Last of the Lights

Tonight, Niels and I are going to purchase the last of the lights for the house. One of our projects for the weekend is to go through and move all the lights, fans and mirrors from the garage to the appropriate room. This might normally be done by the builder, but we bought most of our own lights to save money, so we're the ones who know where everything goes!

Here's a little lighting preview.

Front Porch and Garage Exterior Lights:

Portfolio Aged Bronze Outdoor Wall Light from Lowes (6). We chose these lanterns because the prairie grid matches the design of our windows. These have been installed for a while. They might be a little on the small side for our house, but we like them. We did notice that the one to the right of our front door is cracked, so we'll have to figure out what happened with that.

Foyer and Hallway:


The first light to catch my eye for the foyer and hallway was the Portfolio 17"W Chrome Pendant Light with Chrome Shade from Lowes. I really liked the modern look of the mesh design over the pendant, and thought the silver would look nice with the gray paint in the foyer.

But then we saw the Portfolio 3-Light Painted Champagne Flush Mount,  also from Lowes.

One big consideration for us in choosing lights is the brightness and amount of light they give. My eyesight has been in decline, so the more light, the better. My practical husband convinced me that the three light was better functionally the pretty two light, but when we went to pick up two lights tonight, not only was Lowes out of stock, but they didn't even have an signage for it. I found this especially odd because the Lowes by our apartment had two of the lights earlier in the afternoon. Since we really didn't want to be driving around all night, we opted for financial functionality, and chose my original favorite and saved a bit of money.

Niels' Office:

No photo for this one yet. We're repurposing a light fixture that Niels brought over with him from his house in Belgium. As you can imagine, it's modern Euro design. I'll let you wait with bated breath.

Great Room:

Our main consideration for our great room light was the ability to use LED lights, so we shouldn't ever have to figure out how to get up 14.5 feet to change the bulbs. (LED lights last about 50,000 hours). We wanted a ceiling fan to circulate air, and we wanted one with a light kit. We have fantastic natural light in our great room, so we'll only use the light at night. We purchased the Craftmade Midora 56" Chrome Ceiling Fan with Grill from Lighting By Design in Canton. Their website is pretty challenging to navigate if you're looking for a specific light, so we linked to a different site above. However, if you're in the area, Kelly at Lighting by Design is very helpful and we were happy to work with her. (Funny aside, after we chose this fan, we realized we took a picture of an oil-rubbed bronze version of this fan at another Charis home over a year ago. Guess it stuck with us!)

Dinette:
This was the first light we bought. I feel in love with it after seeing it on an episode of HGTV's "Bang for Your Buck." I had to negotiate hard with Niels, but once he saw it in person, it was a done deal. It's the West Elm Large Rectangle Hanging Capiz Pendant.

One of my favorite home decor bloggers has the same fixture in her gray dining room. I am so excited to see it go up, although our dinette will be green, not gray as we were thinking when we bought the light.

Kitchen:
The original plan was for three can lights. Since our cabinets are dark we opted to increase to nine so it wouldn't be do dark. It definitely isn't! It may be overkill, but at the time we made the decision, I had a raging headache (that took three months and three days intensive treatment with my neuro to break up) and my vision was at a low point. I don't regret the change.

We also have two cans in the command center, which is hidden in an alcove to the right in the picture above.

Under the cabinets and in the two frosted glass cabinets, we chose Kichler Design Pro Black 3.5W LED Disc Lights, aka puck lights from Lighting by Design. We wanted LED lights that would be bright and cool, and really wanted to avoid florescent lights which can trigger my vertigo--not a good idea when I have a knife in my hand! Once we chose the type of light, we need to decide between strips and pucks. We chose the small round puck lights primarily because there were quite a bit cheaper. Also, the wiring is a lot easier (read: cheaper) with the puck light. We chose black to blend in with our cabinet. Because our cabinets are not very wide, so I think the pucks will be sufficient. If we had longer expanses of cabinet, we might have splurged on the strips.

They'll look a bit like this:

Over the outer island, we chose three ET2 Fizz pendants. We found these at Whitmer's Lighting and they are really, REALLY cool. They look like solid blocks of glass with bubbles in them. There are also straight lines that are similar to the lines in the glass of the backsplash. The catalog photo really doesn't do it justice:

Here are a few of Niels' artistic shots:

Pantry/Mudroom/Master Closet/In-Law Closet/Laundry Room/Upstairs Hallway


For these utilities areas, we decided to go with a bright yet economical flush mount light from Lighting by Design. The Maxim Malibu is a popular choice with Charis homes. We chose it after seeing in the last Charis model. We bought five large four-bulb lights for the small rooms and closets. We bought three medium three-bulb lights for the hallway.

