A Floor and A Half

As promised, here is 1/2 floor and the 1st floor.

The 1st floor is where you would enter from the garage or the alley on the eastside of the house.  The garage is big enough for 2 cars (we only have one) and it has an actual entry way.  We’ve (Catherine) have always wanted one of those.  From the entry, you can either head upstairs to the Main Floor or take a right into the Craft Room.  Yes, Craft Room.  It’s actually suppose to be a studio apartment we can rent out, but right now we don’t have the funds to finish it that way.  We (Catherine again) hope that it never has to be rented out and we can leave it as is.  Look at all the daylight (weather permitting) it will get!

As you head downstairs from floor one, you hit the landing where there is an entrance from the “street side” of the house.  We say, “street side” because it’s actually quite a hike up from the street to get to this entrance.  We don’t imagine many people will use it.

Downstairs past the entrance landing leads you right into the Music Room/Band Practice Space.  Yes, we (both of us actually) are super excited about this room.  All the large musical instruments final have a place to live!  This space is actually a daylight basement.  It’s got some light, but not a lot.  It could be part of the studio 1 rental, but both of us really, REALLY(!!) hope it never comes to that.  We’re investing in soundproofing insulation to help with the noise, er, music. 

Each of us to spread our hobbies out.  He gets to fill his space with instruments and she gets to leave her sewing machine out permanently and possibly incorporate pinks, purples or teals into the decor. 

Main Floor Layout

I made a little something so everyone can see what we’ll be working with.  Here’s the main/2nd floor.

Just so you get a sense of dimensions, the deck is actually 6’ x 17’ and the kitchen is 10’2” x 11’4”.  We put in a few extra things like a half height wall between the Office/Den and Dining room, built in cookbook shelf on the kitchen island and very few walls.  We also have A LOT of windows.  I think about 28 total in the house.

We’re really excited about the floor plans but with no walls between the kitchen, living room and dining room, we’ll have to be careful about coordinating colors.

This is just one of three and a half floors in our new house.  Floors one and half will be next.

The Ups and Downs

Building a house is like a rollercoaster.  It has skyscraper highs and below sea level lows.  It toys with your emotions and has you doing and thinking crazy things.  For example…

Yesterday we had an inspection.  It was suppose to be easy.  We were suppose to pass.  We didn’t.  They wanted us to change a few (like a hand full) of washers.  Yes, that’s it.  Our sub-contractor, Alex, asked the inspector if he had 10 minutes to spare, it would only take 10 minutes to change the washers.  The inspector said no and left.

Alex changed the washers and called for a second inspection today.  The inspector was suppose to be at the project site at 10am.  My dad showed up at 11am to find out if the inspection passed but instead of finding Alex starting on the insulation, he found Alex in his truck still waiting.  The inspector didn’t show up at 10am.  I called my Dad at 2:30pm to get the latest and my Dad said Alex was still in his truck, waiting.  The inspector didn’t show up at all.

I asked my Dad how the whole inspection process works.  Do you call and request an inspection and when a time is scheduled, you get a confirmation number?  Nope.  I’m told you call and request a schedule by a certain time the day before (I think 11am and via voicemail) and then you just wait.  You can also do it online.  They don’t tell if you if the inspector will show up or not, they just expect you to wait. 

I hoped I misunderstood because seems lame and crazy and totally inefficient.  I didn’t misunderstand.  I requested an inspection through the City of Seattle’s DPD Online Inspection Request page and filled in all the needed info --permit number, type of inspection required, contact info, address -– and then I hit send.  The next screen showed this

Do you see a confirmation number?  I don’t.  They don’t even give you a time frame.  Doesn’t it seem ridiculous that the inspector couldn’t spare 10 minutes but it’s OK that our sub-contractor had to wait around for 5 hours today and maybe more tomorrow?  I realize that he has a schedule but 10 minutes more at our site means he doesn’t have to come back the next day (or not come back the next day).  How is that fair?  I want to be able to bill the city for all the time they waste.  I won’t even charge what they charge me (about $160 an hour).  OK, I won’t bill the city, but I did save a screen shot of this page and if the inspector doesn’t show up and Alex doesn’t get a courtesy call, I’m going to be super pissed. I might have to call Jesse.  I told you, you do crazy things.  I hope the inspector comes tomorrow but I won’t hold my breath. 

