The final countdown

Timeline: Parade of homes deadline minus one week.
The craftsmen at the house today said they will finish in time as long as the builder stays away 😉
Mike-the-Builder has a really good report with them, and they have gone above and beyond when things have cropped up.
Such as instead of grouting the kitchen yesterday like planned they were cutting and installing more backsplash today.

Happy green =)
Also a first peek at the pendant lights over the kitchen island.

That BIG box is the dining table chandelier.

These even bigger boxes are the fridge and freezer, their trim kit is the long box on the floor. The dishwasher has the cooktop on top.
The right light in the wrong spot can also be seen here.

The laundry room boxes.

Speaking of lights, here is my favourite entry light turned on.

Sparkly and throwing cool shadows on the ceiling and walls.

And once again, I am so happy with how this turned out. I don’t think I will stencil these walls after all, the shadows are really neat.

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The great room fireplace has been finished.

The master bedroom tray ceiling light in action.

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Master bath has shiny new shower heads and controller thingies. Just missing the hand held.

The tub filler is still in its box, now in front of the tub.

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Stained baseboard in place on the stair landing.

It looks so much better, or maybe I should say less ‘huh?’ than the white that was there previously.

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Doug-The-Painter didn’t just stain the baseboard and continue the finish paint of the house. He also atomize sprayed the front mesh for our surround speakers, no more stark white rectangles on medium gray wall.
They look darker than the wall due to the black speaker behind, I can fix that and I think it looks much better already.

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The checklist is now down to a few items.
One lighting fixture is in the wrong spot, and the one that should go where it hangs is still in its box.
The appliances are in cardboard boxes in their respective rooms, but we are waiting on the ovens.
The tub filler is still in its box in the master bathroom.
Mirrors, towel bars and tp holders are yet to be hung and shower doors installed.
Lastly, the built in bookshelf is being finished off site (funny!) but other than that, it looks pretty close to done!

*cartwheels*

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Things look great outdoors as well.

       

Waiting on even more dirt to shallow out the front and west side swale, so that part has not been seeded yet.

Everywhere else the landscaping is in and ready for mulch and rocks. The backyard and east side future lawn areas are covered in a layer of straw, to help the grass seed germinate.

We also had a fence company out to measure and give us a quote for a 3 rail split rail fence.

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Something has changed within me

Something is not the same.

The electricians and the painters were working at the house today putting in their finishing touches.
Appliances have been delivered, there are big cardboard boxes in both the kitchen and the laundry room just waiting to be installed. Fridge and freezer are evident, as is the dishwasher, not sure if the ovens have arrived yet. In the laundry room boxes we have washer, dryer, 2 pedestals and we think the 5th box in there might be the laundry sink.

Speaking of kitchen. I was thrilled to see this today:

Yes, I especially like the damaged drywall areas!

Why? Because yesterday it looked like this:
And I hated it. Those light mint green tiles made the whole backsplash look pixelated and the stark contrasts did not work for me at all. Especially not with the countertops, and those are not going anywhere.

If the light ones had been in a shade in between the dark and the middle colour, with more of a brown tone it would have been much closer to what I had envisioned.

Luckily, our head tile guy was installing the rubberized membrane on the dog tub in the basement. We happened upon him as we were checking out the basement while I was still whining about the kitchen.
We told him how we L-O-V-E how the shower turned out, but that the kitchen backsplash was atrocious (clearly no fault of his, that selection is all on me), and how I had read up on glass paint in different forums and been to craft stores earlier in the day to figure out how to paint the backsplash until we can have it replaced.
He said that since it wasn’t grouted yet, he could ‘just have his apprentice pop some of the light ones out’.
Serious doubletake.
Really!?!
He double checked to make sure he had enough of the other two colours to be able to pull it off, and he was only 1 bullnose tile short.

YES! =D

So instead of having a grouted backsplash today, we have this, and I couldn’t be happier about it!

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More changes, we have hardscaping!
The foundation plants are also in. There are 6 trees left to be planted in the front yard, you can glimpse them to the right of the trucks in the photo. Also 6 more trees for the west side, but we are waiting on more dirt before they finish off the front yard and put down grass seed.

Landscaping happened yesterday, and we had them take out one of the apple trees in the back yard that was a little mutilated during septic tank install.
I liked that tree, but it will be easier to get the fence in now.

The new stairs leading down the the backyard, they flipped those huge stone slabs around with a backhoe and scooted them into place after digging out their spots with hand shovels.

And here is the backyard, the disturbed areas here have been seeded. The septic mound in the very back has new grass peeking through the straw!

We will kill off the ground covers in the treed areas and either seed it or plant something that is less likely to be poison ivy.

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Heading indoors again:

Lockers, with hangers.

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The kids’ fans were all lit up.

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So were the can lights.
And…

Do you see it?

It is THE light. The one I gave up my DIY itch for.
It is right where it should be and I think it looks awesome.

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Another happy room.

Powder room, with electricity.

I think I might not have to stencil these walls after all, those are some really cool shadows cast by the chandelier.

The mirror is the only thing missing in here.

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The painters had stained a couple of lengths of baseboard, to replace these white ones on the stair landing. It just looked odd with stained baseboards flanking the actual stairs, then switch to white at the landing and continue with stained for the other half of the stairs.