In Law Suite and "Paris" Bedrooms:
As we get to the end and the bills are coming in hand over fist, we decided to look for some bargains. We found two Casablanca Claremont 50" ceiling fans in Brushed Nickel at Tuesday Morning. They are nice basic fans with high reviews. They came with remotes and we got a great deal. I'll talk more about Tuesday Morning in a minute.

In-Law Bathroom:
We found the Urban four-light vanity light at Menards. There isn't a window in the in-law bathroom, so we wanted to make sure there was a lot of light.

Back Porch:

Our covered back porch will have two outdoor ceiling fans. Other than being usable outside, we just needed fans with light kits. We opted for the Allen + Roth Seagrass fan below because it was in stock and we liked the style better than the other options.

D's Bedroom:

Our three-year-old boy is all about planes, trains in automobile. We found this airplane blade set several months ago and quickly bought it.

We didn't realize we had to buy a specific fan until just recently. We thought he had buy a white fan, but in a happy surprise, we found out that Home Depot had the Hunter Ashlyn fan in brushed nickel.

D's Bathroom:

I discovered Tuesday Morning when I was staging our old house last year. I found lot of bargains on housewares and would browse there occasionally to get ideas for the new house and projects. Usually, I don't see the items on the upper shelves because I'm just not that tall. But, a few months ago, something caught my eye, and I realized that they often have larger housewares and appliances on the upper shelves. I found D's bathroom vanity there. A four- light silver vanity for $30. SOLD!

Powder Room:

In fact, I actually found two vanity fixtures that day. The other one only had three lights, so we decided that since D's bathroom doesn't have a window, he'd get the four light, and the well-lit powder room would get the three light vanity, which was only $20! 

Master Bedroom:
Niels picked out our ceiling fan at Whitmer's Lighting. It's a Craftmade 5th Avenue. We chose it because of its modern look. It doesn't have a lot of light, but we don't really need a lot of light in our bedroom, and Niels deserved to be able to pick one of the lights! (I like it, too!)

Master Bathroom:

We picked out our bathroom vanity lights on a rare date when my mom was visiting. Yep, we went to Whitmer lighting for our first year in a year. We love the ET2 collection and thought this vanity from the Bloc collection was really cool. We actually bought two of the two-light version since our bathroom has a ton of natural light. 

Whew! That's it! We also have a door bell and some lights on the stairs, but for the most part, these are all the lights in our finished level. We'll need to get something basic for our unfinished basement, but that's a decision for another day. 

Utilities Report: January 2012

As we move closer to our move-in date, Niels and I have been thinking about new post ideas that relate to our earth-friendly, energy-efficient, universally-designed home. Our hope with this blog, in addition to reminding us how we came to the decisions and selections we did, is that our posts provide valuable information to others who are considering their own home building project.

This week we received our utility bills, and we are quite pleased. One of several advantages of insulated concrete form (ICF) walls is that they have a high R-value, which means that the temperature stays more consistent than in a stick-built house.

To provide some practical evidence, we will share our monthly utilities on the blog.

As a bit of background, our previous house was a two-story colonial built with traditional stick construction in 2003. With the finished basement, it was 2,582 square feet. We had an energy audit last summer and the report showed that we had a very tight house, which means we didn't have a lot of heat loss because our windows were well sealed. In fact, we were told not to do anything else because then we'd need mechanical ventilation. We were already using all CFL bulbs, so the only changes we made were to add aerators to the faucets. So, in summary, we had an above-average energy efficient house according the the expert.

Our new house has 2,885 square feet of  (almost) finished living area (first and second floor). The unfinished basement is 1,700 square foot, for a total of 4,585 square feet. We have four heating and cooling zones, which gives us the ability to keep unused area cooler (or warmer, depending on the season). Of course, our house is still under construction, so we aren't using any appliances, and only a few of our lights are hooked up. Also, our house isn't completely sealed yet so we still have a few holes were cold air is getting in, the zones are not set up yet, and our front door and garage doors are open quite a bit as the crews are going in and out.

That said, here's the first month's comparison.

In January of 2010, our Dominion (gas) bill was $168.65 for 17. 6 MCF (old house).
In January of 2011, our Dominion (gas) bill was $90.93 for 12. 1 MCF (new house).

Since the vast majority of our gas bill is for heating and cooling, we were very happy with this initial look at savings due to the ICF construction.

In January of 2010, our Ohio Edison (electric) bill was $135.27 (old house).
In January of 2011, our Ohio Edison (electric) bill was $20.81 for 135 kilowatts (new house).

Unfortunately, since we moved, we can't get the kilowatt usage for last year. Obviously, we expect our bill to go up once we get lights, appliances, etc., but I highly doubt it will be anywhere near $135.

January Totals:
Old house: $168.65 + $135.27 = $303.92
New house: $90.93 + $20.69 = $111.62
total savings: $192.30!