This is a major downer that may actually be followed by an unexpected upper.

As I was surfing our file on the DPD site looking for a reference to any inspection scheduling notification, I noticed that recent ECA exemption request from us was approved today.  What does that mean?  Well, our land has a major slope in the front and the city said we couldn’t have a deck that extend more than 3 feet off the house without plans from our Geotech saying it was safe to extend 3-5 additional feet.  What do you do with a 3 x 6 foot deck?  We collected the needed info and submitted a request for exemption on October 14.  I was told it would take about 3-4 weeks to get an answer back but then today I find this in our electronic file online…

If you can’t tell, under the words Review Status, it says APPROVED.  Hmm…could this be an up moment?  I left a message with our architect just to double check.  Hopefully he’ll call me soon.

I guess we’ll just keep out fingers crossed that

1. the inspector shows up tomorrow
2. the inspection passes and we’ll still get all the insulation installed by Monday
3. that the info I found on the DPD website does in fact mean we can have a deck that extends 6 feet off the house.

Painting Progress

The post title says it all.

Eastside of the house

Northeast corner.  Sorry, the photo was taken with an iPhone

Southside of the house.  Yes, it’s red.  Very red.  Cherry Tomato Red to be exact.

The guys tried to finish painting over the weekend but wind and rain isn’t ideal for being on a ladder 30 feet above the ground.  The painting should be done today.

We also have a inspection today.  If everything goes well, they house should be insulated by the end of the week.  Wish us luck!

Tile? Done and Done!

We think. 

Let’s start with the kitchen. 

We got samples of the all the tile options and it looks like we’re going with the round circle ones from Overstock.com.  The red had too many variables (light, under wall paint color, cabinet color).  The other white tile didn’t look white enough and some of the pieces in the tile were frosted.  There was a little too much going on there.

We’re really happy this decision is made and has been ordered.  We’re really tired of talking about kitchen tiles.

The last tile decision (we hope) was the tile for the master bath.  Going with the master bedroom style, we wanted to do grey and white in there with cork floors.  Finding grey tile we liked was hard.  The ones we really like were out of our price range or were to slick to use on the shower floor. 

 

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We thought about just going with the white kitchen tile we didn’t select and non-endangered eucalyptus tile for inside the shower.

The only thing about the eucalyptus tile is that you can’t really cut it.  Hmm…that wasn’t going to work.

Then I found this stone tile that’s in a shade of grey we like, we can use it on the shower floor, and turns out to be cheaper than both the white tile and eucalyptus (but not by much). Check, check and check!

This may not be the end of it though.  Once we bought the tile, I remembered a picture I cut out of Sunset magazine of a bathroom I’d kill for.

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It wouldn’t really go with the style of the house, but I like it anyway.  What about the light blue tile (or white) down the center of the shower wall starting where the showerhead is and flowing in a stream (like the picture above) onto the floor and stopping at the drain?  Too much?

Or, what about the entire bathroom floor in the stone tile?  What do you think?  Stick to the plan as it is now?

Master Bedroom Inspiration

We may not know how we want to decorate most of our house, but of one thing we’re sure, there will be lots of gray.  Gray is the new (old) black, or our favorite version of it anyway. 

We’re also pretty sure about the colors of our master bedroom – black, white and gray.  Here are a few rooms we wouldn’t mind sleeping in.

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I LOVE this room.  We have big windows similar to these in our master bedroom and our floors are almost the same color. 

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We like this room but I bet we’ll get tired of that wallpaper really fast.  Besides, it might be a bit too feminine.

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We do want to introduce some color into the room.  The first of the red inspirations seems pretty doable.  We could surround our fireplace the way they surround their TV.

Red might is an option but yellow might be too.  We have a bunch of stuff from the wedding that I’d like to use in our house like vases from our centerpieces, the guestbook/poster/invitation and the little basket the flower girl carried. 

We also have all the fabric from the centerpieces I want to use to make this…

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I don’t want too many colored details – just accents.  We want to be able to change the POP color in our room pretty easily.  Maybe red for fall/winter and yellow for spring/summer?  We also like blues and greens!

What colors would you suggest?