Also, there is a safety light here for night time stair-strolls.

The LED hand rail lights are yet to be installed.

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Rocker switches in the office.

Power and ethernet ports. The desktop powerhouses will be hardwired for speed.

Our cabinet maker is building the built in bookcases off site, but besides that small thing, the office is finished.

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The great room looks like this.

Those surround sound speakers make me sad.
We have this beautifully finished, perfectly smooth expanse of wall, and then there are those -things-.
The painter will try to dilute the wall paint down and atomize spray them, but the holes in the mesh are so fine it might not work that well.
What on earth was he (as in the husband) thinking?

Oh well, maybe I should take up tapestry making and cover that whole wall.

On a happier note: fireplace stone is pretty much the only thing left in here.
And blinds.

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The rack with the home automation system,  waiting for more tech toys to move in.

Master bedroom with electrical outlets and TV installed.

The electricians and painters were doing their final work, and the rope light in the tray ceiling was going in as we watched.

This room is done!

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The ball over the tub all lit up.
The tub filler and the shower faucets are still in boxes in here.

The sconces that will flank the mirrors over the vanities all work.

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Master closet #2 gets to close this post.

Stone and light – Design meeting #3

Our first stop today was at Chippewa Stone, in Medina and our second was at Whitmer’s Lighting, in Fairlawn.

The stoneyard visit took an hour and the lighting took three (!). And we still didn’t pick a main entry light.

We met with Interior Design Studio Katie, who helped us work through the stone yard’s selections of natural stone and quartz as well as the plethora of lightning options. I’m combining the two visits in this post, so things that belong in the same area get grouped together.

The first slab both Eric and I could agree on liking was Giallo Ornamental Light, which will go in the kids bathrooms, both the boys’ and Ms in the basement.

As a refresher, their bathroom vanities are espresso stained maple, and their floors a light ceramic tile.

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 The kids will have this light above their mirrors and vanities, but upside down so suicidal bugs will fall out and not accumulate in the glass chamber of Doom. The boys will each have a 2 light version, and M will have a 3 light over her mirror.

All three are getting the same ceiling fan in their bedrooms, with modified boob light >_<

That was it for today’s kiddie selections

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Chocolate! What’s not to like.

This is the counter for the laundry room. The cabinets in there will be white and the tile floor has the same small grain look as the counter. The photo of the tile is a little lighter than reality.

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On to the master bath. Here we went with a Caesarstone Classico in Nougat.

I’m very happy with how this worked with the striped floor especially.

Katie had samples of our flooring and vanities, among other things, in her awesome bag-of-holding. Here they are all together:

     

These are the other master bath selections, shower wall with accent to the left, and floor, shower wall and shower floor mosaic to the right.

I did not get a picture of our bathroom sconces, because I forgot. They will be similar to this one in shape, mounted vertically on each side of the mirrors in the master bath.And finally the crazy ball that will go over the master tub, it will be one size down from the one showed.

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Here is our master bedroom fan, followed by the bigger great room fan with dark blades.

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The office will have this fan with seeded glass (so we’ll till get those cool patterns thrown on the walls from the bubbles in the glass) and an old bronze finish and darker blades than the picture shows. 

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Onward to the kitchen!
Katie found our backsplash! It’s a crackle subway tile in three different shades of green, I think it will look awesome! Something along these lines with a third of the tiles darker, and a third lighter than this. 

Since we have white cabinets Eric wanted a darker counter while I leaned towards light. So we tried finding something in between. We saw this and really liked it:

It even had some olive in there, but there were only two slabs left from this lot, and both were claimed. They had another batch but it was a lot darker and busier, not for us.
A few rows further back we found something else we both thought looked nice. Again they only had 2 slabs so in a worst case scenario we will only get it on the island, and then go with a calmer medium dark gray Caesarstone quartz on the perimeter counters. In this slab we have some light and medium gray with darker gray veins and there’s also some taupe in there and a green tint.

When we came to the kitchen lighting, Jason, our sales rep at Whitmer, mentioned this ‘really different Area51 series’ in passing, we passed it in the store and I made a remark that it reminded me of ‘Alien mucous. It’s a snot light!’. After a moment followed by ‘I like it.’
Eric actually agreed, it wasn’t as crystally as he had feared.
The cage around the glass blobs will be a dark antique bronze instead of white, and it will have two buddies to dangle with over the island. It really looks a lot cooler in person and the green of the glass works well with the green of the backsplash.

  The hard part was finding a kitchen table light that played nicely with it. After some old school catalog browsing we found something we hope won’t look too out of place. Also with greenish glass.

We’re going with the bigger one, to the left.

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There will be a flushmount light by the garage entry, and a small classic crystal chandelier in the powder room.

Eric claimed he will never look at this light, and if he has to use the half bath, he’ll keep his eyes closed.
I honestly don’t care as long as he hits the inside of the toilet :p

We did pick out a very cool looking chandelier for the ‘formal dining/reading area’ form a catalogue, but I forgot to take a photo.

The one light we have left is for the main entry. I want a metal hoop ball pendant/chandelier, with a crystal pendant in the center, but I haven’t found the right one yet. I might try to make one and when that thought strikes, it’s difficult to settle for something less than that image that evolves in my head.