:30pm, in case anyone would like to attend. Jens Lindemann, former member of the Canadian Brass and guest trumpet soloist with orchestras around the world will be playing with the Wind Ensemble also. It should be a wonderful concert!

I think we've chosen the tile for the kitchen floor. It is Mohawk's Citiscape tile in Village Green. This photo doesn't show all the different tones in the tile - you can't even seen the green tones in it. It looked great with the cabinets (cherry wood, honey stain) and the verde butterfly granite that will be on the counters. Wish I could find a better photo of it... This isn't our door style, but it is the cherry wood with honey stain...
Verde butterfly granite...
DH and I went to Lowe's last night and picked out the fan/lights for the bedrooms, sewing studio, music room, and lights for some of the bathrooms. We've chosen the tile and light fixture for the kids' bathroom. We borrowed the tile sample from Molyneaux and took it to Lowe's with us last night to see how well it went with the granite sink top for the kids' bathroom - it went perfectly!

Here is the fan for my sewing studio (Harbor Breeze 48" Elite). It has a bit of a futuristic look to it, but the halogen lights are very bright and repositionable which will be good over my sewing area. And this fan is for the study...
Hmmmm, I can't remember which fan we picked out for the kids' rooms and DH has the list, so I'll have to post a photo on another day.

The long-awaited window seat...

We stopped at 2 tractor places this morning. DH had already decided on a Kubota so we just needed to check out a couple of different dealerships. We were using the GPSr to locate the first one, when we decided we must have passed the place. I'm not sure how we missed it, as there were all these HUGE, very orange tractors next to the road! We must have really been in la-la land when we drove past it. :-D I think we've decided on the B3030 tractor and attachments so we can mow, smooth gravel, landscape, etc.
We headed to the house after our tractor shopping trip. The carpenters were back today and they had put in the half wall between the kitchen and family room.
They were also working to open up the ceiling over the master bathroom tub. Originally it looked like this, with a flat area over the tub (this photo taken from above the tub, from the kids' bathroom in the attic)...
And now it looks like this, with the ceiling opened up to the area beside the kids' bathroom on the attic level (this photo taken from the master bathroom, standing where the tub will be and looking up into the kids' bathroom)...
They were also framing-in the master bathroom tub...
And DD will be excited to see that her window seat has finally been put in. It's really big - we could get rid of her bed and she could just sleep on the window seat! I'll eventually make a cushion for the seat...
The electric, heating, and plumbing guys were all working on things today. This is a photo taken in my sewing studio. Because of the way that the steel beams and joists run, there needed to be a soffit built in my sewing studio to contain the heating and A/C ducts. The soffit will be over the wall of cabinets, over the door and in front of the closet. We started with 9' ceilings in there, so it doesn't feel closed-in at all.

Spring has sprung (A.K.A. we need a tractor!)

Signs of Spring's arrival are everywhere (even though the weatherman is calling for snow tomorrow!) -- the daffodils are coming up, the robins are in the yard, and we've seen the geese headed North. This also means it is time to go buy a tractor so we can take care of the 22 acres that our new house sits upon.

Since the property used to be a golf course, we have large areas of the property that have been mowed every year and if we can continue to mow them a couple of times a year, we'll have grass instead of tall weeds. The tractor will also be needed for plowing snow, leveling the gravel on our 450 foot driveway, digging out the ponds to enlarge them, digging holes to plant trees, and probably a whole host of other jobs that haven't even occurred to us yet.

We'll head out to the house after we tractor shop, and I'll try to post an update later...

The stuff in the walls...

We had a taste tonight of what DH's commute might be after we move. Traffic was horrible and backed up on both the highway and on the back roads. We were planning to meet a landscape designer at the house at 6pm. It took us nearly an hour to get there. The landscape guy didn't make it until 7:15, although part of that was due to him getting lost on the way there!

So, all the "stuff" is going into the walls now - heating, electrical, and soon the plumbing.

And the Royal Flush has finally arrived on-site... :-D

We narrowed down some of our lighting and fan choices this week. Here are a couple of options for the master bathroom lights.



This is probably the fan that will go under the awning off the back of the garage (in the patio area)...
This is probably the fan for the great room (with the very tall ceiling)...
A here is a fun pendant light that I found - it would be great for the sewing studio if I was using pendant lights in there!
OK, who in their right mind would want a light that looks like an artichoke? And even if you did like it, would you really pay the $13,598 that it costs! Yikes!

Oh, I almost forgot...we saw a couple of flocks of very noisy geese fly over the house tonight and, on Saturday, I saw a heron (twice). Very fun!

Kitchen design changes and granite

I met with our kitchen designer (KD) on Thursday to discuss the kitchen design. I've been reading the kitchen forum on the Garden Web a lot lately and, thanks to all the people who post there, I realized I didn't know the answers to some very important questions about our new kitchen. I also needed to let our KD know that I wanted to change the island to one level instead of the two levels that were in the design originally.

This is the original design of the kitchen. I kept most of the perimeter cabinets the same, although some of them have been changed to drawer stacks instead of regular base cabinets.
The cabinets in the island are now a bit odd in their shape! Here is a sketch I made of the new island configuration...There was a question a while ago on the Garden Web kitchen site that asked what people regretted most about their kitchen remodels. Many of the respondents said that they wished they had gone through everything in their current kitchens and decided exactly where everything would be stored in the new kitchen layout. So, to avoid regretting the same thing later, I made a list of my new cabinets and tried to figure out where everything in my current kitchen will live in the new kitchen.

