Just a quick out-take

We're continuing to close in on the finish line, with (extended) punch lists hanging in every room, chunks of things getting marked off each day. Stopped by on Wednesday to discover that at last the front door was sporting its new paint and hardware -- what a pleasant shock!

The steps are still a bit messy from cement work being done overhead, and we still need to replace the elderly house number plaque with the individual modern numbers waiting in a closet, but man, what a transformation! No awnings, no maroon paint, no frilly white ironwork! (I'll take credit for that last, having spent most of one Sunday afternoon sanding and painting the rails in this new "stainless steel" color, chosen as a compromise between classic black and the white that continues to be standard down the street. One of my neighbors liked the look so much she might redo her rails the same!)

Anyway, compare that picture with how the front looked before:

I think you'll agree we've sent Granny packing! Hopefully it will seem like just the right place for a young urban couple who want to be in this trendy part of town and have just a little bit of history (see: original floors) in the bargain. More photos soon.

Quest for granite

Most of my design for the kitchen was built around the white cabinets that it started with and a coordinating granite sample (from my friendly local kitchen designer). Once I realized I had to start over, I got some new cabinet samples to work with, and my "design board" looked a bit like the image at right (with some allowances for bad lighting -- that sample on the left there should be pure white!), based pretty much on the same idea. The granite is a mix of large grey and white patches with some tan. The cabinet samples are white and light grey, and the backsplash tile is a matte glass in a bottle brown color (to add a little warmth to the room).

I sat on this collection for a while before we got around to time for templating the cabinets for counter, and then I was told to head out to the "stone warehouse" to pick out my actual piece of granite! So off I went.

Here's the immense warehouse -- a little reminiscent of that giant government storage facility at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Aisles of stone from around the world, mostly for countertops, in all colors and patterns. Slabs are probably 6 feet tall and 12 feet wide, so it's quite a walk!

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Here's the slab I actually chose (left). Looks a bit darker in the photo than in person -- the close-up at right is probably the better approximation. A little finer-grained than my sample from three months before, but definitely the same general color mix.

So, one templater, several weeks of cutting, and an afternoon's installation later (plus some work by my guys around the house), how's it look? Like a kitchen has been born!!! Closing in on civilization here!

I have to say that between the countertop and the light fixtures (and some other recent developments inside and outside the house), it's starting to look like we might actually get this place done soon! And I'm pretty excited to see it all finished and with the construction equipment (and dust!) out of there. Not to mention with a little furniture and daylight to lighten things up.

As for granite, another time I'd make visits to the warehouse earlier in the process, to be sure I got to look at more than one cut -- that is, this time I was looking at slabs that all came from the same slice of stone, so there wasn't much variation, but I imagine something new must come in every few weeks. I like the look of what I ended up with, but I'd be curious to see whether additional options would catch my eye when looking at the actual stones rather than just representative chips.

So, just waiting for some pulls to finish up this room, some flooring for under the washer and drier in the basement, and some cement work on the front where the awnings came down (yay!). Patio has been painted, basement carpeted, and bathrooms mostly done. More pictures to come! And hopefully a listing not far behind.

Kitchen taking shape!

Well, at last the cabinets have been installed, and I can start to see the outlines of a pretty spiffy modern kitchen. The scale of 42-inch cabinets is a little hard to convey in photos, but it's very striking in person! I want these in my kitchen at home!!

You can see the nice built-in compartment for the fridge at left and a gap for the stove and microwave. (Also, some glimpses into the interior machinery of the cabinets, which includes a bunch of nice roll-outs and so forth that got thrown in with my order as freebies.)

Next up, the new sink base (gonna get a nice big one in there!) and dishwasher (the absence of which was part of why I had to gut the kitchen to begin with).

Continuing around, we come to the grey section of cabinetry, including a spiffy aluminum-and-glass wall cabinet (an extravegence I'm unlikely to repeat, but will definitely enjoy), and where there will be a breakfast bar once the countertops arrive.

These photos are a couple of weeks old already, so there's paint on the walls and other things falling into place. Next to show here: adventures with granite!!