Granted, this is not an apples to apples comparison since the old house was smaller and the new house isn't complete, but in terms of our utility budget, this is a huge difference! And hopefully, gives those curious about the impact of full ICF construction some real-world information.

And we've hit 20,000 'hits'...

Today we've reached the 20,000 'hits' milestone. We never thought we'd hit anywhere near that number and are glad we are serving a need. We realize some part of this number is artificial due to some spam-referrers but still it continues to amaze us to see the amount of traffic we are seeing.

Glad to be of service!

It's beginning to look a lot like home! Painting continues

When I drove up to the house around noon today, I didn't see any cars and was bummed thinking the crew had the day off. I popped in anyway to check and was so happy to see that they have made create progress upstairs!

Fourth Bedroom, aka the Paris Room. 

This will likely be our TV room until the basement is finished. In our previous house, we had a China room with souvenirs from my trip to China, just before we got engaged. Since then, Paris has become a special place to us, since that is where Niels proposed to me. So now we have a place to put our Paris photos. 

The shade is Sherwin-Williams Dovetail (7018).

View from the door. 

View from the window. On my monitor, this looks more like the true color.

The Laundry Room:

This is Sherwin-Williams Oyster Bay (6206).

View from the door.

View from the window.

Contrast with natural maple cabinets. This is the closest to true color. 

D's Bath:

I saw this beacon of yellow from the stairs and knew that painting was getting done. It looks really bright in over the tub, but it's not this bright in real life. But even if it was, it's D's favorite color. I'm sure that will change at some point in the next fifteen years, and we'll do something different.

The color is Sherwin Williams Solaria (6688).

View from the door

View from the tub. This is a better representation. It looks a little bumblebee-ish with the espresso cabinents, but we have some cool bamboo flooring going in, so that, along with the granite should help it out.

D's Bedroom:

This was started last week, but now the second coat of blue (Scanda 6529). You can also get a peek into his Solaria yellow closet. Since D is three, we didn't limit him to our muted grays!

Master Bathroom:

I thought I understood that the master bedroom was next after D's room was started last week. Instead, it's the only room upstairs untouched (other than the hallway). However, the crew started on the master bath before taking their lunch break. This will be Dovetail, the same gray as the Paris room. The water closet, which you can see in the back, will be done in Sensuous Gray (7081), which is a grayish-plum, as will our master bedroom. The closet, which is off the left, will be Mindful Gray (7016), which is a lighter gray.

The upstairs should be finished this afternoon, and then the crew starts on the main level. So exciting!

I saw Todd driving by on my way out and we talked a bit about what's coming up. The painters should be done early next week. The flooring will start late this week. We are going to have appliances delivered into the great room next Wednesday. Joe is coming with the last of his trim pieces, and to raise the command center this Thursday. Over the weekend, Niels and I will move all the light fixtures to the rooms where they should be hung. This means our main goal for the week is to pick out the last couple ceiling fans! We're also ordering the in-law sink now that we know where we should have it delivered, and next week we'll meet with Todd to talk about what we have going where for those. So happy to see the end is near!

Electronics overview

As mentioned in the 'since money is an object' post here is an overview of the dream house electronics vision. Here we go.

• Wired Network: One of the standard features of Charis Homes is phone lines to almost every room. Since we no longer have a landline we've changed that from standard phone lines to CAT6 ethernet cable. This means hard-wired Gigabit speeds in most rooms. All these cables will come together in 2 main switches (supporting power-over-ethernet) in the basement.
• Wireless Network: We're using a 3-pack of Wireless Access Points, one on each floor connected through the before mentioned ethernet using the same cable for power as well (power-over-ethernet). This will give a generous wireless coverage throughout the house on every floor. 
• Internet: Not sure yet if we'll stay with TimeWarnerCable or if we'll switch to AT&T U-Verse. In any case the signal will be routed to a hardware firewall before being distributed to the two switches.
• TV signal: More than likely we'll retain DirecTV. My wife is an avid Football fan from Minnesota so that kind of settles that part. We'll use their Whole-House DVR function (wired) and their Nomad device for wireless signal distribution. Using the Nomad allowed us to save some money on not cabling the 2nd floor. 
• Digital Storage: With our digital camera being one of the heaviest used devices in our household we have to make sure we got some good storage and retrieval for those digital photo albums. We'll be using a Home Server approach with Network-accessible storage. Add some (non-cloud) backup goodies due to the shear amount of pictures we take to keep the FUBARs away.
• Home Automation: See first line... 'money is an object'... so, integrated home automation is out.
• Alarm system: Yup... that definitely IS in the budget... ;-)

Primed for Painting

We drove down to the house today so Niels could see the paint progress. There were a few people visiting with Todd, our GC, so it was fun to show them around and answer questions and explain why we've done what we have. Joe's cabinets were a big hit!

