Week 5!!

Every week I'm amazed at the higher number I write. I cannot believe we started this renovation 5 weeks ago. It is hard to remember not driving 30 minutes to school and back and back to school and back. Poor Carter spends a lot of time sitting in the car. We are planning on moving back home on 2/27. If you saw our house right now it would be hard to imagine that we will be able to move in, but just like George Michael we Gotta Have Faith.

This week I picked a runner for the front staircase, more electrical work was done, the media room had a bunch of work done, the fireplaces were removed, lights were installed in the family room, The supports were put up for the new pantry and kitchen wall, Jim drew the kitchen out in sharpie for me us to walk through, we chose the ceiling for the keeping room, we discussed sound proofing for the media room, I bought 4 sconces for the media room, ordered cabinets (!!), Chose the hood for the kitchen, I went and (hopefully) picked out countertops, picked tile, picked the new staircase banister, and made some executive decisions about placement of speakers around the house.

First thing that I did this week was pick my runner. I went over to my dear friend Julie's house and Janell and Julie spent their Saturday morning helping me look for a runner (What amazing friends I have!). Then Monday morning I went to Williams and Sherrill and Mimi helped me pick this out.

The bottom of our back staircase we had a large Pendant boob light that hung down. I wasn't sure what to do there. Originally, I thought I wanted some sort of urn but it is right in front of the bathroom which has a lot going on and it will be right off of our new coffered ceiling so I wasn't sure how it would look. We decided to just put a can light here. It is right next to the new mudroom and there are all can lights there. I am telling you, the electricians are fast and really good. 

The new fireplaces will be installed on Monday! I cannot wait to see them. The problem with the family room and basement fireplaces was, they were not vented and giving off too much carbon monoxide into the rooms--this was a big problem, obviously! They are installing new vented fireplaces. 

The fireplace in the family room removed

The keeping room surround removed. We are going to keep the mantle in and just paint the fireplace black. We are going to put an all black granite in to weight the black of the TV (TV has been taken down for it's safety)

Kids are standing in the fireplace hole

Billy was not a fan of this, but when else do you stand in the fireplace?!?

Countertop oh Countertop, are you my countertop? Wow, have you ever shopped for countertops? Me neither! Let me tell you about this awful process. You go to a warehouse that has these huge slabs of stone and walk through the warehouse and outside the warehouse and look at them all. It is overwhelming and amazing what the Earth can make. The downside is, you have NO idea how much any of the slabs cost. So you tell the warehouse the name of you fabricator and contractor and then they send your selection to the fabricator who then tells your contractor how much it will cost. It doesn't make much sense to me...you fall in love with a countertop that is way out of you budget-ugh!

I was picking out kitchen/office and media room bar countertops. For the kitchen I want a white marble with movement and the media room bar something dark and leathered or honed. Here are a few ideas!

Media room bar

I decided to change out our banister. Again, I was at my friend Julie's and loved her banister. We are going to have these square banister, but will be stained the same color of our floors with white square spindles. I might have squealed when I saw these. Billy said, oh I like those a lot! The people rejoice

The top piece is the banister

This is the banister

The wall is up for the pantry and wow, i could not be more excited. I really squealed when I saw that. I keep walking in and pretending to take can goods off and on the shelves (there are no shelves or can goods right now...maybe the family can eat my pretend dinner I make from my pretend can goods). 

entrance into pantry

This is the new entrance into the kitchen from our new space in the foyer. It will have an arch like the rest of the doorways on the 1st floor

One of the issues of the family room was how dark it was. Even though it was 2 storied it did not have much light. I am very excited to have 9 can lights in here. each light will be inside one of the coffered ceiling boxes. 

New plumbing for the upstairs bath!

The current keeping room ceiling has a faux finish on it, which a) i hate. b) is starting to crack. We knew we needed to do something with it, but what. I wanted to do shiplac and here are the two options. It comes double sided. One side has a beaded look which gives 2 board look for each board and a 1 board look on the other. Meaning, you get twice the boarded look on one side than the other. We are going to do the bigger side and they will be painted white. 

Single bead. See my foot for reference

single bead side

      

double bead side

Media room: There has been a ton of electrical work done in here. The boxes around the room have been built and the can lights installed. The boxes for the speakers have been put on and it is looking really great. We are really excited about this room!

The green squares are for speakers

The two upper holes are for speakers, the small square hole in the middle is for the TV, the bottom rectangle is for the subwoofer 

Can lights 

We changed the color of the cabinet in the media  room bar because we are going to have wood accents around the room and I had picked Cherry. Apparently, Cherry is the 2nd most expensive wood you can pick. So back to Beech! ha

here are our media room sconces!

You can see through to the basement from the kitchen. It freaks me out every time i see it...

Ceiling fan in the keeping room was taken down

Keeping room ceiling wood

Tile. I went and picked it out. It was much better this time around, but I still do not like tile. 

Media room tile which we might not even need....

bathroom tile. Bathtub on top, floor on bottom.

Backsplash to be determined after countertops are decided!

