Build - Day 143 - Lots 'o decisions

Today we finalized a lot items on the remaining parts of the house. We've decided on:

1. Our revised locker lay-out to better suit our need (and trim some cost)
2. Dropping down the niche in the front entry to make it a seat instead of a display niche
3. The 'trim' above the fireplace; basically making it an oversized window frame to be painted in an alternate color
4. The supplier for the non-kitchen cabinets; Carter Lumber with Merrilat maple cabinets in the same Shaker/Espresso finish as the kitchen
5. The layout of the in-law bath vanity wall
6. The countertops for the non-kitchen cabinets; all granite remnants except for...
7. A ... drumroll... remnant marble top for Jen's lowered baking center.

We also dropped off the lease for the corporate rental that we will use as our temporary housing in between the 6 to 8 weeks of the current house closing to the dream home completion. Pictures will follow later this week.

Tomorrow we'll pick up my mother-in-law who will stay for 8 days to occupy our son so my wife can focus on packing while I'm working. I'll have a long weekend the next weekend in which we'll load up the POD for conditioned storage (it's winter in Ohio...), the Penske truck for moving the non-critical boxes to our dream home garage and the suitcases for the corporate rental unit.

Here are a few pictures from our rock hunting expedition today. We had already decided on the Hanstone Speccio White quartz for our kitchen and command center.

We decided to go with granite in our master bathroom because it was a little cheaper than quartz. The challenge was finding something that wasn't too busy so it wouldn't trigger Jen's vertigo. The Kasmir White was just the ticket.

Our Kasmir White slab

Kinda fun to see our name in stone.

Kasmir White kitchen

We decided to shop the remnants for the other bathrooms. We don't need a lot of counter in those rooms, and we weren't married to any particular stone.

For Daniel's bath, we liked this one, with the bit of yellow, his favorite color. This is called Venetian Gold.

our Venetian Gold remnant

Venetian Gold

We chose this remnant for the powder room. Apparently we have excellent taste because it's a much higher level that we'd consider otherwise. It's called White Diamond.

our White Diamond remnant

White Diamond kitchen. I couldn't find a bath photo online. I don't think our slab is this busy.

We really like the gray lines in the River White remnant for the in-law bathroom:

our River White remnant

River White Bathroom. I kind wish there was a slab for us to have used in our bathroom. This is stunning!

Close up of River White

River White kitchen

The big surprise: Jen's marble slab. We had planned to eventually buy a nice marble slab from Williams Sonoma or someplace as a splurge for her baking center. The ones we looked at were small (but HEAVY) pieces of marble that she would take out when she baked. Since this Carrara marble remnant was EXACTLY the size we need for the baking center, we're saving money by using this instead of the quartz  for the permanent counter. Jen is so happy.

Our Carrara Marble Slab

Williams Sonoma Carrara Marble pastry board

Me at the Dutch kitchen showroom that inspired my  baking center. Ours will not be quite so big!

Lastly, we chose this Citadel Warp (5882) Formica laminate for the laundry room. It's the one room that has natural maple instead of espresso, so we went with a darker counter. Our quote was actually for the granite-looking laminate, but Jen likes this better, so we'll save a bit of money here, too.

 Getting closer... ;-)

Build progress - Thanksgiving

Happy Turkey Day, America!

Now that the cranberry sauce is wiped off our faces it's time to get back to reality... Well, we never even got that far. The current house is a packing zone so no time or space to prepare anything remotely looking like a Thanksgiving dinner. Driving around town shows us that our town is simply closed. Nothing is open on Turkey Day, not even Pizza or other fast food chains. Ended up at Denny's to at least up the calorie count.

For the house on Black Friday I did armrest shopping on the same device used to write this post. Actually scored a GPS for my wife for getting around town in the apartment which is 20min away and 2 Waste King L8000 garbage disposals all for a very good price. I think the disposals might even be covered by our allowance for it.

Also updated the house picture with a shot taken at Thanksgiving Day. Starting to look like the Dream is becoming reality. Back to the other reality of packing up the current house.

Kitchen progress

Today we had the rare opportunity to see our kitchen cabinets taking shape. This is one of the advantages of doing a custom kitchen. After our sons nap we loaded up the car and headed south deep into Amish country. True Ohio splendor and gives our son the ability to know what a hay-stack actually looks like and let him appreciate the simpler life that can be equally fulfilling. The trip takes all but an hour and - when not raining - makes for a very pretty drive.

