Loose ends

Can it be? Posts, on this abandoned blog, two days in a row? Indeed. I've had a few people ask about projects that I mentioned and then left hanging while I disappeared into the baby ether. First, our fantastic tile backsplash that the even more fantastic Meryl and Chris from Picardy Project helped us with during their Renovation Road Trip. When they left, the tile was all installed but still needed to be grouted. Brandon and I finished that up the next day, and then I actually did try to take photos for the blog, and they all came out crappy. So I tried again today, and... still crappy. I don't know why this is so hard to photograph, but in person it is so pretty that I just want to kiss it.

The photos make it look a bit washed out, but in reality there is tons of subtle and beautiful shading in the marble. It works so well with the dark counter, white cabinets, and stainless appliances. It really ties the room together. I seriously sit in the living room and smile at the backsplash... what, is that weird?

Oh, and here's what happens when I am trying to take photos while B is in the kitchen, and I ask him to move:

We still see you.

Anyway, the hugest thanks again to Meryl and Chris for their help with this project. It is one of those things I probably never would have gotten to without some extra motivation, which they are never short on. Seriously, the energy those two have boggles my mind... especially considering Meryl was secretly pregnant during their visit here! We can't wait to meet the sure-to-be-awesome Cashew.

Speaking of babies, loose end #2 is Millie's nursery! When last we spoke of this room, we had some paint swatches on the wall and some kickass artwork. Turns out you need a few more items to take care of a baby... like a crib, changing table, and rocking chair, for starters. Plus storage, because this teeny little room has no closet.

But first, we had to finish painting - and ideally before it became too hazardous for me to cut in around the 12' high angled ceiling. We ended up going with a Goldilocks color... what's that, you ask? Well recall that I was whining that Benjamin Moore's Sweet Orange was too bright, but Yellow Haze was too subtle... so the friendly paint store guys mixed something halfway in between that was juuuuust right.

It is bright and cheerful, but not crazy psychadelic. Millie already seems to perk up and look around when she's in there, so I think she approves.

We scored a great deal on this crib on Craigslist. It was a barely used Babyletto crib (this model, if you're curious), and even better, came with a shwanky organic crib mattress made of angel tears and unicorn farts lambswool, coconut fiber, and natural latex. So far Millie is still sleeping in our room, though, so the crib is serving as a great storage facility for cloth diapers.

We needed a teeny little glider for our teeny little room, so I was happy when I found the one pictured above (another Babyletto product, the Madison Swivel Glider in slate). It is really comfy for nursing and rocking, but I wouldn't recommend it for super tall folks. I got the footstool (with storage) on Amazon. I can go back and find out where it's from if anyone cares, but I'm afraid I'll be terrified by the amount of cr@p I've ordered on Amazon since then, so I'm going to hold off on doing that.

Here's the "changing table," actually just an IKEA Hemnes dresser. Millie used to hate diaper changes, but she's reconsidered her position and now thinks this is the most awesome place ever. We frequently have "happy changing table time," which involves lots of leg kicking, squealing, and grinning. Cutest thing ever.

(Some of my long-time buddies will recognize the polar bear picture on the wall in the photo above - it's good old Kobe, from the Roger Williams Park Zoo, subject of the undergrad research project that set me on the road to grad school! Also a super adorable picture.)

Speaking of artwork, here are the paintings I posted about before, in situ over the crib. Love them!

And here's the other side of the room, where we have an antique armoire that we already owned, and the IKEA Hemnes bookshelf.

We got blackout shades from Select Blinds. We've been really happy with them - they were easy to install, and really do block a ton of light. Plus, I was somewhat irrationally happy to find the perfect colors to match the orange walls and turquoise accents. Because I'm a dork.

I think there was something else I was going to write about here, but I'm on borrowed time because Millie has been sleeping over two and a half hours! Let me know in the comments if there's anything interesting I forgot about.

Oh hi, I'm adorable.

Backsplashin!

Only have time for a super quick post, but I just had to share the posts that the amazing Meryl and Chris of Picardy Project wrote about their visit with us. First of all, these people are so fun, friendly, hilarious and easy to talk to - I seriously felt like I'd known them for ages. We did our best at convincing them to move to Michigan ("check out our house prices compared to the Bay Area!") but I'm not sure we were successful - they'd have to leave a pretty awesome house of their own. That said, it was SO fun to get to meet these two in person, and I hope we'll get together again someday!