Dear Santa

Dear Santa,

We’d like the following items for our new place.  We’ve been really good this year.

Thanks,

M & C

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Domino Decorates – Taking An Art Inventory

As soon as we could see rooms developing in our house, I ordered the book, Domino: The Book of Decorating: A Room-by-Room Guide to Creating a Home That Makes You Happy.  I loved Domino magazine but it went under last year **tear**.  I went to the library today to look through back issues but apparently they destroyed them. 

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Anyway, where was I?  Yes, Domino’s guide to decorating.  The first great piece of advice Domino gives is to take an inventory of what you have.  I sort of did this tonight.  I went around and took pictures of pieces I knew we’d like to take with us to the new house.

OK, let’s get started!

Here is just a sampling of our wall art.  Micah is in a band and I love really good band art.  From left to right - top row : My Morning Jacket poster, Brooklyn poster by Ork Posters (we also have a Seattle one), old New York City Transit Map, An Ethiopian Home Blessing Piece I brought back from Addis Ababa.  Bottom row : Canada steamer poster, Sigur Rios poster, Greyhound art poster, strange homemade art I made for Micah a few years ago. 

I also have this poster by Jason Munn/Small Stakes that Micah gave me for Christmas.  I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Munn’s stuff.

Here are a few more things we have laying around our current apartment.  From left to right – top : We made a wine rack that is partially done, a statue of Buddha.  Middle : Our bar, a framed fortune cookie message, an old mirror.  Bottom : painted green mirror.

OK, last collage! From left to right – top : My Russian Presidents Matroshkas, vase made by a friend, Russian mailbox, our wedding poster/guest book. Bottom : Rug my brother-in-law sent from Afghanistan, little feather painting from Costa Rica, painting by a friend from Russia.

So we were thinking that we’d use some of this art as a color base for each room/area of the house we have to decorate.  The tricky thing is deciding which area gets which colors.  The other tricky thing is deciding which pieces may not make it on the walls. 

Anything here you’d use as a decorating base for a room?

Houston We Have A Problem…

…and a solution…

Let’s start with the solution.  After a lot of thought and a lot of back and forth, we decided to go with the white tile in the kitchen.  We LOVED the red but we realized it was too red for the cabinets. 

We looked into colored glass, but couldn’t find it for less than $120 a square foot.  Poop!  Right now we’re deciding between the white circle tile and this tile I ordered a sample of.

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It’s got the same pattern as the red, but it’s clear/white, so it’s won’t be as busy.

I did order 60 square feet of the circle tile for our main floor bathroom.  I figure if we like it, we can order more for the bathroom and if we don’t we’ll have enough for just the bathroom.

I’m glad we figured this first thing out.  We still need to decide on the tile for the master bathroom.

And the problem, also color related, is this…

What is this?  Well, it’s suppose to be the paint for a third of our house and it’s suppose to be a little lighter than this pot.  Just a touch.

Everyone who’s ever played with paint or even painted their nails knows the color you see on paper isn’t necessarily the color you’ll end up with.  I asked the salesperson if Cherry Tomato Red would actually look like the paint chip.  He said yes, I put in the order.

We tried it out on the house and it looked more like flame orange.  Double Poop!  Luckily, we went back to Sherwin Williams and they agreed to replace the paint because it would take 3 coats of the flame orange to get it to look like the Cherry Tomato Red we ordered.  We hope it turns out!

The other color problem is all my (Catherine) fault.  We decided that the other two-thirds of the house would be gray – really similar to the darker grey on our blog but I mistakenly picked out a much lighter grey.  What was I thinking?  When it’s wet, it looks white.

I spoke to my Dad/contractor today and he said it was darker when it dried.  I hope so.  I don’t think we dislike it enough to buy new paint (we ordered a ton) but I am a little disappointed.  I blame it on the Flu.  

We’re finishing off the exterior finishes with a white for the trim to match the windows and garage door.  To bring the darker grey back into the mix, we were thinking of painting our two exterior doors a charcoal gray.  What do you think of gray doors?

P.S.

The siding is almost done!!!

The alley entrance and south side with horizontal siding.

The street side entrance.  The door side will have horizontal siding and the left side of the door will have the HardiePanel siding.

The east side of the house with our car in the driveway!!

