Are U Ready for Dis?

First, Les Couleurs...

In the dining room we have Spiced Pumpkin. It's a rich terra cotta color that we thought would nicely compliment the cabinets and the cherry wood furniture we bought from Stickley. See how well it looks with that panel for cabinetry (I think that goes in the refridgerator space).

In the foyer and hallway, we chose a neutral shade that is slightly darker, than the color that was already there. This is called Twisted Oak Path. We believe it compliments the Spiced Pumpkin and the shades we chose in the New Space.

This is 2 shades of yellow, but we don't remember the names of them. The window wall is an accent color, and it's slightly more yellow than the rest of the room. The wood work will remain white. The fireplace will have a black slate surround.

The display nooks in the hallway will be painted Twisted Oak Path, with the backs painted a variation of the shade used in the powder room....

...remember this color for the Powder room? It's called Fruity Punch. It's only going to be in this semi-circle, next to the Euro-crapper we bought. I think the rest of the room will be a basic white.

The hangers for the mirror, and the wiring for the pendants in the Powder Room.

And now the exciting stuff....

meet The Granite. It's Brazilian, and the pictures don't really do it justice. Its got swirls of bluish-black, specks of amethyst colors, and golds, and whites, and greys. We thought it was fab-oosh.

Here's a wider shot of the buffet into between the kitchen and the dining room.

Here's my new GE Monogram 5-burner cooktop. The granite guys took the cooktop and the sink with them to custom fit them in the granite.

Here's the new sink, smaller prep sink on the left, deep basin on the right. The holes in the back, from left to right are: counter top disposal on/off switch, Soap dispenser, Main Faucet, filtered water dispenser.

Here's the rear view. The bar juts out about 24 inches, it's still got the 2x4 underneath because the counter won't be fixed until the plumbing is attached and completed. Here's the first shot of the accent color we chose called Ruby Dusk. It sort of eggplant colored we chose it for this under counter area and the trim on the Curve in the New Space.

Here's the wide shot of the new workspace.

Here's the wide shot of the New Space, with the accent colors.

Here's the view of the kitchen from the Dining Room.

There you have it. It's really coming together quick now. Today the crew is finishing the deck while the painters wrap things up inside. They make do some cabinetry while the painters are working.

The siding guys will be here. They replaced siding and trim on the side of the house yesterday, it's a mess now. I think they'll be there until the middle of next week, but the great thing is that since Commonwealth is subbing it out, they can focus on detail work inside.

It was took dark last night to take exterior shots, and I didn't have the bandwidth this morning...as I will address in a separate post.

Anyhoo, have a great weekend eer-one!

S'all for now,

cc

BIG DAY TODAY....

The painters were at the house yesterday and they completed the dining room and part of the new space. It looks great!

Tim made great strides on the Deck yesterday, it should be completed by Friday or Monday.

Today the painters come back, they will probably finish up on Friday.

The granite countertops are completed and will be installed today!! When the are in the backsplash can go in and the appliances.

Oh, and I almost forgot! The siding guys come today to start installing the new siding! Steve said they may finish that in one day, like the roofers did, however the roofers arrived at 7am sharp and worked all day, but the siders had yet to arrive when we'd left at 7:30am.

I'll post shots tonight or tomorrow.

cc

Week 13 - waiting waiting waiting

We scheduled movers for July 31st.

Are these guys ever going to finish? We're at the point where everything is just about to be finished, but it's either half installed (like the cabinetry or the electrical and lighting fixtures) or waiting in the limbo of our smelly garage (appliances and plumbing fixtures)...the garage is smelly because the port-o-pot is right next to it, and well, odors waft. A lot has to happen before we can move back in.

Friday, the countertop folks came and measured for our countertops and then left. Steve said the turnaround is usually a week.

Monday our appliances arrived and are in the garage waiting to be installed. We got the GE Advantium oven, the GE Monogram wall oven (electric convection), GE Mongram 5-burner gas cooktop, GE Monogram 'Euro' hood, Jenn-air 'fridge, and Bosch dishwasher. We spoke personally to each appliance and welcomed them to our household...and appologized for having to store them in a smelly garage. The Bosch seemed put out, but then it is European.

