A Hodge Podge of Updates

Here we go! Some serious update for you! This is kind of hodge podge and all over the place, but it'll give you a pretty good idea of what's been going on with our home on the Lane.

Let's rewind to when the cabinets were installed.  I showed you the kitchen, but couldn't showcase my brother-in-law's other talented work because flooring was being installed in those areas.  Now the floor tile is in, so here's the rest of the custom woodwork.

The mudroom:

 Yeah, it's dust and dirty from the finish carpenter installing all the trim, but you get the idea.  Mudroom cubbies and bench.  Love this--it's such a pretty place to store all our gear.  In case you're wondering, Eric doesn't want a cubby--he prefers the nearby closet to hang his stuff:)

The kids bath:

Obviously it still needs a counter top, but you get the idea. 

The laundry room:

Jason even managed to build us a folding table for above the washer and dryer.  Amazing!

The master bath:

Again, still need the counter, but this baby is 8 feet long so Eric and I get loads of space.  Just for comparison's sake, the master bathroom in our old house had 1 cabinet door and 2 drawers.  Now we get 5 cabinet doors and 6 drawers.  Smack!

And you may have noticed the tile in all the above photos.  It's pretty dusty, too, so hard to capture the real color.

See what I mean? This is the mudroom. I just can't get an accurate photo with all this dust.  However, the master bath tile is fairly dust-free, plus it's my favorite, so here's what that looks like:

We used the same tile for our master shower, which I tried to photograph, but it's small with odd angles and no light, so I did my best.

We LOVE this tile so, so much! It's actually less "busy" in real life and a bit more muted, so it's perfect.  The view above is when you step into the shower.  Then if you turn to the right, here's what it looks like:

We've got three shelves in the corner and will have 2 shower heads. The wall across from this--the wall to your left when you walk in looks like this:

There's another shelf and a small bench.  I am so excited about this shower I can hardly stand it!  But we're moving on to other things.

The kitchen counters have been installed and they look better than we'd hoped.

A close-up:

And here's the view of the island when you walk in the front door.  I love this:

Next we move on to the fireplace.  The mantel and stone have been installed.

The mantle will be enameled the same white as the kitchen cabinets.  We wanted light stone to keep with the light, white and bright feel of the house, but we like how this stone sill has some shades of tan that will go well with the wall color and the carpet.  A close-up of the stone:

We'll end with an exterior update.  The exterior has been painted, however it is not done.  The second accent color still needs to be painted around all the trim.  And while we love the main color, the paint job itself leaves something to be desired.  With that said, here's what the exterior looks like now:

Wow, that's a blue sky! I didn't even edit that photo, either.  Anyway, we move into this place in 19 days and there's still lots to be done.  In the meantime, we have Thanksgiving, packing and planning for the move, planning and packing for a fun Christmas cruise with Eric's family, Christmas shopping, and the actual move.  Oh, and Eric may be having knee surgery in the middle of all this so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to update the blog with all of that going on, but I'll do my best. 

It's Official

Just a quick update, but an important one! We're officially closing on our home on the Lane on December 13th.  That's just 20 days away! We cannot wait to call this place home.  Yay!

P.S.  We're way past the putting up siding stage, but the siding needs to be finished being painted before the exterior is complete.  We'll post pics of that once it's done!

The Post with No Updates

There's not much to report, but I don't want you to think I'm forgetting to update the ol' blog.  It's just there's really nothing to write about. Last we left off, the hardwood floors had been installed, and shortly after they were in, the cabinets were put in.  Unfortunately, our home on the Lane still looks like this:

The tile floors were being put in last week, but they're still not done, so this is all I've got for you on those.

A few more of these gorgeous doors have been hung, but nothing amazing enough to write a whole blog post about.

The painters were supposed to start, but so far I've only see one small paint sample on the wall and a report from our soon-to-be neighbor that the painter received "bad paint" so couldn't begin today as planned. 

At this point, move-in day is just 17 weekdays away and we are getting nervous that the house will once again be delayed.  I'll update here as soon as we have something blog-worthy!

Kitchen Cabinets

The kitchen cabinets are installed and look how pretty they are!

My brother-in-law, Jason, owns a custom wood working business.  You can check out his website here. He agreed to build all of the cabinetry for our new home and we are so lucky because everything is truly gorgeous! This post will focus on just the kitchen because I couldn't get into the other rooms that feature Jason's work since tile was being installed in those areas (bathrooms, laundry, mudroom).

Here's the kitchen with just the lower cabinets in.