In the last two days, a lot of staining and clear coating got done.

The foyer niche bench:

Close up with the beautiful grain

Big pictures view

 Stair Hand Rail and Kitchen Trim:

In-Law Suite Vanity:

Pantry Door:

Mudroom Locker Shelves and Tub Surround Panels:

Stair Rail:

All that's left for staining is the mudroom lockers and in-law vanity drawers, which are currently at the carpenter's shop. Hopefully, they'll arrive on Monday to be done.

My mom reminded me that the most time-consuming part of painting is the prep work. So for the first few days, the crew did a lot of caulking, hole filling, smoothing, and taping. Then, they moved on to the trim. We went with Sherwin Williams Pure White for our trim. It's a nice bright white.

Pure white snow and Pure white sill.

Nice deep ICF sill under a nice warm Low-E window.

And now, the best part: COLOR! As part of our contract, we had an allowance for six Sherwin Colors, plus a trim color. In addition to the Pure White trim, we chose Oyster Bay (a grayish-green), Dovetail (a dark gray), Mindful Gray (a light gray), Sensuous Gray (a plumish gray), and for our son, Scanda (boyish blue) and Solaria (yellow). All of our paint is zero-VOC for clean, healthy air quality.

We ended the week on a high note, with the first room painted. Here's our son's Scanda blue bedroom with Solaria yellow closet. Our son just turned three. The nook to the right will be his super special secret hiding place, with a little help of a curtain and rod. When he's a bit older, we'll turn it into an indoor tree house, and when he's a lot older, it will be a desk area.

This is the view of his room from the closet looking out. 

By next weekend, most of the paint should be done, and possibly some of the porcelain tile and luxury vinyl tile (LVT). The flooring is ready for us at Northport Flooring America, but we want to make sure it isn't painted! Our appliances are also ready for us at MAS. Most of our fixtures have arrived, but we'll pick out the last choices this weekend. Joe Yoder will be back on the 19th (five days) to raise the command center desk a little bit and deliver the last of his trim work (the laundry cubbies, mudroom locker door, and baking center support).

We're at the point where everything is the last thing, so Todd has quite the dance card to arrange. He'll be working on a schedule soon. We're still hoping to be in by Valentine's Day. Our corporate housing apartment is pricey and we're getting antsy to be in our new home!

Getting Organized with Pinterest

It's a snowy day here in Ohio, so no trip to the new house this morning. And since Niels accidentally took our son's coat to work with him in his car, the boy and I are staying inside doing our projects. D is three and loves to do his projects, whether coloring, playing with letters, baking with me or anything that else that we can come up with together.

We get a lot of ideas from Pinterest, not only for things for the two of us to do together, but also for cooking, organizing, and of course, getting ideas for the new house. If you aren't familiar with Pinterest yet, think of it as a online filing cabinet or cork board to file or "pin" all the wonderful things you find on your favorite blogs and websites so you can find them again easily. In other words, is a collection of images on topics of interest to you with clickable links to the original source. Depending on how the original pinner described a pin, it can also include the price or other information.

Before Pinterest, if I saw something I liked on Houzz or Garden Web or any other site, I would download the picture to a folder on my computer. I might name the file to give a little detail, but I could never find the original photo again, or remember where an item was for sale, or find the original link or post. The brilliance of Pinterest is that you can put a little bookmark on the top of your browser so you can easily save any image you'd like, and Pinterest automatically remembers where you found it.

So, for example, if you were looking at ceiling fans online, you'd do your regular search. In this case, I'm at Lowes.com. If you find a fan you like and want to save it, you just click on the bookmarklet. It's a little  goofy with Chrome, but on Firefox and Explorer, the bookmarklet has the Pinterest logo.

Once you click on it, a pop up will come up that looks like this.

There's a gray box that comes up over each image if you hover over it that says, "Pin this." When you click on the gray box, another pop up comes up, like this:

This is where you use the drop down menu to determine which board you want the image to be saved in. I have board for each room of our house, for "culinary creations," for each person, etc. In this example, since we haven't made all of our lighting decisions (but really need to!), I have all the lights we're considering in one folder. After we make a purchase, I "repin" a duplicate copy into the corresponding room folder.

Under the drop down menu, you can describe the pin. In case of items we may purchase, I like to include the official name of the item, the price and where it can be found (even though the link will take me to the site. This way I can know without the additional click). Anytime you use a dollar sign, Pinterest will put a banner over the item with the amount so you can see it right away. Sometimes, if I'm on my game, I also include model numbers and the purpose for which I'm considering an item--which room it might go in, for example. 

You can share your pins on Facebook, if you want, but most people don't because Pinterest is highly addictive and that would be annoying to have a steady stream of pins on your friends' facebook feeds...especially if they aren't on Pinterest.  So you click the red Pin It button and it's saved.

