Tile and trim.....

Tile and trim....

December 30th  -- At 8:03am the house came alive with 4 craftsmen and a visit from the contractor. 

The tile setter's goal was to set all the tile floor on the main-level, starting with the shower floor and the bathroom floor in the 3/4 bath off the gathering room, shown in these two photos, with arctic white hex tile with a black hex thrown in randomly to break up the white.  The white and black hex tile is "period appropriate" for the age of my house.

He also set the slate tile in the pattern I created for the rear entry to the mudroom

And, near the end of the day when I arrived home, he came running after me to say that he just ran out of the white hex tile, so the bathroom in the guest suite is about 80% done, as shown in these photos.  I got on the phone to the contractor who will bring the needed 5 sheets of the arctic white hex tile by tomorrow morning.

The crew of finish carpenters are focusing on hanging the remaining doors and trimming the doorways.  Here is the trimmed doorway that goes from the gathering room to the stairwell to the basement.  Eventually, the finish carpenters will build the "wall of bookcases" around this doorway.

They also installed the pocket door, which looks like this.

A new member of the finish carpenter crew arrived today and he was sent to work in the master bedroom to hang doors and to begin trimming the windows and doorways with the mill work.

Here is a photo of a trimmed window in the master bathroom.

   

And, here is a close up of the detail in the mill work for the window trim.

By the end of the day, all the windows in the master bedroom were trimmed and "silled":

And, the door to the master bedroom suite was hung, but not yet trimmed.

During the morning visit from the contractor, we discussed the advantage of installing a mini-pendant light over the sink, rather than a canister light fixture.  So, I will return to the lighting store to order one more mini-pendant light fixture that will match the two pendant lights that will hang over the breakfast bar.

Speaking of the breakfast bar, the contractor, head finish carpenter and I agreed on a design where corbels will extend from a support wall to hold up the granite top of the breakfast bar.  The two corbels will match the design of the exterior corbels.  The support wall will be open on the side facing the kitchen so that I can have a few shelves to hold my spices that will be in easy reach when I face the range top.

The head finish carpenter also needed to ask me questions about the interior design of the master bedroom closet and the shelves in the pantry.  As we were discussing the closet shelving, he pulled me aside and said something to the effect that he understands the importance of closets and to assure me that he is a "closet guru" who will work to maximize storage space -- music to my ears.  Sure enough, when we moved to the pantry to discuss the shelving, he suggested a great design that would also accommodate a space for the vacuum cleaner, with shelving above so as to not waste storage space, as well as the installation of a bar to hang brooms, mops, and so on.  He even suggested a special shelf to hold heavy equipment, such as a professional mix master, which I do not currently own, but who knows what the future will hold with all this space for future kitchen gadgets and gizmos.

In the mean time, I'm pretty sure that I have settled on the interior paint color, "on the rocks" and below is a sample of the carpet for the stairs next to the white trim and the paint color.  

I ran over to the store to pick up a knob that I think will work for the kitchen cabinet doors, and narrowed down the choice to two drawer pulls.  I will mess with these tomorrow and try to decide on the drawer pull and when I do you'll see that hardware.  

So, the tile and trim are the focus this week, and the progress is moving along nicely.  There is a bit more work that needs to be done to some of the drywall in some of the rooms, and I look forward to the painting crew returning in a few days from their holiday vacation.

Not a blank slate....

Not a blank slate....

December 29th  -- Today's homework assignment was to take the 16 12" by 12" Italian slate tiles that will be installed at the rear entry into the mud room.  As you can see from these photos, each slate tile is unique with its own pattern of browns, gray, blue, and variations of color in between.  I worked to arrange each one of the 16 tiles in a way that would look interesting, and this is the pattern that I came up with.

These photos show the pattern that I came up with from different views from walking into the mud room

 to being inside the mudroom....

These slate tiles have a slight surface texture that I hope they will catch and hide enough of the "outside" on the bottom of the shoes that will come through this doorway into the mudroom, especially during winter and from the garden in the summer.

 After I played around with arranging the tiles, I numbered them 1 to 16 and taped an individual number to each tile.  

I created a schematic of where each tile will be placed -- the member of the tile installation crew, who is a native Russian speaker, will be able to follow the numbered tile and the numbered grid so that he can set the tiles in the desired location.  My understanding is that he will set these tiles next week.


 Color me hopeless....I spent a good part of the morning throwing paint samples on walls all over the house.  I am so hopelessly confounded and confused by choosing color.  I thought I had settled on a lighter gray with a tint of blue ("On the rocks") and a warm light gray with a tint of brown ("agreeable gray").

Here they are, side by side, with photos taken at approximately noon on what is a sunny day after an overnight snowfall.

These photos were taken in the upper-level sitting room on a wall facing southern-exposed windows;

agreeable gray -- top                                                                    on the rocks -- top
on the rocks --  bottom                                                                  agreeable gray -- bottom

These photos were taken in the master bedroom, the ceiling color is called "snowbound"

Agreeable gray on the left                                        Agreeable gray on the left; On the rocks, right

On the rocks on the right                

Agreeable gray on the left and on the rocks on the right

 These photos were taken in the foyer, on the main level:

On the rocks, top                                                                         Agreeable gray, top
Agreeable gray, bottom                                                             On the rocks, bottom

These photos were taken in the living room/temporary kitchen with an eastern window and a southern window:

Agreeable gray, top
On the rocks, bottom

                              Agreeable gray, top
                              On the rocks, bottom



















These photos were taken in the dining room

On the rocks, left     Agreeable gray, right

On the rocks, top                                                       On the rocks, top
Agreeable gray, bottom                                            Agreeable gray, bottom

