2nd Bathroom Remodel Begins

I apologize that there has not been a lot of action on this blog recently, but then again, there has not been a lot of action on the literal home front. Damn JAN. There is light at the end of the permit tunnel though. We are making changes requested by JAN and then we can resubmit them to her where(fingers crossed) her pasty little hands will sign off on them. There are still a few items to check off while we wait. Like the 2nd bathroom downstairs.

Michael and I went tile shopping Saturday and I let him take the lead on the decisions (with my sign-off of course). This is the bathroom by his office and the 2nd guest bedroom so he will be the one using it. He picked gray travertine tile for the floor. Even though travertine makes my heart hurt a little bit, the gray looks nice.

For the walls of the shower, we will be using a white lantern tile with a matching grout. Similar to this:

We will be having an old dresser converted into the vanity by using a white rectangle vessel sink. I am bored with it as a dresser, but I think it will get a new leash on life as a vanity.

Although the look of this bathroom is not shaping up to being my 100% first choice, Michael seams happy.  I have also narrowed down our exterior paint colors: Squirrel, Black Suede, and White Fur.



Please ignore the lovely four leaf clover door and busted light

The bottom color is squirrel. The bottom post color is Black Suede

Finally, the kitchen designer sent us the latest plans for the kitchen. Until JAN from permits approves our remodel, I can only get so excited.

Everyone- please keep your fingers crossed!!!

Good Art vs. Bad Art

In case you are wondering, life is still on hold because of JAN from the permits office. Last Wednesday, we were told that we were 7th on her list. If she does not process our permits by Friday, she will be working at an average cadence of less than 1 a day. I would be embarrassed if I only produced one task a day. Come on JAN!

Monday started with this posted to our door:

Bad Art

It was a STOP WORK order from an inspector driving by the house.  Michael and I spent all of Monday night cursing this guy before we could call the inspection office and get it figured out Tuesday morning. Turns out, he misunderstood our address and so when he typed it in and did not see anything (including demo permits) he assumed that we were doing non-permitted work because there is a dumpster and storage unit in the driveway. Once we cleared up that he had the address wrong (we are on a corner), he lifted the Stop order. Now if JAN would get her tush in gear, this would all be moot.

Since we can't do much until final permit approval, I have turned my attention to other decorating to-dos. I picked up my house blueprint that I had framed. It looks amazing. I am not sure where it is going to hang once the house is done, but I am sure we will find the right place. I like how the neon watermelon matte peeks out just enough to add some punch.



Good Art- Straight from the year 1964

Last week, we had the rest of the apartment kitchen counters installed. It looks amazing. I was also able to track down the company that made the flooring in the apartment and order a bit more for the kitchen. Good by yellow dirty linoleum! Having the same floors running all the way to the end of the kitchen wall makes the space feel so much larger.



New floors, new counters, new art

We are still waiting for the electrician to come out and install new can lights in the kitchen (good-bye florescent!). We are also still waiting for all the kitchen hardware which is on back order. Hopefully we will have it by next week?!?!?! I was anxious to add art to the kitchen. I had the idea of botanicals on jet black backgrounds. I have seen this before, but it is always really expensive. The apartment is getting the budget renovation so I had to think out side the box. I ended up finding a book on Amazon called "The Art of Instruction: European Educational Posters from the 19th and 20th Century". It included the exact type of images I wanted so I ordered it hoping there would be a few full page images that could be framed.

Turns out, almost every page was frame worthy. I narrowed it down to the two I wanted and used a sharp knife to remove the pages. I did it so carefully that one can barely tell there are pages missing. Now I have two new pieces of art and a cool coffee table book. Despite JAN's efforts to slow me down, I would call this some progress! What do you think?

Weekend Round Up

As with all weekends lately, this weekend was dedicated to house stuff. Our next door neighbors invited us to a concert at their house Friday night. Apparently, they have summer concerts in their backyard a few times a year. It was a lot of fun and we were even fortunate enough to meet a few other people from the neighborhood. We didn't get to socialize too much, but we really enjoyed the music.

What you can't see in this picture is the rest of the yard which is graded and has a big waterfall. The waterfall, which flows down a few levels, ends in the pond you see in front of the band. Our new neighborhood has a ton of great landscaped yards. This is our inspiration for the front of our house:

An evening thunderstorm required me to grab a picture from the safety of my car.