Kitchen developments

Well, the guys are finally turning their attention to the kitchen, where so much of my imaginative energy has been invested. I thought the house was a bit crazy when it had this many appliances in it:

Of course, that was before the pile-up had added some cabinets and grown to look like this:

But luckily, just this week the kitchen floor started to look like this:

and then like this:

The addition of the light gray grout to my concrete-looking grey tiles has absolutely made me salivate. Painting this room is up next. Can't wait to see all the rest of the components coming in there to match! Not to mention the granite that inspired it all!

Long cold season

I know it’s been a few weeks since I updated, and they’ve been frustrating ones. We’ve had a number of major snowstorms (enough so that even my kid curses the prospect of another snow day!) which have meant days when nobody could work, and even between storms it's been so uncharacteristically cold that a lot of work on the exterior of the house basically can't be done. (Read: too cold for cement and stucco.) Plus, there was some poor communication between my general contractor and my HVAC team (each waiting for the other to do some preparatory step) that added at least a week of time sitting around, probably more.

So, stuff has been getting done at the house, but it's less the kind of stuff that makes for exciting visual progress and fun After photos and more the kind of work that involves one guy there by himself straightening out some sub-code wiring, or another one doing some framing in preparation for new drywall. It feels like slow going (and I'm sooooo tired of the cold!) but I do have an entirely new furnace and ductwork, the basement has walls again, there are can lights in the ceilings where they're supposed to be, and all the bedrooms have nice closets and decently levelled and mudded walls, so things have in fact been happening!

Still, heaps of finishes are delivered and waiting to be installed, and in fact appliances and even kitchen cabinets are waiting impatiently in the wings. So I hope we'll start getting some of the chaos cleared and some things like tile and paint getting into place soon! Fingers crossed! Meantime, one little happy bit was the materialization of my middle bedroom window seat, incorporating the new heat/ac vent into its base:

Window Seat House summary page

For those who arrive late, a chronological list of all the posts in the project (kept updated):

1. Introduction
2. Before I: exterior and living room
3. Before II: kitchen and bedrooms
4. Before III: upstairs bath
5. Before IV: basement
6. Closing day: floors
7. Planning: window seat room
8. Demo I: basement chaos
9. Demo II: miscellaneous bits
10. Forward progress: drywall and HVAC
11. Kitchen developments
12. Kitchen II: cabinets!
13. Kitchen counters: Quest for granite
14. Quick snack: front door
15. Other developments: patio, basement carpet, and more
16. Unveiling of the floors (and closets)
17. Listing pics 1: first floor
18. Listing pics 2: basement and upstairs
19. Final wrap-up: before-and-after composites

More demo, just for the fun of it

A few more photos I hate to skip:

• Here's a chunk of new and old wiring in the basement, waiting to have a wall to cling to again. This is an amusing mass of switches controlling two different rooms -- entertains me every time I grab one to flip it on (but only one of many reasons my kid isn't making many visits to the house right now!)...
  
• This is more detritus from basement demo -- pieces of chimney pipe (the whole chimney needed to be cleared of debris and relined by chimney guys), some radiator piping, et al. I think that orange machine might have played a key role in grinding up the crazy plaster/wire ceiling.
  
• Here's a victory shot of all the red carpet once it was removed from the living room floor and stairs, along with the tired green underpad. I guess I took this picture pretty early -- the radiator grille is still visible back there, where now is only a gaping hole...
  
• Speaking of holes, here's a sample of the post-radiator look. These aren't the classical windy pipe radiators of my own youth (like this), but the kind that use a dense row of metal flaps to disperse the heat (like this), all set into large metal boxes within the walls (to varying degrees).
  
• I also quite like this photo from the middle bedroom after we pulled out the offending closet.
  
  You really get a sense of the many lives of old houses, as this archaeology uncovers multiple layers of wallpaper and room layout. The oldest stuff in this house is lathe-and-plaster; other parts are drywall, and still others are just smoothed-over exterior wall material. (Nobody wants to sacrifice living space for the luxury of unnecessary framing!) Fun.