At the cabinet maker's wood shop we saw our kitchen dreams become reality for the 1st time. We were both in awe of the craftsmanship before us even without the final treatments of the beautiful natural maple. The fit-and-finish is unparalleled and the construction is rock-solid. The prep island already has the Blum Servo-drive installed for the recycling center and all the other Blum BlueMotion hardware had arrived a day before. The whole kitchen will be soft-close (both the drawers and the doors), full extension and full overlay with no particle board insight. After seeing them look this good in their current state we feel 110% certain we made the right decision for the kitchen which is the focal point of the dream house.

The finished cabinets were also undergoing some rigorous Quality Assurance test by 3 boys (aged 2 through 6) climbing through them, playing on them and running around them. Didn't even hear a squeak...

In about 3 weeks the cabinets should be all done but before mid-December we might get another sneak-peek when they are about to be stained. Can't wait for them to be delivered and ready for us to use.

Our recycle center with...

... a little trick, the Servo-drive release and close (by Blum)

The Master Carpenter, Joe Yoder, and his craft. (Photo taken with permission for the blog)

Dovetail construction, in pieces.

Dovetail, finished. For the record, completely sanded smooth...

Bottle cubbies.

No particle board... all plywood and solid maple.

Blum Bluemotion soft-close hinges.

Blum Tandem Bluemotion soft-close drawer slides.

Pantry Update

It's been pretty crazy around here with a flurry of showing on the current house, and finally, after 211 days, AN OFFER! It took less than a day to work out the details, and hopefully we'll get through the inspection and have our closing date on December 12. 

So now, in addition to packing up our house in 3.5 weeks, we are also trying to find a place to live, and make the last slew of decisions for the new house, including what to do with my lovely 9'10" x 9' pantry, which currently looks like this: 

Niels demonstrates the width of the pantry.  We want the first floor to be wheelchair accessible, so the door is 36" and there is room for a chair to maneuver around inside. 

From the kitchen looking in toward the right. The appliance shelf will go along the long wall, and 12" bookcases will go along the back wall for my bulk foods.

From the kitchen looking in toward the left. We'll have a full size upright freezer, a 5' tall shelf with open drawers, and hopefully another 7' bookcase.

From the back wall of the pantry, looking across the kitchen into the dining room.

From the back wall, looking into the great room.

We've been coming to appreciate the wisdom of prioritizing structural upgrades over cosmetic, but months of looking at model homes, design magazines and home decor websites can sure test your resolve. Our trim carpenter's estimate for tricking out my pantry was more than half the cost of our custom Amish made kitchen cabinets, so we went to plan B: looking for an appliance counter to go with the solid wood bookcases we want to  re-purpose.

6 and 7 foot unfinished wood bookshelves, currently used to sort  paperwork.

These shelves are 12" deep, which is perfect for the green storage containers I use for my bulk foods. I'm so excited to finally be able to expand my selection! 

Here's a look at my current pantry.

Love my label maker!

Last week I was at Value City furniture checking out the clearance section when I found this bookcase:

HomeCourt bookcase

What caught my eye was the baskets on the bottom. It wouldn't work for the appliance shelf, but I thought it would be good for storing potatoes and onions with the open ventilation. And the tall cubbies on top would be great for storing trays. I could put baskets in the other cubbies. The espresso wood is the same stain as our kitchen cabinets.

Around this time, my toddler son got restless and started walking away. As I caught up with him, I saw these two pieces that were part of the same collection:

HomeCourt Chesser

HomeCourt Dresser and Mirror (the mirror will go in our son's room)

I thought I could push those two pieces together to get the 8' counter I wanted. As a bonus, there's a nice mix of shelves and drawers. That's when I learned that these pieces were actually part of the LeBron James HomeCourt youth bedroom furniture collection. The funny part is that we're in Ohio, which is not keen on King James these days. No wonder it was all on clearance! Good for us, we got it for a steal (about 1/3 of the list price). I put a hold on it until I could show Niels, and he agreed that we wouldn't get anything nearly as nice for the price. 

I started playing around with the layout, and came up with this:

From the bottom, moving clockwise: 36" door, HomeCourt bookcase,  full size freezer,  7' bookcase, 6'  bookcase, 7' bookcase, 6' bookcase, chesser, dresser.