It got us a little motivated to do some landscaping in our yard....and there is a TON of landscaping needed. Most of our .40 acre lot is covered in "rat bushes" and needs professionals, but the back patio felt approachable.

 

 Don't let the fact that it was green throw you. It was ugly and not in line with our style. All it needed was some elbow grease and a new toy for Michael.

Michael (and assistant Buckley) handled the big bushes while I ripped out the ivy at the other end of the back wall. Even after 4 hours, we weren't able to finish it all before the sun was directly above us. I don't do yard work in the afternoon sun. The progress was still remarkable.

We might keep that blue juniper bush, maybe, The rest of the green rat bushes will be gone. By the way, I have never seen a property that has so many rocks. There are rocks everywhere! Buckley was feeling bored so we gave his hydrant a little coat of fresh paint.

Speaking of paint, I also picked up some samples for the master bedroom. This color will be bold and only on the wall behind the headboard. The headboard is going to be custom made and over-sized and there will only be a little of it showing so I want it bold. Plus Michael is worried that the house will have too much white in it so....

The colors don't photograph the same as the look in person, but I think we are going to go with Ionian. I also like Forest Night but it is REALLY dark in person.

One last update since I last checked in- our master shower was framed out. It now has a bench and a ceiling. We are putting in a steam shower so we needed to drop the vaulted ceiling. The bench will be perfect for lounging on when "steaming" and it will also hide the steam equipment.

 

It is hard to imagine wanting a steam shower when it is 90 degrees in the house! Okay, that is about it on the weekend round up. Please keep your fingers crossed that JAN will approve our permits this week and we will be off to the races!!!!

I Have Fallen In Love

The other day, as I was doing "research" on Houzz, I came across a picture of tile that was so perfect I froze. I am in love. I have not been able to get this picture out of my head for over three days now:

This is the tile that we NEEEEEEEDDDDDDDD in our master bathroom. Admittidly, it is a little expensive but I think that it would match well with white subway tile. Subway tile is the cheapest tile one can get so I think that if we do the floors with this tile and then the shower stall with white subway tile, it will put us exactly on our original budget. It is made of marble and I am anxious to see it in person. It is a new product and will not arrive at the tile shop for another 6 weeks.

I have plenty of things to keep me busy in the meantime. I finally found a fire hydrant for Buckley and I will be painting it this weekend. I am giving it a bright new paint job in "Safety Red". it is currently sitting in our carport. Fingers crossed that an Olympic weight lifter does not steal it before I can move it to the back yard. It was a ton....we are estimating over 150 pounds!

I am going to be working on Buckley's Pissin' Park this weekend. With any luck, it will look a little more like this when I am done:

This picture makes me consider wood chips instead of grass. We shall see....

Michael and I have a running joke right now about our "Phase 3" plans. Phase 3 is not a scheduled phase of the remodel (unlike Phase 2 = Exterior paint, landscaping, new driveway). Phase 3 is just where we dump future plans. We plan to live here a long time so Phase 3 will last the next 10 years. ANYWAYS......phase 3 includes a small Pool/Spa (a.k.a Spool). The MIL has one and we love it. The only logical place for the spool would be next to Buckley's park. We found this picture and it made us laugh:

Our future spool.....just kidding.

I should have a lot of updates to share after this weekend. Not that JAN has approved our permits or anything. Grrrrrrr.

Keeping Busy

We are officially at a standstill now waiting for the city to approve our permits. There is a part of me that really regrets being a good citizen and filing stupid permits in the first place. With the demo done and the framing up, there is nothing left for the crew to do but wait for the green light. We filed our permits on June 9th and things were clipping along until we got to the Codes step. Apparently some lady named Jan has been on vacation for two weeks and she is the one that has bottled necked the process. I guess the city does not have a contingency plan if something should happen to Jan. I guess all permitting in the city would come to a crashing stop?

To help mitigate my anxiousness, I have been working on small projects in the basement. First up, I updated all the apartment doors with new knobs and hinges. It was a very small and inexpensive change but it does a lot to update the place. I ordered the handles from the same place I ordered my kitchen hardware and the rings in the apartment bedroom called myknobs.com. So far I have been really impressed with the quality and someone from customer service even called to inform me that the kitchen knobs are on back order and would I like to pick something else. Nice right? Here is the before and after:

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER - Close Up

Oh and did you notice my new fiddle leaf fig? I have wanted one for a long time and I won a gift card at a fundraising event not long ago. I already knew that we were moving so I figured I would wait to use the gift card on a fiddle leaf fig once we moved. We have named her Margo.

