Big Work Week

Wow, things are moving ahead swimmingly--so much so that I'm now talking to a realtor about listing my 'old' home. We're holding our schedule well and we think we might be moving in around mid to late March.

We have the electricians in the house now and yesterday they roughed in most of the lights and outlets in the top floor and started in on the main floor. I'm pretty happy with their professionalism and flexibility so far. Our windows have been delivered and window/siding guy Glen and his school bus-driving buddy were at the house all afternoon after the bus-driving shift on Thursday putting in the new windows. Of all of our subcontractors, we have been most concerned about this link just because we had no referrals from friends and found this guy through Service Magic which I wouldn't recommend using in general. But so far, he's shown up promptly and he seems to be doing the work we hired him for so I have no complaints. In fact, all of our subcontractors so far have been great. After we pass inspections, maybe I'll do a post with referrals and put a little plug in for them.

In other news, our friend Jill Z. came over to the house on Thursday evening to help us choose some paint colors. Jill's worked in color consultation in her professional life and has a great eye for this stuff. She brought a fan deck of paint colors and we narrowed the field down to a few key ones: a grey-blue, a creamy tan, an accent red and a white for our casework and trim. I'll post some swatches when I get them in the right format.

We ordered our kitchen cabinets last week and I thought I post a sample of the style: a shaker door style. Our deeper drawers will have a detail similar to the door style. Our shallower drawers will just have a plain front. For our kitchen, the maple will be painted white. We think this style is consistent with the period of the house and we are attempting to established an updated craftsman style for the main floor. I say 'establish' because while we didn't buy the house in an updated condition, there was some unfortunate updating that occured in the mid-to-late century including a fiberglass tub insert and cheap particle-board kitchen and bath cabinets.

For our upstairs bathroom, we are keep less with the style of the house and we opted for a more contemporary style vanity cabinet. It will be a slab door (no panels) and will be a darkly stained birch with a whitish countertop. The house will be classic/period on the main floor and more contemporary on the second floor style-wise.

This photo I found online is similar to the look we are trying to achieve in the upstairs bathroom. Our bathroom is much smaller than this and will have a simpler layout.

In the downstairs bathroom, we have opted for a more period-specific look with a pedestal sink, matching cast iron tub (not a claw-foot though), subway tile for the wall and built-in medicine cabinet/mirror. We'll be installing those small hex-tiles on the floor and this combination should give us a very classic look albeit brand new.