This week, is interior painting, and the siding sub-contractors are going to remove our existing wood siding and replace it with the Hardi-Plank.

No pictures, really because there's not much to show right now. Steve has been by himself the last few work days as, the rest of the Commonwealth crew finishes smaller jobs.

Die Kabinette sind angebracht worden!

Or...the cabinets have been installed, auf Deutsch. Oh, how we have waited to see these.

This is week 12. On Monday the floors were buffed and a second coat of poly-deathfumes were applied. I took the day off and palled around with my folks in Old Towne Alexandria. Good times were had. The floors were finished around 3:30pm so we couldn't walk on them until 6 pm. We all went out to dinner and when we came back they were beautiful. Hawkins flooring was able to buff out the mail that dried stuck to the floor on Friday, Steve said the boss scowled, and uttered a "Dios Mio", and probably a couple of other Spanish unprintables, and then he just buffed it out. They're gorgeous.

Anyhoo, on Tuesday they started installing cabinetry. Thank goodness that Mom and Dad got to see the base cabs installed before they left on Wednesday morning. Below are some shots of how it turned out on Wednesday morning.

This is the dining room that thier using as a staging area. Below is the cabinetry for the 'message centre'.


This is the main work area. We went with a maple base, that is stained to look like cherry. Natural cherry cabs were THOUSANDS of $$$ more. Melissa Chernick, Commonwealth Designer Extraordinaire, steered us towards this manufacturer. The company's name is Diamond Cabinetry, and its a semi-custom cabinet maker. Melissa says that semi custom means that you order cabinetry from a catalog and it's made and shipped to you. They came in boxes that were labelled, manufactured in Alabama. Wonder where? There were some really talented carpenters in the town I grew up in, Ozark.


This is the wall for the pantry and refridgerator, and what we call the Baking Centre. The pantry has pull out shelves. The 'fridge will go in the centre, we got Jenn-Air 'fridge with french doors and a pullout freezer. The Baking Centre will have an appliance garage and book shelves for cookbooks and whatnot.
This is looking from the sink area into my new workspace. The corner cab is a garbage can lazy susan. 3 plastic bins, one for garbage, one for paper, and one for glass and plastic. No more schlepping recyclables out to the bin! The cab at the far right will open into the New Space, so that we won't have to reach accross the expanse of countertop to reach the door, there will be another appliance garage under this cab.

A front view.

This will serve as a broom closet, and cleaning products storage. It's only about 1 foot deep. Hmm, it looks disturbingly like a Confessional!

This is the Message Centre. I'll show more pix of this later, it doesn't make much sense now.

Here's the outside shot. Steve moved that gi-normous mound of foul smelling dirt and is ready to build the deck. You can't see it in this shot, but the holes for the posts have been dug. The stuff is all on our parking pad out front ready to be built.

Today, the plumbing fixtures arrived! Melissa Chernick, Commonwealth Designer Extraordinaire, came by this morning as well to finalize our color choices. They did more work on the cabinetry, adding doors, drawers etc. The guy from the granite place came over today and measured for the countertop. I can't wait to see it, because I haven't looked at it since February. Next week, Mike-the-drywall-guy is coming next week to paint, as well as the tile guy to do the backsplash.

It's all coming together really fast. We can't wait to see the finished product.

S'all for now!

CC

The First Coat is the Deepest, and now a gift from your postal service...

Friday morning, apparently fairly early, the flooring guys arrived and laid down a coat of sealer, and the first coat of poly-deathfumes. Remember, we had to vacate the premises on Thursday night and bunk with Ste. Cheryl of Shirlington. We had a wonderful evening with this pious woman. She was charming, witty and lively... especially once we plied her with a gin martini at the Busboys and Poets restaurant in the village of Shirlington, where she was at home, among her faithful.

Anyway, Friday morning we all headed to the house to see what it looked like. Here's the fabulous results. The stain matched pretty closely, didn't it! Here's what it looks like at the base of the stairwell. This is the existing flooring, sanded stained and one coat of poly.

Here's the existing floor in the old living room, new Dining room.

Kitchen floor, it's all new flooring from the wall that juts out on the right. Remember this used to be our teensy dining room.

The flooring in the new space.

Looking towards the entrance to the deck.

Looking back towards the kitchen.

New hallway.