But enough rambling - check out our awesome new backsplash! Here are the Renovation Roadtrip posts at Tinkernation and Bob Vila. I've finished the grouting and it looks even more completely stupendous now. I'll be back soon with finished photos, whenever Brandon finishes sealing the tiles so we can reinstall the outlet covers (ahem) (I did the first pass with the sealer, but it was a bit stinky and we don't want Cletus developing a habit).

In other news, we have an (almost) finished nursery! I know, bad blogger... we've been doing tons of little projects and I've been totally failing to post about them. I'll try to get things all caught up before this blog turns into a baby picture repository (in less than three months?!).

ADHD paparazzi

This has been a busy week at work, and I haven't been able to escape early enough to make it over to the house during daylight hours for quite a while. This is kind of a bummer, but in some ways totally fun, because when I got back there this evening SO MUCH STUFF HAD HAPPENED! I ran around with a camera snapping pics like a crazy person (the fact that I was also petting tiles and talking to window trim probably didn't help my case as a non-crazy person). First things first, we have a front porch!

This actually happened last week, but the foundation guy covered it all over with straw so I couldn't get a good photo... not that this one is particularly good either (although it's nothing a few miniature goats wouldn't take care of, Brandon...).

Inside, the carpenters have been killing it on installing trim, and the painters must be following right behind with primer. It looks like the trim is almost done, whereas last time I was at the house only a couple windows were finished. It all looks so great! Here is the entry area on the first floor:

The beadboard around the pantry has also been installed:

The living room door and windows are all trimmed out as well, including the giant windows that look out over the river.

Pardon the strange angle on that last pic; I took it from upstairs so my camera would cooperate with the weird lighting situation. These windows, and the dark beams against the white ceiling... I die. So beautiful.

The trim-tasticness continues upstairs in the landing:

The narrow door on the left side will be a linen closet, while the bifold doors close off the laundry closet. LAUNDRY. UPSTAIRS. Someday I might get over the miraculousness of this concept, but it won't be anytime soon.

The tile installer has also been back working on the master bathroom for the last few days. The glass tiles seem to be nearly impossible to photograph, but in person they are a beautiful smoky green. Using the flash (as in the bottom pic below) makes them appear ugly 70's olive, so I included the out-of-focus top pic because the color is a bit more true to life.'

In other news, I picked tile today for the pad area underneath the wood stove. I wanted natural slate, and figured we'd just use basic square tiles, but then this pattern caught my eye at the Tile Shop. Love! Brandon had texted me: "Oh suit, I didn't send you measurements. 52.5 x 36. Get trout, and sealer." I picked up two boxes of the tiles (each 3' x 3'), and sealer, but decided that grout would probably be a tad more useful than fish for this particular project. And I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to reference business attire, either.

Ca(AAHHH!!!)binets

I am going to do something flat-out CRAAAAAZY on the blog right now. LOOK OUT! I am going to create a "kitchen" label for the bottom of this post. I KNOW. What will I do next?!

I feel like I can do this at this point, because we are moving from the realm of "the space where the kitchen will be" to the realm of... dare I say it??... ACTUAL KITCHEN.

The fridge will go in the space at the left of the pic above (the cabinet on the floor is just there temporarily on its way somewhere else). The range will be in the middle, with a microwave above, and the pretty glass-fronted cabinet in the pic below will be in the space at the top right. The cabinets will be trimmed out all the way to the ceiling, and we'll eventually put in a tile backsplash, so you actually won't really see any of the color on this wall. And in front of this whole expanse will be an island, with more cabinetry, the sink, a dishwasher, and a bar height counter with stools.

THERE ARE CABINETS. ON THE WALLS. Sorry for all the caps lock, you guys. I am a little bit excited. And I can't promise to be any better about it tomorrow, because the a(AAHHH!!!)ppliances are coming!!!

In other news, the flooring guys were wrapping up their day when I got to the house this evening - they had laid more flooring in the guest room...

...and dining room.

It looks amazing!! But the living room currently looks a bit disheveled, what with all the cabinets and wood-cutting going on.

I chatted with the flooring guys a while today about what they'd recommend to seal the floors. Being an eco-nerd, I'd hoped to use a non-toxic, low-VOC product like linseed oil. They warned me that using a natural oil would be super high maintenance (it would have to be redone frequently) and it wouldn't protect the floor well from spills, dog toenails, etc. They recommended a product called Glitsa that I'd never heard of. I came home and Googled it, and learned that it contains formaldehyde... but then found another site claiming that the formaldehyde breaks down very quickly and there's no off-gassing, whereas polyurethane finishes can off-gas for much longer. Sad face. What's a girl to do? Anyone out there have any experience with these purportedly green sealers?