Ignore that hideous mauve colored paper protecting the hardwood floor.  That paper throws off the true color of the island.  The island stain has no pink undertones--the below pic is probably the most accurate photo of the island color.

And here's the other side of the island.  Eric and Evan are standing where the kitchen sink will be.

After the lower cabinets were in, Jason and his guys put in the upper cabinetry.  I cannot tell you how much I love them!  The cabinets will all (aside from the island) be enameled in a creamy white color--just like the door in the photo below. So they're not completely finished yet, but at least you get a pretty good idea of what they'll look like. 

And a few more photos of different angles for you.

These will have a glass insert when they're finished

And my favorite photo again for last--it's the best color-wise.  Have I mentioned how difficult it is to get a good photo at 4:30pm this time of year with no electricity in the house? Pretty dang hard, so I'm thrilled I could actually capture the true feel of the kitchen in this one:

The tile is being installed, as I mentioned, so we should have photos of that once it's grouted.  And exactly one month from today, on December 13th, we will be moving into this gorgeous place.  So unbelievably excited for that day!!!!

Floor It!

Finally, after 2 1/2 weeks of sheetrocking, taping and mudding, we've moved on to the next phase of the house.  The hardwood floor is in! Woohoo!  The flooring was delivered last Friday, then had to acclimate for a few days before it could be installed.  So we looked longingly at this pile of wood for a few days, dreaming of when it would be under our feet.

On Monday, the flooring guy installed it all, then sanded it on Tuesday, at which time it looked like this:

And that's when the drama began.  The stain was scheduled to be applied on Wednesday.  When I stopped by the house on Tuesday, the flooring guy had prepared two samples of the stain we'd chosen.  Both samples were the same stain, just applied in different ways to achieve different looks.

You can see one is lighter and shows the grain more while the other is darker, but the grain is much less noticeable. I really don't care for the grain showing, and this particular stain has a very high contrast between the grain and the wood. Not my thing.

This doesn't show the contrast very well between the grain and wood, but it's really dramatic in real life.

However, we also didn't want really dark floors (we talked about why here) and the other option was dark. Really, really dark--almost black. No thank you.  When we looked at these options, we were told we had to make a decision that evening. It was 5:20pm at that point and that's when  I started feeling a little panicky. 

Again, not the best photo since it's actually much darker in real life--the camera flash makes it appear lighter than it really is.

Honestly, we didn't care for either option.  My mind kept saying "Black or zebra-stripey? I don't like either one!  What to do, oh, what to do?".  I quick made dinner, drove Marea and one of her friends to dance, then met Eric at the house again.  It was dark, but we managed to find the one working outlet to plug in a light.  We stared at the floor some more.  And then we called the builder and asked what our options were because neither of us liked the options under our feet.

Looking at the floor in the near-dark.  I hope we didn't scare the neighbors!

We spent the next hour and a half texting and calling the flooring guy and the builder.  After a friendly conversation with Eric the flooring guy, we felt slightly better.  They planned to show us a few more samples the next day and we could wait until then to make our decision.  Whew!


So, on Wednesday, the wood was stained with a couple more options.  The new options that had less ebony undertones, and more brown tones.

New color options--again not this light in real life

Old color options

We wanted the color to coordinate (not match) our other color choices, and I had been wishing we had some of those samples. Luckily, we noticed this sample of our hand rail sitting in the garage.

Seemed like a stroke of good luck it was sitting there since it will also be the color of the island in the kitchen, which will be right against the hardwood floor.  So Eric grabbed the sample and held it next to the flooring options.

We immediately knew which one we wanted--the darker brown option in the new color. It's a rich, warm brown which will warm up all the white we'll have going on, and still work with the other warmer tones we have selected with the granite, light fixtures, and wood tones.

Picture the darker floor in the top photo with the granite and cabinets here.  Ignore the floor color next to the granite--that was the original color we chose, but ended up not loving.

After we made our decision, the stain was applied and the floor was sealed.  Now it looks like this:

Well, most of the floor is actually covered in paper so we can just see small patches here and there.  This photo is probably the most accurate one of the color:

See what I meant about the other photos not showing the true color? This is really about as close to the real color we can get in a photo. And ignore all those dirty footprints--they'll get cleaned up pretty soon.  We love, love, love how the floors turned out and are so grateful the flooring guy gave us some more options.  This is exactly the rich, dark, warm brown color we were hoping to have.  What do you think about the color?

Coming soon--cabinets are already part-way installed!

A sneak peek of the cabinets:)  And the floor covered in mauve paper--beautiful, no?

Siding is waiting to be painted, and these doors are waiting to be installed.  Love these doors!