You'll then get a fading pop up that confirms your pin to your specified board.

If you go to that board, you can see all of the images you have pins on that board at a glance. You used to be able to scroll through each image with your arrow key, but they did away with that for some reason on the last upgrade. Not a fan of that change. However, you can still click on any image from the gallery and see it enlarged.

Pinterest has been a great help as we've waded through all the selection decisions in building the house. Since I am at home all day with our son, I have more freedom to browse and research. Before Pinterest, I would send Niels a bunch of emails, or print of a lot of pages for him to go through when he came home. Now, we just look through the gallery together and can immediately spot trends to get a better idea of what we want. 

Pinterest is also a great resource if you're just getting started and don't know what site to search. Keeping with the ceiling fan theme, I can use the search function at the top of the main page and type in "Ceiling fan." A new gallery will come up with images that have been tagged with "ceiling fan" or use those terms in the description. 

From there, I can look at any image that catches my eye, and can access the original source. Other pinners can like and make comments, which can be helpful as you are making decisions as well.

Each pinner has a home page with all their boards. You can arrange these in any order you want. 

I've had several people ask me how to use Pinterest, and how I use it to organize our build (and home). It helped to think of the various categories for which I draw ideas. I have many, MANY boards (58) and the moment, but these are the ones that relate to building our dream house:

• Room by Room
• kitchen
• pantry
• dinette
• great room
• mudroom
• foyer
• office
• in-law suite
• master bedroom and bath
• D's room (our toddler son)
• guest room
• bathrooms
• laundry room
• command center
• exercise room
• basement
• landscaping ideas
• Selections
• fireplace
• lighting
• paint
• flooring 
• counters
• universal design
• General
• dream house. This was the original board for house things, that quickly got more precisely defined.  It still holds ideas and images that relate to the whole house, things that haven't re-ordered, and really cool ideas that we aren't doing but are fun to drool over
• home decor ideas. This is generally things that would be bought, not made.
• going green. Do it yourself cleaners and ideas to reduce, reuse and recycle
• projects, tips and organization. This board needs to be divided as well. Currently, it includes DIY projects for the home, simple solutions, unique uses for ordinary things and ideas for a clean and decluttered life.
• Uppercase Living. I'm a big fan of word art, so I created a place to put my ideas.
• Big Bad Lowes Buy
• Big Bad Ikea Trip

One of the reasons for Pinterest's popular is the ease and flexibility of use. In addition to looking at items on your board, you can also go back and look at everything you pinned in one gallery. Just in case, hypothetically speaking, you forgot where you pinned something, but you just KNOW that you did.

In you have a blog, it's kind of fun to see what things other people pin by doing a search of your blog name:

 

But I think the most popular way to use Pinterest is to just browse. Since you can follow friends you know (like Facebook newsfeeds) and people you don't, but who interest you (like Twitter), and see what they are pinning. You can follow specific boards or every board, so you can customize what you want to see. 

Pinterest is technically still in Beta, but it's easy to get an invite if you know someone who's on it (like me). There are still a few bugs, but it is an absolute godsend for keeping ideas organized for your house, planning meals, planning a wedding, dreaming up a wardrobe, or hairstyle, or travel, finding learning and play ideas for your kids, finding inspiration for your workouts, your goals, your life. In this down economy, Pinterest is a fantastic place to learn to do it yourself, make it yourself, or reuse it for something else. It's brilliant. I've pulled up my boards when talking to our GC and subs, when talking to vendors and store clerks, when explaining to friends and family what I'm looking for/hoping for/planning for. It's a brain injured girl's best friend. (Other than her hubby and son, of course!)

Linked to:
Mums Make Lists

Painting Has Begun

Niels and I were talking the other day about how your perception of a house can vary. For most people, most of the time, when you walk into someone's house, you think about how cozy it feels, or as the Dutch say, gezellig, which, by the way, is a fabulous word that can't really be translated. It infers a sense of not just coziness, but warmth, hospitality and a sense of contentment with one's company.  It's a home that is lived in and loved in. That feeling has nothing to do with with fixtures and finishes, and has everything to do with how at home you feel when you're in it. Think of a time when you were enjoying a meal or conversation with a loved one and thought you wished that you could live in that moment forever. That's gezellig. 

Now, when you are in the midst of building, or thinking about building, or selling, or thinking about selling, homes become houses and you mentally break them down as you focus on different aspects. There are several homes that Niels and I have been multiple times and come away with different thoughts each time. For the first couple years of our marriage, we looked at layouts: how many bedrooms, how the rooms flowed together, the overall size and feel, the function of the kitchen, colors and fixtures that caught our eyes, etc. 

We wrote all these things down in a wishlist and handed it over one day to our builder and designer. Our builder laughed at us, but happily, our designer was able to come up with a plan that gave us everything we needed and most everything we wanted. 