There was also progress in the master bathroom upstairs - the floor tiles are laid! I heart white hexagons. It is like a beehive of cleanliness.

The shower is all prepped for tiles, including what I like to think of as the leg-shaving bench:

I can't wait to see how the glass tiles look up on the walls! And the rest of the cabinets! And the appliances! Things are getting exciting around here, people.

Painting and tiling and flooring, oh my!

Turtle House must have been a bustling beehive of activity today, since evidently the painters, tile installer and flooring guys were all at work. The painters were in the master bedroom, taping off the beams (which we're leaving their current dark brown color) and painting some of the decking in between. We think this is going to look great (like this inspiration picture - but a less glossy white), but we wanted to test it out in the bedroom before committing to doing the whole living room/loft ceiling this way:

Not sure if that is primer or paint, but it certainly looks like it'll take a few coats to get an even color up there, because the decking was so irregular and discolored in certain areas. I am excited to see what it looks like with the protective paper taken off the beams!

This is actually an update from a day or two ago, but the painters have also completed the porch ceilings...

...and the much discussed garage doors! We went with plain brown to match the trim:

The tile installer came back today to grout everything in the downstairs bathroom. For those of you who have been up all night worrying about it, he also switched out the mismatched soap dishes. Both are now the glossy white color - so they don't match the matte white subway tiles, but they match each other, and the tub, toilet and sink. So much better! Here is everything all groutified:

Perhaps the most exciting thing today was the beginning of installation of the wood flooring. I am not sure if I've posted about this on the blog yet, but this flooring is one of the things we're the most geeked out about (and clearly, we're super geeked out about a lot of things). It is actually old barn wood reclaimed from a barn on Brandon's grandmother's property. Brandon's uncle, who farms their land (and a lot of other land!), couldn't fit his enormous farming equipment into the barns that were built nearly a century ago, when farming implements were muuuuch smaller. They decided to modify one of the barns by removing a whole bunch of interior beams (and then securing the exterior structure with cable instead - it's actually pretty ingenious). When Brandon heard about this, he begged his family to save the beams for us, which they did - and his amazing parents even hauled it all up to Michigan for us (yes, I totally lucked out in the in-law department).

We found a miller up here who cut it down into tongue-and-groove flooring several months ago. He told us that it is mostly red oak and white oak, but there is also a lot of other wood mixed in there - whoever built the original barn probably just used whatever was on the property! We asked the flooring guys to just lay it haphazardly, so the different colors and widths will all be randomly interspersed. Luckily they were totally gung-ho about this, and told us they'd done another similar floor recently and it came out looking amazing. We are so excited!

One thing that's really neat is that some of the boards still have holes from the wooden pegs that held the whole barn together. We asked the flooring guys to just fill these with a clear epoxy, so they'll still be visible and we can tell people the neat history of our wood floor.

Here are a couple shots from the upstairs landing. There is still a ton of wood in piles all over the place, but the flooring guys said they'd be back all day tomorrow - can't wait to see how far they get!

Tiles on the floor, tiles on the floor

Yep, another original composition by yours truly, closely related to the Paint Song currently shooting up the charts. Here is my muse:

Beeyoootiful, are they not??

Also, a brief update on this weekend's wall saga - Brandon and I went back to the house after work today to try to fix the &@%#!ing crooked wall. We pulled seven of the nine 6x6's up off the rebar we'd driven through them, and let me tell you: if there is anything worse than building a retaining wall, it is DISASSEMBLING AND REBUILDING a retaining wall. But, I do think it's much improved - it is still a little uneven, but at least it's not doing the drunk-lean into our front porch anymore. Instead of uneven, I am going to call it "rustic" and claim it is charming. And if you're tempted to disagree, please recall my mad skills with a hammer drill.

Awetumn

No major house updates to report today - the tile installer made some more progress yesterday on the subway tile shower surround, and it looks great! The only issue is the soap dish and shelf. Neither of them match the tiles, and in fact they don't match each other, either. The soap dish is a really bright white, while the shelf is more gray. I will have to get some interesting and colorful soap to distract guests from noticing the mismatch, ha!

This evening the dogs and I spent a little while just hanging out on the dock, and it was an ohmygoshbeautiful autumn day. Sunny, mid-70s, deep blue sky behind golden orange foliage... sigh. The light was so lovely that it made me wish I were a photographer... but I snapped these few shots to illustrate the real reason(s) we're so excited about Turtle House!