The new engineered oak floors.  They look great!

It was very encouraging to see these things go in.  It makes you feel like there actually is light at the end of the tunnel.

Test (and final) paint color.  Having a color consultant/interior designer for a wife means that you usually get it right the first time.

Chloe approves of the new tile floor!

Thankfully, Julio’s dad came out for a couple of weeks to help tie up some of the major loose ends.  His tips and tricks allowed the cabinet installation to go very smoothly.  Without his help, the job would have taken MUCH longer and would not have turned out so well.

Hex tile. We wanted an original look to the bathroom, so we decided to spend the extra money on hex tile vs. something more modern.

Stephanie created a design that looked as though it could have been there since 1911. Most people are surprised when we tell them that this floor is brand new. Continue Reading »

Julio holds up a piece of the moulding.  This was another great moulding from McCoy Millwork.  It has a nice, simple angular design that really fit well with the Craftsman aesthetic of the house.  It would not have been appropriate to install anything curved or frilly in this kitchen.  The angle is later mirrored in the window/door trim, as well as the piece on top of the cabinets.  We got a great color match with our cabinets with one of the stock Minwax stains, plus a satin poly finish.

Because the price difference was huge, we chose to use hemlock instead of fir for this moulding.  Like so many other details, it became much less noticeable once the whole room was put together.  Even though it doesn’t really match the trim in our other rooms, the "feel" is the same, so nobody ever notices.

Backerboard installed over the subfloor and floor patches.

This was one of the very few items that we hired out.  Pretty much everyone agrees that it’s one of the best not to do yourself.  We have had enough experience with drywalling in the past to know that it’s very time-consuming, and it’s much easier to have someone else wrap it up in less than a week, while you’re at work.  It would have taken many, many weekends to do the job, and we were getting desperate to get into the house and stop paying rent in addition to our mortgage.

This was a great point, to finally have the room ready for drywall.  It felt like six tons being lifted off of our shoulders.

The bad part of the story was that we were on a really, really tight timeline, due to being squeezed between a Friday inspection (for rough-ins) and a Monday inspection (insulation) in order to be ready for our drywaller to start on Tuesday morn.  Julio’s dad was coming into town to help put the kitchen together the next weekend, so it was very important to have the drywalling done by then.  Both the kitchen and bath had to be done over the weekend, and some delays forced Julio to pull an all-nighter on Sunday night.  It all worked out as we needed it to, but the weekend was one that we didn’t want to think about for a long time.

Because it’s almost impossible to keep Kraft paper intact and to maintain a good, continuous barrier, we like to use a sheet of plastic as the vapor barrier.  It’s much easier to add the plastic after the insulation than it is to try to night tear and rip the Kraft paper.