After that, how we saw other houses depended on where we were at in our own building process, and we saw through the lens our next set of selections. When we were breaking ground, we were thinking about full ICF walls and looking forward to quiet walls and low utility bills. When the framing went in, we were thinking about where light switches would go and what kind and color we would use (white rockers) and how high they should be and how many we should have. Same with outlets. And TV outputs. And ethernet connections. 

All along the process we went, for the most part, til recently, all our decisions were the structurally, behind-the-scene things that no one other than our family and friends (maybe) and other potential home builders (possibly) find interesting. 

Until now. We're coming up to the last few weeks and finally, all the polite folks who have been following along (18,000+ views!--who are you people!?) Now our house is turning into a home. First with our cabinets, and now, PAINT! I can't tell you how excited I am. To me, paint means we can see the finish line. Paint means home stretch. Paint means our dreams of a gezellig home are coming true. 

So after that long-winded introduction, the painters have descended upon our new house!

The crew got started on Monday, taking down all the doors and carefully numbering each one, along with its corresponding frame. 

Yesterday, they spend the day caulking all the baseboards and door frames. I was a little surprised that the trim work went on first because it seems like it would be easier to paint the walls first. They explained to me that the trim that is put on is primed, but not finished, so they'll actually paint them when they do the walls. This crew painted our old house when we were staging it for sale, so we'll trust them. They do a great job so clearly they know what they are doing!

Today, there were three guys hard at work. One guy was busy staining all the trim pieces that will match the espresso cabinets: hand rail for the stairs, stair cap, tub surround, mud room lockers and foyer niche bench. They were planning to match the dark espresso of our cabinets, which is a tad darker that we thought it would be. The inside of the cabinet doors are a bit lighter, and show the grain better. So that's the hue they'll match. I love how the hand rails look.

A second guy was finishing up the caulking. The last bit to do was around our finally finished trim piece above the fireplace. Seeing that ladder reminds me why we better love the color in the great room. There's no way I'm repainting that!

The third guy was upstairs using the sprayer to start painting the trim white. I didn't want to get too close, but I did snap a few pictures from the stairs. You can see that they took great care in covering and sealing all the cabinetry and fixtures and securing them with painter's tape. There's the view down the hall to D's bathroom.

Here you can see that the door frames and baseboards in the hallway are done.

It'll take the crew about two weeks to finish painting. As I was talking to one of the guys, I mentioned how, before I got sick this fall, we had hoped to be in by this weekend (my 40th birthday). Then we had to revise our hopes to maybe have a floor to sit on and a counter to set a cake on. Then I laughed and said, "Maybe you could put a dot of actual color on the kitchen wall for my birthday gift." He said, "We'll try to do a little better than that."

If all goes as planned, the walls will start getting their final paint color on Friday. Our flooring has been delivered to our supplier, and after all the priming is done, the floor crew will get started. The two crews have a schedule set up to work around each other and our house should start looking very gezellig very soon.

Since money is an object...

The previous post was a bit of nice to have wishlist when money would be a plenty. Reality is that the opposite is true. In order to get a couple of things we really want, we opted for a couple of 'downgrades' from what you normally see in new construction. Here is our 'downgrade' list...

