Color Selection

This is a bit of slow season in our build as the electrical/plumbing/HVAC finishes up. There's been a little bit of insulation blown in and then we're see the drywall going up. At the point, our house will really start to look like a home.

We've handed off our flooring selections, and the folks from Charis will do a little research so see if we can get the costs in line with our allowance. 

The other big batch of decisions we made this week was selecting the colors for our soon-to-be walls. Sue, from Charis, came over with her big book of Sherwin Williams color swatches and we got to work. Our allowance is for six colors, though we could always pay more for additional colors if we wanted them. Our current house has five colors (mostly one outside the bedrooms), so we figured six was plenty.

In our current house, our base color is what I call "chocolate milkshake." When we put in on almost 5 years ago, it really reminded me of a Wendy's Frosty. But as we've been looking at models and watching HGTV, we've been won over by gray as the new neutral. It works with our modern bent and our steel appliances and fixtures, so we think it will look nice. 

Thanks to the Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer, we're able to get a large scale sense of how the colors will look.

We'll use the darker gray as the base on the first floor for the kitchen, great room, dinette (maybe, see below), foyer, mudroom, office and maybe in-law bath (if we don't go with the room color). We'll  use the lighter gray upstairs in the guest bedroom, hallway and our bath, with a transitional treatment using both hues on the stairway. 

SW Classic French Gray

SW Light French Gray

The next decision was the in-law suite. We knew that it would be the same (or Sherwin Williams equivalent) or our current master bedroom colors, which is sage green and chocolate. I was happy to keep those colors (since we have all the accent decor) for our new master until my awesome hubby said we could use plum: my most favorite color! So here's the color for the in-law suite (and laundry room)

SW Dried Thyme

So, our room will be this pretty plum color! Our wedding colors were platinum and plum, so of course, I love that subtle reminder in our bedroom. What can I say, my husband is the greatest!

SW Expressive Plum

Just for giggles, I did this rendering for the dining room. It looks a lot richer/deeper than the rendering of our bedroom. Interesting. Our dinette will be very bright because it has windows on all three sides (and open on the fourth), so I think we could play with a darker color if we wanted to be crazy with it.

SW Expressive Plum

Our 2.5-year-old son's favorite color, for quite some time has been yellow. When we asked him what color he wanted his new room to be, he has quite consistently requested yellow. However, yellow is not really the calm nap/deep sleeping-inducing color we have in mind, so we're sticking with blue like he has in his nursery, but more of a "big boy blue. We saw this particular color in another Charis home and we feel in love with it.

SW Bracing Blue

So that leaves one last color. We had to decide between the vibrant orange Dutch bathroom I put off in our current house because we needed to be neutral or yellow for our amber-obsessed son. After looking at pictures of my Dutch decor, we decided that the yellow would work, so this is the yellow for our powder room and D's bath. The power room will have orange tulips for accents, and D's room will have blue accents.

SW Bee's Wax.

We made all these selections in our home, at night, under warm lights. Sue, our interior designer, is ordering larger samples that we'll bring to the new house to view with natural light. If needed we can adjust the tones.

I can't wait to see it all come together!

Build - Day 24 - August 4, 2011

Today we have reached another milestone. Yesterday the blog went over 5,000 page hits (still blown away by that...) but today we've reached the highest point on our house. Yes, the roof trusses are on. Both for the main roof line and for the garage.

Yesterday the dinette was 'topped', today it was the rest of the house. Tonight - after we received another kitchen quote - we took some cool night shots as well. Here's a sampling of it...

Early morning progress

Lots of these were consumed over the last three hot weeks... 

4pm progress, roofs are on...

Back of the house showing the roof lines.

Sky finally cooperated. 

Showing the tray ceiling in our bedroom.

Playing with the light on the 2nd floor.

The great room in a great light.

Build - Day 23 - August 3, 2011

A bit of a rainy day today but as usual a lot was done by the crew. They put the roof trusses up on the dinette and sheeted the back porch. They also finished up the interior framing of the 2nd story and around the would-be-fireplace.

Speaking of fireplaces, we will have an electric fireplace (see the fireplace post for the details of that decision) so we will not need a big protruding fake wall so the current framing (see pictures below) is gonna be made a little smaller probably on Monday to give us some time to finalize the design.