All White or Matching Red?

Ah, just when you thought we were done talking about kitchen design issues, we hit you with an all important color question.

Originally, we wanted this kitchen from Ikea.  I love the visual texture of the wood and even though the whole look is minimalistic, it still feel warm and homey.

We didn’t end up with this kitchen, mostly because our contractor didn’t like the quality of the cabinets.  They look good now, but he doubted what they’d look like in 15 years.

We still ended up with white counters but instead have shaker style cherry cabinets.  We actually like the cabinets and have “moved” on from our original inspiration to something more like these (also from ikea).

We decided on cork floors and brushed stainless steel to finish out the look.  You’d think we’d be done with the kitchen colors, but we’re not.  We can’t or rather I (Catherine) can’t decide on the backsplash (area on the wall between upper and lower cabinets).

We really wanted some color like this (again, from Ikea)…

…but not in green.  We like it, but we are thinking red to match all my Le Creuset pots.  Yes, I’m matching the backsplash to my pots.  What can I say?  I love them.

I found some AWESOME red glass tile on Overstock.com that we both love.  It’s not cheap but it’s definitely cheaper and more hip than anything we’ve seen so far.

Pretty right?  Done, right? No, here’s my problem;  the cabinets are darker than our original inspiration and darker than the green tile picture cabinets.  Won’t the red glass tile and cherry finish be too dark?  Micah says no since the counter is white and we’ve got an open plan main floor. What does that mean?  Well there are no walls between the living room, dining room and kitchen.  So there will be plenty of light.

I did a mock up to try and visual the color.  Warning ** I’m not a designer or computer whiz, so this are a ROUGH mock up.

I told you it was rough.  The grey is the stainless steel appliances.  The red is the tile and the white is the counter.  Ignore the weird island thing.  There will be an island but it won’t look like that.  The kitchen doesn’t look too bad right?  The cabinets will be a little redder than the cabinets in this drawing though. 

I’m also concerned we’ve got A LOT going on.  Red tile, white counters, red cherry floors, stainless steel and cork bamboo colored floors.  Too much?

If we don’t do the red backsplash, I was thinking white.  Micah is concerned that the white tile won’t match the white granite counters.  I’m less concerned about that. 

I found some white tile for our bathroom that I actually think will look good in the kitchen too.  It’s also from Overstock.com

It would make the kitchen look like the 2nd Ikea inspiration picture.  The round tile still give texture to the walls, but it would keep the kitchen lighter and more open.

Here’s my ghetto mock up of the white kitchen.

It’s a little blah in the picture but there isn’t any texture in the image.

I did find an image of a kitchen with a red backsplash and darker than white cabinets.

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OK, the last one doesn’t have red in it, but isn’t it pretty?  It does have lots of color (grey counter, green tile, bamboo cabinets) but they all look great together.

So, it the red tile kitchen too dark?  Would it close everything up? Is there too much going on?  Remember, we don’t have any walls that close the kitchen in.  Is the white too boring?  ARH!  Help!

Progress is ExSIDING!

We spent this past Saturday looking for a kitchen sink, a hood for our island range, paint and interior doors.  For the most part, we came up empty handed.

We thought we found a sink but then when we got home, I realized it’s finish wouldn’t match the rest of our kitchen, so I had to cancel the order this morning.  Luckily, I did find another sink in the finish we want for $140 less.  It even has the same dimensions and gauge as the original.

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Done!  One thing off the to do list.

We went to 3 different places to look for island hoods and came up empty.  Home Depot had one that was $699 but not in our size, we’d have to special order it and they had a wait time of 2-3 weeks.  I found other island hoods online but they were over $1800. 

The funny thing about island hoods is that not very many people make them and there is very little in the way of reviews for those that do exist.  We found one online for $499, and we’re trying to dig up some info on the brand, ENJEN, before we go ahead and buy. 

**Note to selves, if we ever build another house, put the sink on the island and the stove against the wall.**

We did have a more luck with paint.  We picked out the red (hardiePlank – horizontal siding), grey (hardiePanel), and white for the trim.  We originally picked out color samples from Behr paint but we’re going back and finding similar shades by Olympic Paint.  Our contractor has been using it for 26 years and thinks it does better in our climate than other brands.  Back to Lowe’s we go.

