Patience is Pius

It’s been a long 18 hours.  We bought a fridge ($620 down from $1900!!!), a washer and dryer (2 for the price of 1!), another tub, ordered 2 exterior doors and basically had to re-order our kitchen cabinets. 

We’re getting our cabinets at Pius on 1st Ave. in the SODO area of Seattle.  The prices are really good but custom items are hard to come by.  We’ve been to Pius to “select” cabinets 3 other times before today.  We thought for sure the last time was going to be our last time but apparently all the custom items we wanted weren’t possible so we had to go back in and re-select our entire kitchen.  It was really frustrating and a little disappointing at first but I think we made some good compromises and the kitchen will look good.  Check out the schematics they sent.

This is the island.  It not entirely accurate.  The range is suppose to be 30” wide but it was drawn in at 36”.  The left side of the range will be a pullout drawer deep enough for our baking sheets to stand up in.  On the left we originally had another pull out drawer with 3 shelves for cooking utensils, cooking supplies (oil, salt) and kitchen towels.  We also added open shelves so our cookbooks have a place to live.  We’re hoping that we can make the left side pullout wider but it’s probably not going to be that easy.

The floor to ceiling cabinets (on very left) are going to serve as our pantry. I had hoped to have just two very tall doors but that’s another custom feature, so we went with six.  I’m sure we can make it work.  I also decided I was going to paint the exposed side of the pantry with the chalkboard paint.  I think it will make the kitchen more us and less like the Pius showroom.  The color we selected is lighter than the color shown.  The floors are roughly the right color but they will be cork.

We also decided against open front base cabinets because we just don’t think that are space efficient.  The drawers will be more useful I think.

We didn’t go with the fridge in the drawing.  We ended up with this beauty by Whirlpool.  It has an ice maker in the drawer. It was one of the models we looked at originally when were sure we’d be dropping $1500 on a fridge.  A friend let us know that Lowe’s put a bunch of stuff on clearance and headed down there to check out what they had.  They had it marked down to $795 from $1895 and we “talked” it down to $620.  SWEET! 

The cabinets should be ready in 10-14 days and the fridge will be getting delivered in a few weeks.  The excitement level is definitely rising!

Bathroom Inspiration

You’ve seen the faucets, now it’s time to share our bathroom inspiration. 

The Guest Bath on the main floor:

We were thinking of something like this.  All white tile, maybe black or brown for the shower floor, or we may just buy the shower bottom.  We are also pretty sure we’re going to use cork flooring in this bathroom.  We just can’t decide on the vanity.  We can’t find one we like so we may make it ourselves.  I was thinking of cutting our current Ikea dining table in half and using it once our new table arrives.  More on that later.

 

Guest Bathroom :

We’re doing a full bath here (with tub) but with no fancy jets (sorry future guests).  We already bought our tile and at a great price!  We got it for $8 a square foot instead of $15 plus tax.  We love the color.  Did we mention we heart Craigslist?  We have all the fixtures already but we need a tub, vanity and floors.  I have no idea what to do about the floors here.  Any suggestions?

Master Bath:

So Many choices and no idea where to begin.  At first we liked the idea of an all white bathroom (including the floors).  The actual space isn’t huge, so we thought the light colors would open it up.  Something along these lines…

But then I found the grey option and we really love them too.  We really love grey and a pop of something bright like orange or yellow – did you see our wedding colors? 

 

I found another SUPER deal for lighter grey tiles.  I was thinking maybe we could try imitating the picture with the dark tiles but use lighter grey and with lighter floors and then using a darker richer color like maroon or cobalt to add some pop.  Thoughts?

We still need to buy a tub for this bathroom too and figure out the shower and vanity situation.  At least we have toilets.  Great, water efficient toilets we got on sale.

Oh, if you know where any of these images are from, please shoot me a line.  I had the links saved in a word doc that I lost when my memory bit the dust last week. 

Who Cares What Day It Is With A View Like This

On Saturday, day not quite sure, we headed over to the house to check on the progress.  Our contractor (Dad) said the 3rd floor was done and they were working on the roof.  We weren’t convinced but went anyway.

Oh, they are done with the 3rd floor and started the roof.

Profile of the house – see the roof?

 The view

 Catherine enjoying the view from our bedroom

Heading over to the house and seeing the progress has really got us excited.  It was exciting before but seeing the house and being about to identify the rooms has made it more real.