They also delivered the Master Bath enclosure and D's tub/shower and put up the top-plates on all the walls. For the Holmes aficionados among us, yes, there is a membrane between the concrete and the wood as wood should never touch concrete to prevent moisture transfer.

We also made a few decisions today together with our GC while touring the site:

• The wall between the kitchen and dinette will be made shorter to allow more light into the kitchen. We'll reduce the number of cabinets /and/or reduce some in size to accommodate this change.
• The window in D's room will be changed from a single-hung 3x5 to an egress 3x3 to avoid an overlap with the dinette roof structure, which will also bring it in line with the other 2nd story windows on the back of house.
• We will change the linen closet in our MBR from opening into the 'toilet area' to open opposite the vanities.
• We will add a poured-in ramp from the back patio onto the in-law suite slider to create a no-barrier-entry and add a poured ramp from the side of the house onto the back patio for the same reason.
• We will reduce the 16" of stone on the right side and back of the house around the patio to accommodate a higher grade level to help with the poured ramp. 

Crew hard at work on a rainy day.

Top-plates are on. Walls are done.

Current fireplace framing. Will be reduced in size... 

D's window oops. Will be changed to from a 3x5 to an egress window.

Membrane between the concrete and wood to stop moisture transfer.

Dinette trusses.

Starting to look like something... 

For tomorrow and Friday: roof trusses.

Build - Day 22 - August 2, 2011

Today they finished up the last ICF block stacking (bit of a rite of passage almost...) to form the 2nd story exterior walls in preparation for an afternoon concrete pour. The also covered the back porch, added the great room and kitchen arches and framed the 4th bedroom upstairs.

At 9am they had finished stacking the ICF blocks. 

Great room view of the stairs, upper window and 4th bedroom.

And they call Montana 'Big Sky Country...'. 

View from the kitchen to the great room.

Close-up of an ICF wall. Solid, solid as a rock...

4th bedroom framed

Our covered back patio. Gonna spend a lot of summer and fall evenings here...

Build - Day 21 - August 1, 2011

A new month and a new floor to complete. August will be the month where the build will reach its highest point and also when the progress will start to slow down. After having our stairs issue resolved we can get full-speed ahead with the 2nd story and roof structure.

First look at 8:30am

Lunchtime progress

End of day.

The great room forms have been completed.

The beam has been removed from the stairs.

First peek at the second floor

Tomorrow the crew will pour the walls in the second story.

Build - Day 18 - July 29, 2011

Today is our anniversary and the progress today seemed to celebrate that with us. Here's the rundown:

• Main level walls have been cured
• Interior framing has been completed
• Stairs are installed and usable
• I-joists for the 2nd floor hung
• 2nd floor sub floor laid
• Wall placement for 2nd floor drawn

All-in-all a very large amount of work got done today. Since the majority of the walls are all up now, we've also taken the opportunity to add some personal touches to them. 

Speaking of personal touches, we've also found a potential issue with our design regarding the stairs. We've envisioned them as being open, but maybe that got lost somewhere in the idea-to-plan translation. We've send some pictures of the 'idea' to our GC to see if we can still realize that. Carefully optimistic that we can... ;-)

After talking with the foreman it is his prediction that by next week Friday they might have the roof on!! As a testament to their work-effort, they normally have a ranch under roof in about 2.5 weeks, but since we have a 2-story it will take 'm a little longer. Still, under roof in about 4 weeks is unheard of in Europe, especially with concrete exterior walls. Oh, and the building crew is only five guys... and no, not the burger-kind... ;-)

I know I've been slacking a bit with the photo sets and later tonight those will go up as well. They are available on FB already for those with the right access. Below is a sampling of the progress over the last 36 hours.

Start framing the in-law suite

The in-law bathroom

Looking at the kitchen wall. Cooktop will go where the
sheet is standing. The in-law suite is in the back and covered.

The 'store', a.k.a. the pantry. Large, but could double as elevator
shaft in later years if necessary.

The cured cement inside the ICF blocks and the sub floor of the
2nd story.

View from our bedroom. Due to the well on left, it will be
permanently green.

This is where the 2nd story walls will be.