We weren’t as successful with the doors.  We saw a lot we liked and a lot we didn’t.  I think our problem is that we don’t really care that much about interior doors.  We do want to do a frosted glass door for the bathrooms.  No worries, you can’t see in from the outside.

We saw this one at Pacific Iron that we liked.  It’d not pre-hung (has it’s own door frame already), so that would be extra. 

We don’t care too much about the interior doors, but we thought this one was nice.  They also had plain doors at Home Depot for 1/2 the price.  We both think we’d rather rather get cheaper doors and use the savings on bathroom tile.

OK, now to the exSIDING part, the north side of the house has been framed! 

They started prepping the south and west side of the house on Saturday and they are pouring the cement for the north side retaining wall, south side walkway and driveway today.  We can’t wait to check out the progress this evening!

A Graceland to Call Our Own (minus the racquetball court)

The Band had Big Pink, Prince has Paisley Park, and Motown had Hitsville, USA.

What do these places have in common?  They’re iconic musical houses.

Why am I talking about it?  I will have one of my own.

One of the best things about building a house is that you can really choose some unique elements,  and design the house around it.  While there are definitely sacrifices that go along with this design style, some amazing things can be included.

One of these such things was the music studio that I requested when we started thinking about the process of building a house.  I (Micah) am fairly obsessed with all things musical and have been for quite some time.

The Tailenders, the band I’m in right now have tried a variety of practice spaces over the last few years; some decent, some awful, and some just weird.  I knew that when we started building this house I had a great opportunity to remedy this situation. 

We did just that, designing a semi-subterranean room that we could soundproof extra heavy, give a dedicated breaker, and set up specifically for playing and recording music. 

The band room is in the basement, in a room that shares some walls with the foundation, making the soundproofing a bit easier.  There’s even a bit of daylight that creeps in.

Now, some pictures:

The room before soundproofing and drywall looking north

Same room, looking south towards the stairs

The under the stairs storage closet.  Not a bad place to store gear (or beer?)

Needless to say, the room will be great.  We can practice, I can play my records loud, and work on the all important Tailenders Christmas Album.  Now if only I had the talent of Robbie Robertson, Prince, or Marvin Gaye.  Then, that’d be something real special.

Which Light to Turn On?

We’ve been jumping back and forth between decisions that need to be made.  We have yet to pick out a kitchen sink, decide on tile for the backsplash in the kitchen, order our cork floors, decide on flooring in the bathrooms or which tiles go where.  Phew, that’s a lot to get done this weekend. Kidding. Not really.

Right now, the big issue to decide on is lighting.  We got a good start.  Our friend Sean hooked us up with a great lighting design.  We’ve met with a few electricians and finally picked one who does quality work and is affordable.

We already have a few fixtures purchased also.

For over the island over the kitchen we’re installing 3 of these:

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We bought 3 of these – 2 for over the dining room table and one to hang staircase area.

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We (I) splurged for this one that will hang in the master bedroom.

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We also sort of splurged on the fixture in the band’s practice space. 

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So that’s as far as we got.  We need to decide on ceiling mounts for the rest of the house.  I think we need 6 of them (2 bedrooms, master closet, tv room, living room and apartment/craft room) if my math is right.  Right now, here are the front runners.

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So we think the decision is really between options 1 & 2.  We like 3, but it’s not holding our attention.  I really like 4, but I think it’s out of our price range.  I asked our contractor (my dad) how much we should be paying for our ceiling fixtures and he said about $30.  Options 1 & 2 are both more than that, but not by much.  Micah likes option 1 more.  I found 3 of them on Amazon.com for $34.99 plus tax but shipping is free.  They say more is on the way, but I’m not sure what that actually means.  I also found a version of this fixture on ebay for $49.99 but there was a make an offer option.  I could probably get it down to $30 a piece but it’s $8 shipping per fixture.

I found option 2 at a few places, but the cheapest I’ve found them for is $42 including tax and shipping.  It’s a little more than Micah’s favorite, but not by much.  I think it has more style but I also feel like option is more versatile.  Plus, we’re going for a modern but simple look and option 1 seems to fit that more.

Which would you choose?  We’re also open to more suggestions (maybe).