I'm also really trying to keep the clutter off my counters in the new house. That means I need a way to lift the heavy stand mixer and the food processor out of the cabinets. The solution is to put appliance lifts in two of the island cabinets. The KD said that the cabinets need to have a minimum 24" depth for the appliance lifts, so there will be one 24" deep cabinet on the baking side of the island for the mixer, and another on the cooking side of the island (opposite the cooktop and oven) for the food processor. That leaves an 18"x24" deep 3-drawer stack on the baking side of the island - top drawer is for baking spices and utensils, and the middle and bottom drawers are for mixing bowls, 9x13" pans, pie pans, etc. - and a narrow 18"x12" base cabinet beside it. Beside the food processor cabinet will be a long, narrow base cabinet, 36"x12" where I'll store casserole dishes (and other as-yet-undetermined stuff).

I was having a terrible time figuring out where to store my spices. I've finally decided to store them in drawers (after seeing many photos on Garden Web of spice drawers). I changed the cabinet to the left of the cooktop to a stack of drawers so I can store cooking spices in the top drawer and pots and pans in the lower drawers. The baking spices will go in a drawer in the island. Here are some photos of spices stored in drawers:

On Friday, DH and I had an appointment to look at granite at the fabricator's that our KD uses. We have decided to go with the Verde Butterfly for the kitchen and Tsunami for the master bathroom vanities. I have never heard of Tsunami and suspect there may be another name for it. The photo we took doesn't show the depth of color very well.


Here is the Verde Butterfly... And here is the Tsunami...

This week it's time to attack all the stuff in my sewing room/craft room and get a lot of it packed up. Last week I packed up a lot of things from the kitchen and dining room that I can get along without until after we move (canning jars, a bunch of cookbooks, candles, etc.). I'm typing the contents of the boxes into my laptop as I pack the boxes, then printing out the labels, and taping the list right to the top of the box. It takes a bit longer to get the boxes packed, but will be worth it when I'm looking for something that hasn't been unpacked and there are a million boxes sitting around!

Details, details, details...

Our meeting with the builder, architect, and electrician this morning lasted over 3 hours! A lot of decisions were made about where electrical boxes and lights needed to be installed and where some could be taken out. There were discussions about the duct work and phone jacks and a gazillion other things. I think most of the issues were ironed out. Some of the outlets and recessed lights were already installed and the plumbing work will begin soon.

Some of the issues we're having with this house stem from the way the joists run in one direction and steel beams run in the other direction. We are facing problems with getting the ductwork into some of the rooms because the steel beams block the way.

The shingles are being put on the roof and several guys were there today to continue the work on those (sorry about the reflection of my hand on this photo!).

Today was the first day I've been on the attic level of the house where the kids' bedrooms are. I stood on the ladder and looked around up there one day, but now that the stairs are in, it is easy to get up there. Here is a photo taken from the attic level, looking down through the opening in the stairs, all the way to the basement. That's a longgggg way down!
This window is over the stairwell on the attic level and provides some natural light to the stairwell...

The view from DD's bedroom is awesome - the best views in the whole house! She can see the woods, the river, and both ponds. The electrician told me that he saw 8 turkeys down by one of the ponds yesterday.

The kids' bathroom has 2 oval windows. You can also see the edge of the shower/tub in this photo. The commode will be between the shower and the left window, the vanity will be along the right wall near the other window. Beyond the bathroom wall you can see the joists from the ceiling in the master bathroom, which is directly beneath the kids' bathroom. This is another one of those complicated roof lines in this house.
One of the skylights in DS's bedroom has been installed.
There is also lots of under-the-eaves storage in DS's room...

After our meeting, we grabbed some lunch and then headed to downtown Pittsburgh for the Home & Garden Show - 9 acres of displays! I believe that the Pittsburgh show is the largest home and garden show in the country. We were able to skip a lot of the displays that we stopped at last year - windows, doors, foundations, etc. are all done now. It also was a lot less crowded than last year, probably because it's near the end of the show and we were there while the St. Patrick's Day parade was going on.

Yippee for stairs! (and other fun stuff)

It is so exciting to finally have stairs in the house! The front door is temporarily closed off and the entrance is from the basement now. The cement slabs have been poured for both the basement and the garage. The front porch has not yet been done.

Our master bathroom tub has arrived. It is a Kohler Sojourn Bubblemassage air tub.
The master bathroom and laundry room areas are finally framed correctly, to match the plans from the kitchen designer. Here are the half walls for our master bathroom shower. There will be glass above each half wall and a glass door across the opening.
Here is a shot from the master bathroom, looking down at the awning that was built off the back of the garage as shelter in the patio area.
The stairs only went as high as the second floor today, so DD still couldn't get up to her bedroom, and we took her picture standing one floor down in the master bedroom window area. In her bedroom this whole triangular window area will be a large window seat.
It was good to be able to stand in my sewing studio again. This is looking toward the larger section of the room...

And this is looking toward the narrower section of the room...
The newly poured garage floor...
So, everyone deserted me tonight - DH and DS had tickets to the Pens game and DD and her friend Ashley went to the high school musical (DH and I are going on Friday night so I didn't want to go tonight). I spent the evening at Lowes getting some details written down about the sewing studio counters and looking at vanities for the kids' bathroom. I think this is the vanity we'll go with (only in a 48" width). It is the Crestview Warm Sienna finish vanity from the Cross Creek collection by Kraftmaid. The counter is King's Gold granite with an undermount sink.
I think we'll also get the matching mirror/medicine cabinet...

Tomorrow I meet with the kitchen designer to go over the changes I want to make to the island. On Saturday morning we meet with the builder and the electrician and the architect (and who knows who else) to walk through the house before the electrician gets started.