two more coats of polyurethane later...

floors with first layer of poly

here is a side-by side of the floors just after having been conditioned, and after the first layer of polyurethane. I think with one or two more layers they will be perfect, but we have to wait 72hrs for the first layer to sink in and dry enough.

paint samples, floor finishing

Updated below

We are in the process of selecting (exterior and interior) paint colors right now. This picture gives an idea of the general palette - cool greens and blues inside, most likely pink on the outside.

Also, Matt has utterly and completely removed every scrap of anything from the entirety of the wood floors inside, and sanded, swept and dusted them clean in preparation for finishing this week. I like the little warning sign he made for the front door. Today he is going to condition (with mineral spirits) and then finish (with oil-based semi-gloss polyeurethane sealer) the whole house, and in a couple of days (since it's going to be rainy and that first coat will dry slow) put down another coat. They will look so great!!

I just hope they dry and cure in time for the next round of subcontractors to come in - electric, plumbing, HVAC and carpenters - to do all the finish work. You'll notice the little space heaters in the picture - we have to have those because we aren't allowed to turn on the gas to heat the place until we pass the final mechanical and plumbing inspections, but we can't pass those until electric is done, but we can't have electric work done until we finish painting, but we can't even BEGIN painting until the FLOORS are done. I don't know how people usually do it, but in my experience scheduling all these various trades and inspections to flow together smoothly has been a confusing jigsaw puzzle at best, and a waking nightmare the rest of the time. But onward we go, in a wet and rainy week, hoping for the floors to dry fast enough for work to resume next week. SIGH.

UPDATE
"Waking nightmare" is actually a little overstating things. It's more like an "expensive heartburn".

Countertops, drawer fronts and shiplap

I had been looking forward to yesterday for a looong time, because it was the day the countertops were to be installed, and we'd finally get to see what our bold color decision on the kitchen island looked like. Well, we got to get a SENSE of it, but it was a letdown because the Austin Countertops people didn't cut the right shape hole to fit the sink. You can tell from the pics here that it's straight in places where it should be curved. Anyway, much stressing out later (about whether they were going to gracefully admit their mistake and eat the cost of re-doing it or not), once they came to look at it today they realized that it indeed needed to be fixed, and are going to do it for free. Whew!

You can see here also is the bathroom countertop - which they also kind of messed up because they cut the depth too short - but they have fixed that for free as well, and are installing that right now. Come to think of it, I should probably go check in and see for myself, to make sure it's right.

One thing that is not stressful is that Amanda is doing a beautiful job of installing the wooden shiplap faux-wall, which will form the kitchen backsplash and go behind the refrigerator. Also Bill and Bob are installing the drawer fronts, and they look pretty damned sharp.

porch and kitchen progress

Matt just finished doing an excellent job installing the porch decking, and now will move on to final sanding/finishing of the interior floors. Bill and Bob are busy installing and finishing all the kitchen cabinets/shelving, and Amanda is cladding the North wall in shiplap as well (behind refrigerator). Right now we are making all the color decisions for the interior and exterior paint, and the countertops (kitchen island and master bathroom vanity) are going to be installed on Monday. Progress!

full shiplap on island

Island and Bathroom Floor

Soon our kitchen island will be completely clad in the shiplap we had left over when we cut that 7-foot-wide doorway between kitchen and den, and I wanted to get a couple of pictures of early progress up, so here you go.

Also, our master bath tile just got installed, and will be grouted today. But it looks so cool I was just excited and wanted to show it.

New Cedar Front Pillar

This is a moment to which I had really been looking forward. In order to run the new steel hand railing on the front porch and steps, Luke had to first install the new 6"x6" wide cedar pillar in the old ones' place, and I think it looks really sharp.

Lower kitchen cabinets framed-in

Bill and Bob are building all the kitchen cabinets off-site at their studio, and bringing them to the house and installing them in place. Now you can really start to get a feel for the orientation of everything in the kitchen. The little square of green material resting on top of the island box is a sample of the silestone color we chose, of which it is going to be made.

New Tile in guest bathroom, shampoo shelf in master bath

I bought some very cheap (.50c/sqft) but beautiful, white 13"x4" tile for the new master bathroom shower, but miscalculated the square footage and didn't have enough of it. I bought the entire stock they had at the store (100sqft), and our new shower's interior surface area is actually 150sqft. We had a concurrent conundrum in the old (guest) bathroom, where we had installed a new shower kit (nozzle and faucet), and had a huge patch of broken/missing tile that needed to be replaced. However, that particular size of tile (4-3/8"x4-3/8") is not frequently used or manufactured anymore, so it was impossible to find, much less purchase in time for Moses the tile subcontractor to install it this week. Our only other option was to devise a homemade mosaic solution with broken pieces to surround the new shower kit, which we REALLY didn't want to do.


So Moses suggested a brilliant solution: rather than do the weird mosaic patch, just completely remove the tile in the guest bathroom and replace it with the 13"x4", since the guest bathroom's interior surface area is only 60sqft. Then go to Home Depot and get 150sqft of regular 3"x6" subway tile for the master bath, of which they'll have plenty, and at a decent price, which they did. So we are doing that, and it's turning out really nice. Thanks, Moses!


In addition to all this, in drawing up plans for this project with our architect Craig, we somehow completely forgot to account for a built-in shampoo shelf in the master bath shower, a feature we'd really been looking forward to having in there. So we had to hastily frame one in at the last minute, and luckily got it in there JUST in time for Moses to start covering it with the requisite Hardie backer board. In case you don't know, Hardie is just like drywall, but stronger and more water resistant.


So many considerations, just with the tile issue. I haven't even mentioned the gigantic headache that was the Plumbing Top Out Inspection - that should probably have its own post.

more befores and afters!

I realize it's still kind of hard to tell what's going on from these pictures, but all you need to know is that drywall has finally been completed, and now the crew is taping and floating. Here are some pics of what different areas of the house looked like before and after drywall.

insulation completed

While we were on our honeymoon Austin Spray Foam came in and insulated the entire attic - old house and new addition - as well as all the open exterior walls. The place sounds and feels much closer to a real house now!

floors getting sanded

More flooring in

New flooring, completed porch siding

Just bought 351 square feet of brand-new white oak flooring, and Matt's gotten started installing it in the master bedroom. Smiley and Bob are almost completely finished siding the addition, and it looks really good on the porch!