Obsessions

Building a house, I (Micah) have learned lots of interesting stuff: the cost of a plans review by Seattle DPD (expensive), Low-E coatings and gas filled windows, and also that it's very difficult to explain what you want to just about everyone. Most of all though, I've learned that I can get obsessed with just about every part, big or small that we buy for our new house. First, it was HardieBoard and flooring; currently it's faucets and sinks. We had a pretty good idea of what we liked stylistically when it came to actually picking them out, my mind was quickly overwhelmed. Before, I could honestly say "I like faucets, who doesn't?" I had little idea how much I would grow to love them.

We were pretty certain that something modern would be good, however practicality was also something to take into account. We both realized that we may love something today, but we also need to love it ten years from now. Another problem is that for some reason we decided to have three bathrooms in the house--great idea when you're designing but in retrospect a sun shower may have been a better idea. Deciding on one faucet is hard, but deciding on 5 (bath and sink total) is near impossible.

Here's how it turned out:

Bathroom 1 - guest bathroom with shower on the main floor:

Kraus round white vessel sink and Sheven bathroom faucet

Bathroom 2 - guest bathroom with bath shower combo:

GROHE Concetto Green Bathroom faucet (top) and shower tub set (bottom)

Master Bath with separate Bathtub and Shower:

Danze Sonora roman tub faucet (top) and wall mount faucet (bottom)

Looking back on all of them side by side, I think I have a sort of semi-teutonic obsession with all things in the faucet world. While initially, I was in love with the Delta Touch Faucets after reading the hilarious reviews, which made them out to be something along the lines of Gizmo from Gremlins, whom you fed after midnight or a miniature old faithful. In the end, I think that the chosen faucets will be a great way to impose our stylistic ideas in a subtle way and give us some direction for the rest of the bathroom design.

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Today is Monday, and day 61 of the project and the day the framing was supposed to be done. I (Catherine) bet you noticed I said supposed to. The framing isn't done today (surprise, surprise) but this time it's not because of the city or soft dirt, it's because of the weather. This is Seattle, so the rain was bound to slow us down at some point (with a little help from Lowe's). Saturday and Sunday were a total wash (literally). It rained like it does in Virginia - long and hard and sporadically. Today it only sprinkled, so the crew was out there trying to get as much done as they could. I have to say, it looks good. I also have to say, this is going to be a really tall house! The framers guarantee the framing will be done by Friday. Does that mean we'll have a roof over out "heads" by next Monday? Maybe but we have to consult with the contractor.

 

the lumber that Lowe's DIDN'T deliver

They finished the main floor and are starting the top floor. You can see the beginnings of the guest bedroom deck.

"Stairing" at the Progress

It's been slow, but things are really coming along now. By day 55 the guys had framed most of floor 2 and by day 56 they were just about done with floor 2 and starting on floor 3 (where the good stuff is) and it's deck.

Day 55: Working on the garage and studio #2

Day 56: view from Cecilia's lot

Are those stairs I see?

Yes, yes they are.

The beginnings of our deck off the living room

Starting on floor 3

A little help from my...

A detail of the 3rd floor lighting design

One of the nice thing about having friends, and having friends who are designers is that you can often solicit some free advice if you ply them with free drinks and dinner. Such is the case with Sean.

Sean is one of my (Micah) friends from UW. We lived in the architecture marvel that is McMahon Hall. Sean studied as an architect and worked for the first few years out of college as an architectural lighting designer (those of you who live in Seattle can check some of his work at Blue C Sushi at U Village).

Being the ever generous friend that he is, Sean has helped us out with many different aspects of the house so we knew that when we started to think about lighting, we would need his expertise. Sean made not one (Blue Cheese, Arugula and Steak Sandwiches) but two (Thai Chicken Curry and Peach Cobbler) trips over to our apartment to help us out with it. The result of this are the sketches below. You can see Sean's notes on the trace paper over the top of the electrician's set of designs. He gave us tons to think about while still keeping in mind that we couldn't in all likelihood spend a ton on lighting. We haven't finalized the plan yet, but we're thinking it's going to be as close to Sean's plan as possible. Lots of surface mounted lights in bedrooms and recessed can lights used to highlight art, make hallways seem bigger, etc.

One of the big challenges was our 2nd floor because it has a fairly open floor plan with the living room, dining room and kitchen all flowing together without a wall to separate.

 

The 2nd floor open floor plan

After a few different ideas we put some recessed can lights to highlight certain areas, set up the kitchen lighting and a pendant fixture for the dining room but got a bit stuck on the living room. We eventually decided that it was best to keep our options open, essentially relying on one centered surface mount light, and table and floor lamps to illuminate the room. This gave us a bit more flexibility with furniture arrangement.