• Half-wall for the staircase instead of balusters: with my wife's head injury the balusters can be a visual distraction, especially with a low winter sun hitting the staircase. In order to counter-act the loss of light on the staircase we added two step cans. It also gives us a nice big wooden finishing to tie it in with the kitchen cabinet color. Plus, a half-wall is cheaper than balusters, hence it landing on the downgrade list.
• Bathroom / shower style: We opted against the full tiling in the bathrooms and chose inserts. Besides the cost savings it also greatly eases the maintenance by not having to clean grout. 
• Laundry room counter top: We have been fortunate that we've been able to use remnants  for a lot of the other non-kitchen counters. This really allowed us to enhance the visual impact of all the bathrooms without the large extra cost. However the extra cost for the larger laundry room made us decide to use a more cost-effective laminate. 
• Flooring: While we stayed with the US Floors cork in the kitchen, dinette and pantry, we downgraded to carpet for the bedrooms, hallway, stairs and office. Originally, we looked at some no-VOC carpet made from corn, but we ended up finding a really good deal on some carpet that will work pretty well. Since we know that we want to change out carpet as we go along, and since we will very likely be adding a new puppy to our family, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to spend  more for the upgraded carpet. For our wet areas, we have been drooling over the Emser Strand 12"x24" tiles for months. We were not as excited about the price. It was easy to downgrade to the 12"x12" which are more economical, but we saved a lot more money by switching to a generic version that still has the same pattern without the through-body color. In the laundry room and D's bathroom, we downgraded further from porcelain tile to an LVT, Luxury Vinyl Tile. Very cost-effective and looks a lot like regular tile. The style we selected looks just like bamboo.
• Master Bedoom: We are a family of three and we use our bedrooms to sleep. Not to lounge, not for an 'escape' from the family we worked so hard at getting. Hence the size of our Master Bathroom is definitely is size down from the average McMansion size. Still, a 15x15 bedroom is a space that VERY comfortably holds a king size bed, with plenty of room for side tables, a chaise and some wall cabinets.
• Master Bathroom: Not too many concessions here but we did take out the door between the Master Bath and the Master Closet. It allowed us to put up a full-length mirror in the door-opening to visually enlarge the space and to finally have a full-length mirror in our bedroom closet... 
• No crown molding: We like more of the contemporary-to-modern style so crown molding was an easy scratch of the list for us.
• Basement unfinished: Easiest 10% cut of the budget we could find. It also allows our son to have a nice large play area and give us a lower tax rate for the first couple years. Plus, this is something we can easily finish later. 
• Exterior stone: We cut out a good amount of exterior stone from the initial draft. That draft had a 'grand entrance' look versus the current 'contemporary craftsman' look with front porch. We still have stone all around the bottom of the house, the lower 2/3 of the front and the 2-car part of the garage. 
• Lights: We have a number of fixtures from local lighting stores but the vast majority of our lights we got from clearance sales at TJ Maxx, Home Goods, Tuesday Morning, Lowes and Home Depot. It really stretched our lighting budget. 
• TV and Phone cables: We use the upstairs floor as a sleeping floor and therefore opted to only have TV outlets in the basement and main floor. We also have no phone cables since we no longer use a home-phone. We actually replaced all phone cables in the original specs with Ethernet (Internet) cable for basically no extra cost. This allows hardwired Internet into every room. More on this topic in an upcoming post on electronics. 

Not sure about the overall cost savings, but including the basement I think we are looking at over $50,000. It would have been nice to not have to cut anything, but reality is that you easily makes some cheaper choices without loosing a lot of 'value', yet still easily upgradable when we want to. 

If money were no object...

Today I had an hour of babysitting in the car watching our son sleep while my wife was running a couple errands. I put together some thoughts on what decisions we did not make simply because of the cost associated with them, projected pay-back period or not a real priority for us. I'll wrap up the post with some of decisions we did make and we will never regret.

Items that didn't make it, here we go...

• Geo-thermal: the extra cost after rebate was still almost $8000. With an Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) structure you get a very high air-tightness (not a lot of heat loss) dropping our projected gas usage to under $400/yr, meaning you end up with a 20+ year pay-back period.
• Under-slab foam: Simply didn't know about that. Not sure about the extra price but it sure sounds nice...
• Mineral foam insulation for the attic: Spray-foam application in the US Mid-West is still a niche market and so are the prices, then you add the mineral foam to it and the price goes up even more.
• ICF flooring and roof structure: ICF-like concrete flooring and roof panels are VERY expensive and add almost $10k to $15k per floor and no one local had any experience with it.   Was on my wishlist as in my home country basically every floor is concrete and makes for a very silent house. 
• (Hydronic) Radiant heat flooring: When the Geo was ruled out we also eliminated the hydronic radiant heat option. We can still do electric for specific pieces of the house later. 
• Radiant Barrier on the roof: Mainly useful for cooling dominated climates. Ohio only qualifies 2 months out of the year.
• Metal roof lined with solar panels: The price difference of the metal roof over a good 30yr shingle is already significant. Just imagine adding the solar panels... 
• Sound-barrier/dampening in between floors: When ICF flooring went out we looked at other sound-deadening products but with carpet upstairs and sound-absorbing cork flooring and carpet on a majority of the main floor we decided it wasn't a wise investment.
• 10" Concrete for the ICF walls: We have 6" already but its nice to kind of feel you live in a VERY solid house. Debated using it for the basement, but our GC (who built 75+ ICF houses already) convinced us it was overkill.
• > 2 1/4" EPS foam for the ICF walls: The thicker the EPS foam encapsulating the ICF, the higher the R-value of the wall. The law deminished return applies here. Yes, it's better but more expensive than the extra value.
• Room-by-Room zoning: We settled for a 4 zone setup. More than adequate.
• HEPA filter: Very good system, but with mechanical ventilation the cost of the filters will be significant. Since we refresh the air in the house a lot more than normal (due to the forced, mechanical ventilation) the HEPA filtered air is less of a requirement. We also don't have a medical need for it (yet)...
• Grey-water system: Simply won't pass code around here. 
• Excavate under the porches and garage: Was cost-prohibitive...
• 10' ceilings (after finishing) on all levels: Would have added a lot of cost for trim, doors and kitchen (venthood extensions required). We settled for 9' on all levels. 
• Triple-pane / dual-gas filled windows for the north-side: Best possible insulation windows are VERY expensive. We settled for dual-pane with an EnergyStar rating and Low-E 366 glass instead.
• High Solar Gain windows for the south-side: To let in the sun (in the winter) to assist with heating the house. Didn't have the time to fully investigate. We used the same windows throughout the house (see previous point).
• Trellises over the south windows to block the summer sun but allow the winter sun: Goes together with the high solar gain windows. We might get this in a few years after seeing how the current setup behaves.
• Sun Tubes for all rooms without windows: Natural light is always a positive, but the extra thermal breaks in our structure and the cost (incl. installation) versus a good 6500K artificial lighting solution nixes that idea.
• Remote (roof-top) blower and make-up-air system for kitchen vent hood: We want a vent hood that is as silent as possible. The best way to achieve that is by relocating the blower motor away from the hood. We were too far into the building process for that to be a good solution for us. 
• Cork flooring throughout the house (for dry areas), ceramic tile (for the wet areas): This will remain the goal for us. The wet areas are pretty much there already and we are only 3 areas away on the main level from achieving that goal for the dry areas. A little further away from that goal on the upper level... ;-)

