All About Lighting

First of all, I cannot believe that it is already Monday.  These weekends just go by way too quickly! I also am in denial that it is going to be November this week, but I can’t wait for Halloween.  Eli and Dax are going to look so cute in their costumes and even though it is going to be freezing, we will still take them trick-or-treating.  Well, at least Eli will go, Dax is only 5 months old and probably shouldn’t be out in the cold weather. Anyway, let’s talk renovation progress especially since I am writing this in a house that is so unbelievably loud right now because so much is getting done. More on that later.

Last week our contractor put up some paint samples. He gave us three options, I loved one and David loved another.  The problem was that David really didn’t like the one that I loved, and I really didn’t like the one that he loved and neither of us liked the third option.  We absolutely loved the paint that we had throughout Compass Pointe.  We used Sherwin-Williams Repose Gray and it was seriously the perfect gray.  There were no undertones, just gray.  I was obsessed with it, so when we were deciding what color we would do the majority of this house, we really didn’t even need to discuss it.  I told our contractor that there was no need for other color samples in the bathroom, we were just going to paint everything Repose.  His crew actually isn’t doing our painting because their quote was higher than David thought it should be, but they offered to paint the master bathroom because there is such little wall space, so why not?  The bathroom looks amazing, I am seriously so happy with it, but the paint doesn’t look so amazing.

David and I were shocked that when we walked in, our beloved Repose looked beige, not the beautiful cool gray we remembered or looked back at in pictures.  We made sure it was the right color on the can, and sure enough it is.  After stewing on it during the weekend, and researching more about Repose Gray, we came to the conclusion that it looked beige because this house has the worst natural lighting ever.  I can’t even tell you how dark the house is and how little windows there are.  Compass Pointe was full of natural light, there were many windows and huge windows as well throughout the house, it makes sense now why Repose looked like the perfect gray  there and like beige in this house.

So, we spent Sunday paint shopping.  We got some colors that were recommended on multiple blogs and on Pinterest, and we headed to Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore and picked up five or six paint samples.  David painted the samples on many areas in almost every room, but it became a bit frustrating because every room has such different lighting that it is diccifdult to choose one color to use throughout the house.  One color might look gray in our bathroom, but beige in the hall, or vice versa.  Finally, we decided on the perfect colors by Benjamin Moore called Gray Owl and Gray Tint.  These two are the ones that don’t seem to have any undertones regarding the light situation.  I am so excited to get rid of our dark walls and to get this house brightened up, but in the meantime I can’t wait to replace the Repose in the bathroom with the Graytint.  It is going to look gorgeous! Until the bathroom gets repainted, take a look at what got done last week.  I have a feeling I will have a couple more progress posts this week, fingers crossed!

Back Aches, Teething, and Delays

It’s been a while since I have been able to write! For starters, the baby is officially teething. Eli was a really easy teether, half of the time we didn’t even know he was cutting a tooth. Dax is a whole other story.  He is in so much pain and there just is nothing that will help.  It’s messing with his naps, sleep, and personality.  This means it’s also messing with my blog time, but baby comes first!

You would think that there would have been a lot of progress with the house since the last post, but David also has been in some pain.  His back went out…again.  He hasn’t been able to work on Eli’s room because he is just in too much pain.  We have family here this upcoming weekend, so really not sure when the room will be finished.  Hopefully soon though because I am starting to feel really bad for Eli in his temporary room.  Poor guy has cardboard and towels for blinds and constantly asks about his big boy room.  Ideally, it is done by his birthday in November.  Here’s to wishful thinking.

Our contractor/ crew only worked 4 days last week and they didn’t work this Monday either.  So far we are 2-3 days behind with the renovation, but our bathroom is looking amazing. I am loving it so much and can’t wait to move back in there.  If you read my last post, you know that we were still trying to decide on grout.  Well, we finally made a decision after a ton of going back and forth.  We (and by we, I mean I- sorry David) decided to go with white grout and gray walls.  The white grout looks gorgeous against the white subway tile, and we knew we wanted to do gray walls, so I thought having gray walls, cabinets, floors, and grout would just be too much gray.  I think our contractor was thrilled with our decision, but he warned us that he’s never had any cleaning crew that could clean it properly, so I hope David is ready to put his cleaning gloves on because this girl right here is too short to clean all of those wall tiles.  Kidding, but not really!

Hopefully by the beginning of next week I have another update or two.  I think they are starting to rip out the floors of our entire upstairs, and start our laundry room next week.  Not sure if this means our bathroom will be finished or not, but we had to order our vanity lights, mirror, and all of the bathroom hardware, so that seems like it’s coming to an end…stay tuned!

*These pictures were taken at night if you can’t tell, David got home late and by the time he was able to unlock the door it was dark out. Ugh

Completed vanity wall Our shower- you can tell where they still have grouting to finish. Doesn’t it look pretty?!

Tile, Tile, and More Tile

Ah another Monday! I usually love the weekends just like anybody else does, but lately I can’t wait for them to be over so that we can continue to get our house worked on!