So excited for some more finishes to be installed!

Delayed, Part II

We posted a couple weeks ago that our home on the Lane is delayed.  You can check that out here.  Does this sound familiar?  It should because we had a very similar post back here.  It feels like a broken record at this point and we are seriously disappointed about it.

We've got the blues (again)!

Just as with the first delay, we've had a feeling for a while the house was not going to be finished on November 15.  Although when the first delay happened, the builders promised, basically guaranteed, that the house would be completed by November 15.  Sadly, November 15 is only 11 days away, and only 9 workdays.  There's no way we can go from this

to finished in 9 days.  So, we will tentatively now be closing on the new house on December 13, which is still almost 6 weeks away.  Since our original closing date in October has come and gone, we're just discouraged it will take this much longer to complete the house.

Fortunately, we are so blessed to be able to stay in our temporary housing as long as needed.  We are beyond grateful the condo we're renting is warm, comfortable, and that the owner (who is my sister's mother-in-law) is flexible enough to let us stay here for the duration of this crazy house-building endeavor. 

We're so lucky we can stay here as long as necessary

Furniture Shopping and Bedroom Decorating

Since we know we'll need some new things for the new house, we decided it was time for a little pre-shopping.  You know, pre-shopping--as in when you just go shop for ideas and think about what could work in the space you have, but aren't ready to actually buy anything yet. The perfect place for our pre-shopping was IKEA, so we headed up there with the kids in tow.

We seriously love us some IKEA.  Once, when we were totally broke and still pretty newly married, we decided to go to IKEA to get some cheap but nice furniture for our house.  Only problem was the closest IKEA was in Chicago and we were in Minnesota. So we left super early, drove 6+ hours to Chicago, got there and bought two dressers, two nightstands, and a few other odds and ends.  Then we drove 6+ more hours right back home, all in one day. True story! What can I say--we were young and crazy back then.  Oh, and we didn't have kids so we could do things like that:)  And we still use both dressers and nightstands in our bedroom, although a few years ago they received a paint makeover. Hopefully that story illustrates how much we love the pretty yellow and blue Swedish store.

Love, love, love this store!

Anyway, back to the present.  At IKEA, we looked at almost everything.  Lamps and lights, beds and bookshelves, closets and cabinet hardware.  Our kids were angels.  Really--they were extremely well-behaved the whole time we were there.  We wanted Evan and Marea to zero in on what they want their bedrooms to look like and what furniture they want to have, so we spent quite a bit of time helping them look at options.

Marea had an extremely difficult time making a decision about her room.  This is classic Marea behavior.  She can never make up her mind about anything. Drives me bonkers sometimes. At this point, she's contemplated the following ideas for decorating her bedroom: dolphins, blue and pink, dance, disco, ballet, horses, Christmas, sparkly, royal (as in for queens and princesses), lime green and pink, purple, red, flowers, garden, polka dots, floofy, poofy (yes, these were 2 different categories according to Miss Marea) and there's probably a few more I'm forgetting. I think she may have finally settled on lime green and bright pink with some sparkle thrown in for good measure, but with this girl, you never know. She may wake up and change her mind again tomorrow. 

This is floofy.  Floofy is good and could be part of M's room.

Chandeliers are sparkly.  Sparkly=perfect for Marea.

M really, really wants a day bed with a trundle.  Not sure if this is the direction we'll go or not.

And here she is testing out something that could be a potential window seat.

Evan, on the other hand, makes decisions rather quickly.  He is very humble and easy-going about this kind of thing.  I love this about him.  He debated between a golf-themed bedroom or a Northfield Raiders room.  He spent about 5 minutes looking at ideas, then decided on a Raiders room, which will be maroon and gold.  Done.  See? Easy-peasy. Love him!

Evan wants a loft bed like this one. 

Or like this one, but without the crazy sister.  Eric may attempt to build a bed for Evan.

Ev wants a small couch under the loft for reading and hanging out with his buds.

And the boy needs a desk. Badly. So this is an option.

 As for Eric and I, we looked at several items. Bar stools:

Not going with clear acrylic.

Definitely no red.  And Marea says this is her "Yo! What's up?" expression.

 

Chairs:

Shelving:

Media Storage:

And there was tons of other stuff we looked at for Eric and I, too.  Way too much for one little ol' blog post. In addition to the IKEA trip and furniture/decorating planning, the sheetrock/mudding/taping is almost done, as is the siding. Here's a sneak peek of what's happening next at our home on the Lane!

Our hardwood floors are waiting to be installed!

The siding is almost done being installed, as is the stone on the front columns!