The above list is a bit fluid on which items would land on it but I guess it's a good sampling. The total extra cost for the dream house would be easily somewhere over $100,000. 

However, we also made a couple of important design decisions - some of which are hard and/or expensive to make afterwards or were simply on our must-have list - that we will never regret. They include:

• Full ICF with 6 1/4" concrete plus 2 1/4" EPS foam
• Heat-pump with dual-stage 96% furnace
• Low or No-VOC paint
• Dual Master suite design to assist with Age-in-Place and Universal Design
• Design the main floor full bath with a 5' turning-radius for a wheelchair
• Easy access into and out of the house
• Open-to-Great-room staircase with half wall instead of balusters
• Amish-built kitchen with quartz countertop vs store-bought with granite
• Large, walk-in pantry
• Cork for the dining area, kitchen and pantry
• All WaterSense fixtures
• All EnergyStar appliances
• All rockers instead of switches
• Building it in a neighborhood we truly like with sidewalks, friendly neighbors and a quiet street

Overall, we probably spent a larger percentage on some of the invisible things such as the ICF than the expensive tile / hardwood floor and commercial-grade appliances. Function-over-form where required, but definitely both where possible... ;-)

Closet Layouts

As part of our busy morning at the new house yesterday, we did our closet walk-through with Les from Top Shelf Closets. I felt a little unprepared for this round of decisions. Even though I try to be organized,  usually I'm working with existing shelving, so trying to think through how to place the shelves was a bit daunting to me.

We have several rooms to discuss:

• Master bedroom 
• Our son's bedroom
• In-law bedroom
• Guest bedroom
• Linen Closet
• Upstairs Laundry Room
• Downstairs Laundry Room
• Entry Closet
• Foyer Closet
• Pantry

The entry, foyer, guest closets, and downstairs laundry were easy. We did Charis' standard rod and shelf, like this:

We didn't put any shelving in the upstairs laundry room or pantry. I have my eye on a metal shelf from Ikea for the laundry room, and we'll be repurposing  some shelves in the pantry for now.

Most of the discussion centered on our son's closet, the in-law closet and our closet. Les didn't have any pictures for us to look at, but we have seen the type of closet system he used in other homes built by Charis homes. They are white melamine systems with cool brackets, like this:

For our three-year-old's closet, we talked about how to best use the space for the next 15 years. I was thinking of three rows of shelves and rods, but realized that would likely result in us needing to redo in a few years. Besides, he has a dresser, too, and not a lot of clothes. We did put in shelving for toys and extra books.

another Charis closet

For the in-law closet, we discussed how to best use the space for the possibility of long-term guests (several weeks or more), short-term guests (who may be working out of their suitcase rather than fully unpacking) and future use as a master if Niels or I have mobility issues and don't want to be upstairs. I think we came up with a good solution with a combination of double rows, single rows and a shelf. Pictures to come.

In our closet, which is long and narrow, we had to work around a full length mirror we're putting up across from the entry. We chose not to put a door on our closet because, realistically, it'd would almost always be open, either out of laziness or to let in the natural light. We decided to go with it, and take advantage of the wall to have a full length closet, which we wouldn't have space for in the bathroom itself.

Les was really helpful in guiding us through our thought process. We liked that he was helpful without being pushy and we're quite happy with what we decided. We'll have mostly two rows of rows and shelves, and we're saving ourselves from buying an Ikea dresser by installing wire baskets, similar to this for our drawers.

We'll each have four 24" wire drawers, which should be plenty. There will be shelving above those that we can use, as well. Les also made the suggestion of using the extra bookcase that doesn't fit in our pantry along an open wall, which will be perfect for more storage. I'm really excited to see how it all turns out.