In the closet

While I wish I had a lovely gardening photo to share with you from such a mild, dare I say warm, weekend, most of the weekend was actually spent in a 2.5'x9' closet. It is now 2 closets.

Here's an overview: We had an awkward bedroom closet that was "walk in" but so narrow that we couldn't really take advantage of the space. So, we chopped it in two and have a smaller and shallower closet for the bedroom and a similarly sized little closet annexed to the kitchen. Yippee. And, we also started to rebuild the stairs to the basement to make them a little safer.

Here's Justin removing the final remnants of closet hardware so we can start building a new wall.

Our new wall, making this closet magnitudes better in space efficiency. We'll need to finish this drywall before we can put some function in the closet but this will work just fine until we get to that step.

A little demo to get into our new closet for the kitchen.

A roughed in template for a new closet. We need still need to demo some plaster under the window and we are considering modifying the window configuration too. Stay tuned for more on that in a few months.

A work in progress had us looking before we leaped.

Voila, One solid platform from the kitchen to the new closet! We'll get some new (used) fir flooring to tie this all together.

Quick Update

I have no pictures to show today but we've had a lot of fun this past week moving in. Yesterday, we received the cabinets for our kitchen island unexpectantly so we were compelled to install the island. I ordered the butcherblock countertop on Thursday afternoon once I realized the cabinets were on their way. Justin had started the installation by the time I came home. I punched holes in all of the doors to install the knob & pull hardware and by 8pm, we had ourselves a kitchen island sans countertop.

UPS has been making regular stops at our place since we moved in. We had a delivery of the bathroom towel bars this week and the pendant lights for the kitchen island, ordered on Thursday, have been delivered today (how's that for speed...and delivery was FREE!). I've been busy getting a few of the things I've been longing for over the past four months including some new hiking shoes and a cute mini-muffin tin. The shoes came yesterday and the tin is on its way today.

Rounding Third...

...and headin' for home! Literally. We are officially six days away from moving into our project and it is frankly, a bit scary. The big news of the weekend was that we passed the final plumbing inspection on Friday. Laura spent the day waiting around for a 90 second visit. Annoying but one less hoop to clear.


We worked on the upstairs bathroom tile for about 12 hours yesterday which is about as much tedium as we could take. Eating pizza made by someone else at 9:30 at night after a long day like that is awesome.


Today we slept in (also awesome), dropped off a whole truckload of cardboard at the transfer station, sanded some molding, sealed the grout and caulked the downstairs shower, grouted a bit of the upstairs shower tile for the last of the plumbing fixture install tomorrow and re-installed the microwave (long story but this time it was done on the first try). Laura wrapped up the pull and knob installation and then we both did a big cleanup of the place. I have scheduled the last of the inspections for tomorrow morning and we want the place to look move in ready. I think we are there so wish us luck!


Here are some pictures of the kitchen (with knobs!):

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.