We are finally starting to get to the fun stuff of the master renovation.  Last week our cabinets arrived for our vanity, we picked out our counter, and our contractor picked up our floor tile and wall tile. In Compass Pointe, David tiled the back wall where our vanity was, and he also did a half wall around our tub. We loved the look and never got sick of it in the entire 18 months we lived there. So, we decided to go with subway tile for the backsplash and walls in this bathroom too.  It is clean and classic looking, and I think it’s good for resale as well.  We are going a gray and white color scheme, and since our vanity will be gray, we thought white was the appropriate choice for the subway tile.  Our homework for the weekend was to decide on a grout color and a paint color.  You would think this would be an easy task, but we are struggling! Part of me likes the idea of white walls and gray grout but then another part of be thinks that that would be too white.  We are also toying with the idea of white grout and gray walls but I get nervous that the white grout will get dirty and gross looking. Decisions decisions. Hopefully we figure it out soon!

Minor Dissapointment

So far we have been really lucky with things going our way during this remodel.  We had a vision for the bathroom, and we had to make some minor tweaks to that due to being way over budget (according to the contractor), but I know it will still be beautiful! Other than that, we only have came across one problem.  To me, its a pretty big dissapointment, but David thinks its no big deal.  There really isn’t anything we could do about it anyway, so hopefully we could make the best of it.

Remember this window? This is the window before construction started…This is the window after the closet was framed…The plan was to move the window to the other side of the closet so that we have two windows in the bedroom, one on each side of our bed.  We budgeted for it and were all set to go, but when the contractor went to scope out the exterior of the home, he discovered that our chimney was exactly where we wanted to move the window. We didn’t budget a bajillion dollars to basically move and rebuild an entire chimney, so unfortunately this window has to stay in the closet.

This means we will have only one window in the bedroom.  No big deal, right? To me, what I am nervous about is how asymmetrical the room is going to look.  I feel like it is going to look so weird with just one window on one side of the bed, and nothing on the other. We might have to rethink furniture placement. Wouldn’t you agree?Fortunately we have some time to think about how we want to go about this, and hopefully we will have a clearer vision once the room is more complete.

Master Update(s)

As I mentioned before, when our contractors leave, they lock our bedroom door so that our crazy toddler can’t somehow get in and get hurt.  Trust me, I really really appreciate this, but sometimes it’s a hassle and I just want to sit and stare at the progress when they go home for the day.

I always look forward for David to get home because not only does he take the boys off of my hands, but I need him to get the key to open the master door.  The contractor puts it up really high, and I am really short- so you know how that goes.

Last week, David was gone for a business trip and I couldn’t see the room for 2 whole days.  Thats a long time considering how fast they work. So much gets done in a day, it baffles me and makes me feel really unproductive as well.

The dry wall is up for the new walk in closet.  These are the doors we are going to be using throughout the home and we thought it would be a good idea to put them on sliders for the closet so that we don’t lose space with the typical swing out door. We love the look, but when David got home he realized it’s a little bit of a struggle to fit through that doorway, and that could become annoying on a daily basis.  It probably wouldn’t be the best thing for resale either.  We decided that we are either going to do smaller closet doors with the same look if possible, or see if the contractors could shave them down.The bathroom is looking amazing. This is a view of where the tub and toilet will be going.Our shower! Don’t mind the attic access.  This used to be my walk in closet so it didn’t look tacky to have the attic access in there, but now that it is in the bathroom it doesn’t look right, so we are moving it to the future laundry room.All of our wrapped up furniture was moved into the future laundry room this week because they started sanding everything.  We also saw the cabinets, floor tiles, backsplash, and counter last week. The floors and cabinets will get installed this week- I can’t believe how fast it’s coming together.

I probably am going to kick myself for saying this, but I am shocked at how stress free this is going so far.  Knock on wood- we haven’t really had too many problems, just a few minor and annoying issues.  It’s also pretty loud but the boys are doing much better than I thought with napping and such.  If the rest of the house goes this smoothly we are one lucky family!

Trim and Moldings

Happy Monday! We are making so much progress on the master, and a little bit of progress on Eli’s room.  It is difficult since I am temporarily living in there, but we are doing our best to get it done.  I have a feeling Eli is closer to transitioning out of his crib than we hoped. We shall see!

I have a weird obsession with trim and moldings in a house so this is my favorite part of doing Eli’s room.  Maybe it’s because we have had so many different types in all of our homes, but for this house, we wanted to go simple and clean.  I think that the trim looks perfect against our new floors. David did a really good job installing them, but I am pretty sure he is relieved that the contractor will be installing them for the remainder of the house.I have yet to share the awesomeness that is Dax’s nursery but let me tell you, its freaking amazing in my opinion.  We did some fabulous moldings in there that we wanted to do in Eli’s room as well. David could seriously do moldings as a side gig now, he’s done Eli’s nursery/room about 3 times now and each time he gets better and better.Looks beautiful right? Once we are all moved out of Eli’s room after construction, we are going to install wallpaper on an accent wall.  I seriously am so excited! Stay tuned!