I've been eyeing the butcher block topped Varde collection at Ikea, and was thinking that would be our solution, but since our nearest Ikea is 2 hours away and delivery charges are highway robbery, the HomeCourt collection will be cheaper. However, I'm still wanting a butcher block top to make the two dressers look like one unit, something like this:

I think the lighter top will make the two sets look better together. I don't think I want to stain the bookshelves because it might make the pantry too dark. 

We have 9' ceilings on the first floor, including the pantry. But I'm only 5'4", so upper cabinets are wasted on me. However, I may get a couple of these light shelves to give a little more storage space and keep things light.

Our kitchen colors are green, purple and gray, with white counters and espresso cabinets, so now I need to decide what color to paint the pantry. I'm leaning toward this green: Sherwin Williams Oyster Bay (6206):

Sherwin Williams Oyster Bay (6206) with the room visualizer.

The best part of this downgrade is that I'll still have a full solid wood pantry with oodles of shelves, my appliance counter and even a few drawers for less than $1,000. Can't beat that!

Progress and Current house - Nov 11, 2011

Today is 11/11/11 and again it has been awhile since we've made an update. The house is coming along nicely and short of the light fixtures, the exterior of the house is now done. For the interior, all the trim work is completed so all doors and their frames, the window sills and base boards are all done. Major items left are the flooring, cabinet installs, paint and fixture installation.

On the other front - we are FINALLY under contract for our current house with a projected closing date of 12/12. Their is a contingency on mineral rights but that seems to be panning (no pun intended) out. The interesting things is that we still have another showing on the current house tomorrow. Both the agent and potential buyers are aware of the contract so hopefully we'll get a backup offer in case something unexpected will happen with the current contract.

Tomorrow we'll start apartment hunting since the dream house will not be ready by 12/12 and we still have the option to lease it back to our builder as a model for a couple of months to showcase some of the more interesting aspects of our new home, if that makes financial sense to do.

Kitchen Pendant Puzzle Solved!

We're in the midst of trim work at the new house. I've updated my facebook album, but we're a little behind on here because my health has been pretty rough for the last few months. I've enjoyed a few good days recently, at least as far as the pain goes, but my vision is still giving me trouble, so photo editing has been slow.

I do want to make a quick post about our kitchen pendants, though. Yesterday, we decided to stop at Whitmer Lighting in Akron to take a look at lights. I had been drooling over all sorts of fun things on Pinterest, but when we saw these Fizz pendants by ET2, Niels pulled the trigger. I never would have found these online because they are tricky to photograph, but in real life, they are just stunning. Here are few photos we took:

Build - Day ### - October 15, 2011

We haven't posted a lot recently mainly due to a lack of time in decision making processes, travel and health issues, but the progress on the house has not slowed down.

Since our last post the walls have been dry-walled and primed, the ceilings have been finished and all the electrical and plumbing is in as well. Next week we'll have regular power in the house as well and can say goodbye to the temporary pole in the front yard. Oh yeah, the drive way has also been poured, the furnace installed and with the installation of the glass block windows in the basement the building envelop is now sealed.

The items that haven't progressed much have been around cabinets and flooring. The quotes we've gotten were close to double the allowances so some soul searching and cost cutting methods had to be applied. We are very close in finalizing all of those items now though. We'll meet one last time with our kitchen cabinet supplier on Monday so he can get started and we'll meet with the supplier of the rest of the cabinets early next week.
Next Thursday morning we'll also meet with our 'trim guy', the master carpenter who will put the finishing touches on  the walls, windows and door openings.

So, here are a couple of pictures of the build as it stands this week.

Back-porch with the stone columns

Basement window, our manor stone and the back-filled electrical connector.

The walk way to the front door is elevated to one step only. A simple, removable one-step high ramp will be created  later to give us wheelchair access.

Good shot of the front of the house with more of the manor stone and the driveway.

Back-porch with the beautiful fall colors in the background.

Rainy day, but good shot of the house.

Close-up of our manor stone selection.

From the kitchen into the great room. More indoor pics to follow.

We've hit 10,000 views!

I never thought that building our dreamhouse would be such an interesting proposition to so many. I know we tend to post a bit more on decisions as well as the more common 'show-and-tell', but never in our wildest dreams did we think we'd hit 10,000 views. Especially not in under 4 months.

To put this in perspective, our friend Marc Martel (leadsinger of Downhere) got 3 MILLION views on YouTube.com in about 4 days with his audition as Freddie Mercury for the offical Queen Extravaganza tribute band so we know where we stand in the grand scheme of things... ;-)

Thank you for the 10,000 views! On to the next 10k...