Another small update I completed over the weekend included striping the wall paper from the downstairs guest bedroom. I feel like it was meant to be because the room is being used as storage for our furniture right now and getting to something is almost impossible.....except......

That's right, except for the steamer! It worked like a charm and all the wallpaper came off in large strips. Emily for the win! About 20 minutes later, the wallpaper was off the wall. Luckily it was only on that one wall.

It actually looks better in this photo than it does in real life. Don't be fooled!

I am going to make a list of other small things I can do while I wait for JAN FROM THE PERMIT OFFICE to get her act in gear. Poor Jan. She is probably a very nice person and has no idea how frustrated her, likely well deserved, vacation is making me!

Apartment Living and Design Updates

This post is brought to you from the apartment of the new house. Things came down to the wire on Friday. At one point, we had a moving van, an appliance delivery truck, counter installers, two Comcast guys, a contractor, plumber, and engineer and of course our dumpster and storage container all in the driveway. It is a big driveway and I would say it reached capacity!

It was about 5 hectic hours where things felt out of control. About 1/3 of the furniture went into the apartment while the rest of it is stored in two bedrooms downstairs.

Before dinner, the apartment started looking livable. All the workers left and things almost felt normal.

We even had the opportunity to enjoy a few design updates including the finished apartment bathroom and a halfway done apartment kitchen.

Did you notice a missing back splash and counter? We are waiting on the second slab. It should go in this week along with new floors. Cabinet hardware is on a two week back order. Sad face.

Other exciting design choices that have been made this weekend include ordering the fabric for the main floor living room couches. I narrowed it down to five aqua/jade fabrics and I ended up going with an antiqued velvet. It looked great with the paint color that will be upstairs and wood sample that will be similar to the floors.

Choose the one in the foreground

Selection on left. Cheetah swatch is for the custom bed we are having made.

In the department of pleasant surprises, we found the original blueprints for the house during the demo. They are dated 1964 and include all the original stamps from the city and engineer. Super cool!! I picked the most visually interesting one to have framed. Although not pictured, I choose navy blue matting with a bright watermelon color accent matting. The frame is going to be polished chrome. I can't wait to see it in two weeks when it is ready!!!

Moving Day: Tomorrow

The movers are set to show up at 8:30am tomorrow. I have decided it would be a fabulous day to go into the office and stay there all day. I will return to the new house after work where everything will be magically waiting for me. I can't handle the thought of working from home because things are a little chaotic around here.

I always thought I had a lot of clothes and shoes, but seeing them all boxed up makes it look like less. My new closet is going to be INSANE. You can get an idea of how large it will be in the photo below. Find the "ghost" wall mark on the ground. That is where the closet will start and it will go all the way back to the wall. And yes, the toilet will be removed.

ghost wall, bottom right

 A lot of the framing has been completed, although it is hard to tell what you are looking at in the photos. It sort of just looks like a bunch of boards, but in person you can really get an idea of the new floor plan. Here are a few other shots of the new framing-soon to be walls.



From master, looking into master bath area which continues on to my closet

End of hallway looking right into the master bedroom

Standing in master bedroom door way looking across the hall into the den.
The doorway to the den has been enlarged to allow for french doors.
Also, it is 100 degrees upstairs with no HVAC - as evidenced by Buckley's face

 

While I can get a sense for how the floor plan flows, I am nervous as to what it means for light flow. Here is a shot looking down the hall towards the master bedroom. It is hard to imagine what it will be like when light no longer flows through from the (future) master bathroom.

Other updates that have happened this week include progress on Buckley's Pissin' Park. The former "rat bushes" have been removed. We will be adding sod after extending the sprinkler line and line the area with a small picket fence. I am also trying to get my hands on an old fire hydrant. I hope this will entice him to go in this area and not trek down the stairs, which would inevitably lead to a broken doodle leg or two in the winter.



Future site of Buckley's Pissin' Park in the distance

Can you imagine this happening in winter?

Well that is all for now. Next time I post it will be from the new house!