Oh, and whats this next to the front door?? Oh, wow, we forgot to tape up the mail slot!!! Good thing the Entertainment Weekly was face up, or we'd have a permenant visage of Michael Jackson, rest-his-soul, staring up at us for the rest of our time in this home! As it was it's only a gas bill and a home-for-sale flyer. Steve said the floorers can just buff this out.

My parents are intown til the 7th, we had a wonderful 4th of July, with Fireworks on Lake Barcroft, BBQ Ribs, and most of the trimming. Hope eer-one had a great holiday.

cc

WooHoo! New FLOOR!!!

The floor crew installed our floor today. They didn't get to sanding and stripping the old floor but they did finish installing the new.

As you can see below in this kitchen shot, the removed the old flooring back to the dining room area.

Here's the view from the corner of the new space looking towards the back door.

This is looking towards the kitchen. BTW, the odd circles in the picture are caused by dust. I think the schmutz were seeing is dust particles reflecting off the flash. Nice, huh? I told M this evening that I don't even see the point in cleaning up much, because it the next day it's filthy again...just want my house back at this point. Anyhoo....

This is looking towards the front door from the new space. This is red oak, btw. We're going to try to stain it to be similar to the old flooring.

Here's the kitchen. Now they can install all them cabinets out in the garage!

Here's the powder room flooring.

Here's the entry to the den, where we're living for the duration of this project. This is why we have to move out when they poly-deathfume the floors tomorrow. The only way we can get up to the bath/bed levels of the house is to round this corner here, and head up the stair way. I can do it without touching the floor, but I resemble a spider monkey whilst doing it...try not to picture it, it's too disturbing. However, if I knocked some drywall schmutz on the floor while I was impersonating George of the Jungle, the floors would be just as mest up. We're vacating...thanks to St. Cheryl of Shirlington.S'all for now,

CC

I like the little car, and this neat-o fright-wig, but the big floppy shoes are binding...

Tuesday, a painting crew came over and applied a coat of primer to the whole level. Later that day, Commonwealth Designer Extraordinaire, Melissa Chernick, arrived with paint samples that we had chosen the night before. She applied the new colors to the newly primed walls. I'll take you on a little tour.

Below is our old front door, which is not changing, there's nothing wrong with it. Steve and crew have completed most of the woodwork throughout the new level. So, the windows and doors all for the most part have their surrounding woodwork now. The first sample is below on the wall on the left. It's an antique cream, not too dissimilar from what we had on the walls before.

This is looking down the new hall way towards the new space. The ceiling height is 7'3" in the hallway. They just finished framing in the woodwork here, and in fact have a bit more to do, on the otherside of this opening. The entrance to the existing den is still rough.

The new Dining Room with the completed woodwork around the existing window.

Now, the colors don't show as well as I would like them to, bur here goes. This is standing in the corner of the Dining Room looking at the front of the cove. The 2 splotches on it are a light greenish/blue. The one on the left is a pale wedgewood blue, the one on the right is even paler blue. Melissa, thinks this will really make the Curve stand out, because the walls in the Dining Room will be...

...one of the 2 splotches below. They are sort of a terra cotta shade, we like the darker of the 2 shades.

Here's the interior of the Cove in the kitchen. I like the paler of the 2 shades here.

Here's the new window wall with the completed woodwork. Nice, huh? This is going to be an accent wall, with one of the 2 golden shades on the left.


Here's a closer view of the completed wood work.

Heres a closer look at the 2 colors. We think the one on the left is too vibrant, so we're leaning towards the lighter of the 2.

The rest of the room will be the lighter of the 2 colors of the wall below. We're choosing a shade of eggplant for the Curve and the bar area.

Here's Tim's completed display cases, there will be an accent color on the back of each shelf, we think it will be variations of the color we're choosing for the new powder room.
Are you ready for the powder room, color?

You sure?

OK...scroll down a bit...

It's called Fruity Punch...HEY! No cat calls from the Peanut gallery, I HEARD THAT!

We'll thats where we are this week. Midway thru week 10.

Today the new floors are installed, and the existing floors will be sanded today. Steve said that he'd seal us upstairs and down with a double plastic seal. That worked well for the drywall, so hopefully the mess won't be too bad.

S'all for now,

cc