On the rocks, top 

Agreeable gray, bottom

These photos were taken in the kitchen, next to the white cabinets

Agreeable gray, top                                                 Agreeable gray, top
On the rocks, bottom                                                On the rocks, bottom

Agreeable gray, top
On the rocks, bottom

These photos were taken on various walls in the gathering room


Agreeable gray, bottom                                                                On the rocks, top
On the rocks, top                                                                            Agreeable gray, bottom

On the rocks, top                                                                                           On the rocks, left

Agreeable gray, bottom                                                                                Agreeable gray, right

On the rocks, left and Agreeable Gray, right

These colors were suggested to me by a color consultant at the Sherwin-Williams store yesterday.  I asked for lighter colors than the ones I tried previously and I explained the nature of my house, showed her lots of photos (albeit in my phone), and told her than I was leaning to a preference for a light gray with a hint of blue or a warm gray, but that I was having so much trouble with selecting a color that I was also open to "warm neutrals," as long as they were not too yellow or too peach.  The idea between these two colors, "on the rocks" and "agreeable gray" is that I would take a monochromatic approach with all the ceilings painted in "snowbound white," all the trim painted in a high gloss bright white, and all the walls would be the same color.  I decided that once I brought furniture into the house I could add color by painting accent walls.  Despite saying several times that I was open to other colors besides gray within the family of "warm neutrals" the color consultant steered me yet again toward the gray palette, explaining that gray is an appropriately historical color for the age and style of my house and it is "very popular" now.  I will try living with these colors and will see how they look at different times of the day when the light changes.

There is no doubt that selecting interior paint colors is 100 times worse than selecting either lighting fixtures or plumbing fixtures.....color me hopelessly confused and confounded by color.

Take nothing for granite...

Take nothing for granite....

December 27th  -- While no one came to work yesterday, today two finish carpenters and two tile guys were on site today, the day after the day after Christmas.  The major task of the day for me was to return to the only granite yard that had the granite I wanted so that I could view all three slabs.

Here are photos that I took of each of the Nordic Black Antiqued granite.  My primary objective was to measure on each slab the distance from the edge of the slab to the white mineral vein.  My hope is that the fabricator will be able to produce counter tops for the kitchen that won't have the white vein and will use those pieces with the white vein for the back splashes or tops for the bathroom vanities.  These photos do not do the granite justice because of the lighting conditions which make the granite look more brown than black and much less interesting than I think it is in reality.

So, here are the three  111 by 67 slabs of granite:

Slab # 1

Slab # 2

Slab # 3

The good news is that the standard width of the kitchen counter top is 25.5" and the shortest distance between the edge of the slab and the white vein is 26.75" on two of the slabs.  So, as I later discussed with the fabricator, it looks like the kitchen counter tops will be "white vein free" with the possible exception of the little peninsula/breakfast bar that will anchor the north side of the galley kitchen, or the side with the range top.  That works for me.

Then there was an interesting little glitch with the tile.  I went to a tile designer who helped me figure out what type of tile would go into each of the bathrooms and the kitchen.  My contractor told me how much square footage of tile I needed for the bathroom floors, shower floors, and other areas in the bathroom and kitchen.  The tile designer ordered the tile, which was supposed to be delivered to my house.  Well, that didn't exactly happen.  So, the head of the tile installation company went to the tile designer's business to pick up the tile, only to find that the place was closed on the day after the day after Christmas, apparently for the holiday.  When we tried to contact the tile designer, we received auto reply messages by e-mail and voice saying that he was out of town and wouldn't return until January 6th 2014 -- that's right, NEXT YEAR!  Neither my contractor or the tile installation folks knew anything about this.

Fortunately, the head of the tile installation company is a resourceful guy.  He contacted each one of the tile distribution companies that had the tile the designer selected to fill my order, drove around town to pick up the tiles and then brought them to my house.  The head of the tile installation company and one his crew then became very were busy moving the boxes of tile to their respective bathrooms and locations in the house. Just to give you an idea of what this was like, on the bottom of this stack of tile boxes shown in the next photo are the 4 x 16 "cotton glossy" large subway tiles that will go into the 3/4 bath shower walls.  The "daltile" box on the top of the stack is the white hex tile that will go on the shower and bath floor, with some randomly placed black hex tiles thrown in to break up the white.

Here is white hex tile that will go on the floor of the 3/4 bath off the gathering floor.

Here is the stack of tile boxes outside the master bathroom, and the black and white hex tile for the bathroom floor:

In the master bathroom "wonderboard" has been laid down on the floor as a prep for the tile.  In the master bathroom "warm wire" will be laid on top of the wonderboard.  The warm wire will heat the tile floor to avoid a cold floor in the winter.  

In addition to all of the tile for the bathrooms, the box of slate tiles from Italy that will go into the mudroom was  delivered.  My "homework" assignment for tomorrow will be to arrange the tiles in the order that I want, number the tiles and leave instructions for these to be laid on Monday.

Besides the tile, there was major progress on hanging doors.  Below is the pocket door to the laundry room, which is next to the opaque glass door that leads to the pantry, as shown in these two photos.

.

The opaque glass library doors that will separate the guest suite from the dining room were also installed, as shown in this sequence of photos -- there is a plastic film that remains on the glass doors to protect them, and the door hardware will be installed after the walls and trim are painted in a few weeks.

This is the view from the dining room, looking at the library doors.

Here is the view of the library doors from inside the guest suite, and in the second photo you can see the four-panel door that will lead to the guest suite closet.

No one is scheduled to work this coming weekend, which means I will do my homework assignment with the slate tiles for the rear entry and I will make another trip to the paint store to revisit the interior paint colors.