Imagine getting a text, " HELP, I need to make a decision on my Hood" Wait, what the heck are you talking about. Well, a few people received that text today. It was a bad moment. Poor Billy is trying to cure cancer and his wife is having a melt down about if she should have a cabinet or stainless steel hood for their kitchen (I am not sure how I got here, but send wine). I received amazing advice from my stop calling me, omg please leave me alone amazing friends. I decided to stick with our stainless steel choice of hood. I really wanted the cabinet look, but opted with the majority. Here are some examples

Mudroom is ready for drywall!

The beam in the basement can be a wood beam with a 12" screw! We will have a steel beam put in the kitchen. Hopefully, this will go in this week coming up!

I am really excited to see it all coming together. I cannot wait to see what next week holds for our house. 

Week 4!!

This week was full of the inner workings of the house. I liken it to the body...there is a lot going on under our skin that you really don't think about until it goes wrong. The "body" of our house got a lot of electrical work done. We planned out the media room that included doing a lot of math. I even got to use some of my high school math skills! I picked out the star ceiling for the media room. I started the process of picking out carpet and delayed my trip back to the tile store. Some more work was done on the framing of the family room coffered ceiling and the decorative framing for the media room was started. Bought the rest of the big pieces of furniture for the house. We even had some excitement in the townhouse which included Carter and I sharing a bag of popcorn with a mouse.

Electrical outlets and lighting never really made me too excited, but when you are knee deep in a renovation, you get excited about all sorts of odd things. I think this is like when parents have their first ultrasound picture--they think it is the most beautiful thing ever, to the rest of society, they all look the same. Get ready to see some can lights. To us, the most beautiful thing, to society, same old, same old. 

we replaced all of our ceiling boob lights to can lights in the upstairs hallway

Upstairs hallway with media room on the right

Boob lights. They look like boobs, right?!?

We are going to replace this (boob) light with another fixture, but we are not sure what yet

Mudroom can lights

The boob was replaced and two can lights put in the hallway. The door on the left is the laundry room

Standing in the new mudroom space, looking towards the family room

We added 6 can lights in the keeping room. It is crazy they weren't put in here in the first place. This room got very dark. We are going to put shiplac on the ceiling and replace the fan with a white one

Light fixture moved over to be centered on the kitchen table

This was the kitchen table switch but moved back to...

Here. it makes more sense here and was originally here. Before there was a blank switch plate here

Steven, Jim, Christian and I spent about 30 minutes laying out the configuration of the media room and the electrical work. It was much more exciting than it sounds AND it involved math!! I could feel my brain cells regenerating as they used the level and measuring tape.  It was a nice change from Disney Junior and Angry Birds. 

Here are the columns for the room. Sconces will be attached to them

2 more columns 

This is the bar area 

The HVAC system will go here. I was very happy we will be able to hide it over the bar

brrr--this is right at the outside of the house. Nature's air conditioning 

Math

We are centering the TV off of the center of our star ceiling which will be centered off of the can lighting that is adjusted for the drop in the ceiling. Math--stay in school kids!

My drawing of the media room. The Purple inside is the fibre optic ceiling. The dotted line is the drop in the ceiling.  My shop teacher would be so proud

I went to Carpet Cuts to pick out our carpet. Steven recommended that I go there because they have really great prices. He was right! I was picking out carpet for our 2 staircases and for the media room. We originally were not going to replace the back staircase but the carpet back there is really old and needs to be stretched back. I do not want to pay to have it stretched since it needs to be replaced.  The front staircase is really ugly. Billy asked when we did the walk through if the runner would be conveyed--he hoped it would be a NO! 

I wanted something traditional on the front staircase, regular carpet that can be easily cleaned on the back staircase and something fun and different for the media room.

For the media room,  we are going to do brown leather chairs, cherry accents on the walls, cherry cabinets, and undecided for the fabric on the panels for the walls. I want navy background for the carpet. I really like the stars. I have some time to pick it, but here are some of the current frontrunners:

 3 potentials for the front staircase

potential for the back staircase. Or I might just do a plain carpet to match what is in the bedrooms

Here are some other things that have happened this week:

Starting to frame the border for the media room that will have the can lights in it

The gutted kitchen and new electrical work

Framing the family room to start working on the coffered ceiling

The mantle is gone!

family room ceiling framing continued

So the moment you have been waiting for. The mouse. The popcorn. Why is she sharing food with a mouse and a baby? Carter and I had just opened a big bag of Smart Pop popcorn. We both have eaten a couple handfuls of it. yum we both thought. Fresh. delicious. I started to put some in Liam and Nora Kate's bags for snack at school the next day when I looked at the opening of the bag and noticed there was a BIG hole chewed out of the side. I'm not going to lie, my first thought was Carter had chewed it, but I quickly realized he was innocent. I thought I would puke right then and there. After calling Billy and demanding suggesting we move back home and Billy reminding me we have no other place to live, we called maintenance and they patched the big hole in the drywall. It wasn't a mouse chewed hole, but the builders never drywalled around the water shutoff. I am hoping that Stuart Little doesn't make another visit. But now all of our snacks are in a plastic bin on top of the dining room table. I am all about live and let live...until they eat my popcorn. No harm came to any mice. Carter and I seem to squeak a lot more since the incident.....

notice right hand corner