We Have Light…And a Few Other Things

I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but we didn’t have any lights in our master besides the two dinky lamps on our nightstands.   The room was so dark, even with the lamps on. We budgeted for a certain amount of recessed lighting and as our contractor has been working on our master, he thought we needed more than we budgeted for, especially in our bathroom and closet.  We got to see the progress and I am so happy we ended up putting more in.  The room is going to be so bright and pretty, and it’s going to be so nice to not have to pull a string in our closet for the light to go on.You can see there is some more canned lighting, and here my friends is our new walk in closet!

This window is currently in the new walk in closet, but we are moving it to the other side of the closet so that we have even more light in the bedroom.No words can describe my excitement for the light that will be in our bathroom.  We had one light, dark walls and floors, and beige/yellow tiles in the shower.  It was so dark and dirty looking.  Not to mention, our fan.  Holy moly, the fan in that bathroom was beyond disgusting.  It was so dirty that it made a creepy noise and didn’t ventilate anything in the room.  Because the fan was so awful, all of our towels and my clothes in the closet smelled like mildew and mold. So lovely.  David’s company carries intense fans, and when we told the contractor which kind we got he said it will literally suck up everything.  I can’t wait to buy new towels and to not feel dirty and smelly after I use them!

Future shower

Future double vanity

You can see with the marks on the wall, but we will have two mirrors and then light fixtures above them- yay, more light!Our contractor framed the wall behind where our bathtub will be going.  He inserted an area for us to store candles and bubbles and such.I am so impressed with our contractor and the rest of his team so far.  They are so respectful of our space, honest, keeping us on budget as best as they can, and doing an amazing job! You would think I would be excited at 5:00 when David gets home, but the truth is I am more excited for the contractor to leave than for David to take the boys off of my hands because that is when I get to see the progress!!

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

I hope you all had a great weekend.  We observed Yom Kippur but unfortunately I couldn’t fast this year due to nursing and pumping- darn it!!

I was going to post this yesterday, but given everything that was happening in Vegas, I just didn’t feel right about it.  I am so sick and sad over what happened, I really don’t have the words. I am thinking about everyone who has been affected by the awful event that occurred yesterday.

On to something much lighter, there is so much progress to be shared on our master, but I thought I would show off the amazing floors in Eli’s room first!

Besides priming the walls, the next thing that had to go in Eli’s room was the floors.  Well, in the entire house really.  The carpet is just awful and it doesn’t help that our 10 year old pug literally goes potty on the carpet a minimum of 3 times a day.  We have gotten to the point where we don’t even clean it in some places because we don’t know if it is a new spot or just a stain that didn’t come out with our carpet cleaner.  It doesn’t help that the color of the carpet is brown, so you can’t even see where there is a stain most of the time.  So gross, I know.  Just know that we don’t allow the baby on the carpet- ever, so don’t go reporting us now!

We picked out the flooring pretty much immediately after we moved in because we wanted it installed in the nursery.  We had that professionally installed because there was just no time for David to do it considering Dax was born on closing day.  He was able to see how the handymen were able to install it, so this made it easier when it came time for Eli’s room.

David removed the carpet in Eli’s room and started installing the floors.  Between watching the handymen install the floors and Dax’s room, and doing it  once before at Owl Lane , that makes him a pro, right? Wrong!

We were in such a rush to get this room finished because we had a timeline of when we had to move into Eli’s temporary room, which obviously meant Eli had to be in his big boy room by then (yep, he’s still not in his room!). David installed the floors in a really short amount of time, too short if you ask me.  He was done installing them and about to install the baseboards , trim, and moldings, but that came to a complete halt.

I have bad OCD and am a huge perfectionist.  I was sitting on the floor and noticed that David did a really bad job at installing them.  Some of the planks weren’t installed all of the way, which caused weird leveling when you walked.  Sure, you would really have to be sitting on the floor and looking for these flaws, but this didn’t fly with me.  The dilemma we were having, or should I say David was having, was that he had to install every single plank in order for this to be fixed- was it worth it?.  I think he was hoping I would say “Oh, it’s fine! Just leave it”, but there was no way that was going to happen.  So, David spent the entire afternoon aka nap time uninstalling and reinstalling the floors perfectly.

He is known to be a very fast paced individual.  He rarely stops to think about anything, unless it comes to his real job. I can’t even tell you how many times I have told him that if he just took his time, things would turn out the way he wanted them to.  David ended up spending 3x as much time to do the floors as it would have taken to do them right the first time, but at the end of the day- or night, they look awesome! I hope he remembers that slow and steady wins the race for the next projects.

*Excuse the iPhone pics, we had no idea where our good camera was at this point

Bye bye bye Cubs colors!See ya, carpetInstalling the floors…the first timeAfter all of the work it took to get these floors installed, you would think I would have taken a picture of the finished product.  Well, we thought it would be a good idea to build Eli’s big boy bed and it is sitting in the middle of the room, which makes it nearly impossible for me to take a picture of the floors.  Don’t worry though, next up is baseboard and moldings and you will be able to get a better picture of the floors then.