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.

Wallapalooza 2011

At the beginning of the weekend, the house to-do list looked like this:

(1) Paint master bathroom;
(2) Add a second coat of polycrylic to the dresser/vanity;
(3) Build three (!) retaining walls.

Here we are on Sunday afternoon, and the list looks like this:

(1) Ice all my muscles, possibly for the next three days;
(2) Advil. Lots of Advil.

Yup, we got it all done - with help, ALL DAY yesterday, from T & M, who win all sorts of major friend super bonus points redeemable for food, beer, or manual labor. Or all of the above. (Seriously, you guys are rock stars and we never would have gotten it done without you!) Here's what we started out with on Saturday morning:

Southeast corner of the house

Northeast corner of the house

Major pile of 6x6's (and more in the truck, not pictured)

This was one of those projects where you don't really know what you're getting into until you just dive right in. We knew we wanted to anchor the wall with both rebar and "dead men" (boards that go backwards from the wall into the hillside), but that was about as detailed as the plan was. As a result of not knowing exactly what we'd need, our day included the following: (1) we went to Lowe's; (2) we went to Home Depot; (3) I went to Ace Hardware; (4) B went to Ace Hardware; (5) B went to Lowe's again; (6) B went to Home Depot again. So let's just say it wasn't the most efficient process in the history of retaining walls, and over the course of those trips we purchased a drill bit, we rented a hammer drill, we purchased a non-cordless drill, we got another load of wood, we purchased another drill bit... Then this morning B returned the rented hammer drill and the first drill bit, so add another trip each to Lowe's and Home Depot. I think I got that right, but who knows, really. It's all a blur.

Hammer drills are for girls only

I told B to "Vanna White the wall" - I think he did alright

Anyway, when all was said and done yesterday we ended up with this:

Southeast corner of the house

Northeast corner of the house

In the interest of full disclosure, that last shot above is quite artfully angled...  here is a slightly different view:

(Click to zoom in if you'd like the full tear-inducing view)

Yup, we still have some work ahead of us. Somehow, probably because one of the lower boards was drilled crooked, we ended up with the whole wall leaning forward a bit. Not good for either its soil-retaining capabilities, or the OCD tendencies of its builders. So, once we've recovered the use of our arms, we are going to pull it apart and try again.

Speaking of arm use, all that drilling and lifting made painting today just a little bit tougher than usual - but we still got a first coat up in the master bathroom. It is a veeerryyyy light purpley-gray-beige called "Lacey Pearl." I'd initially wanted something bright in the bathroom, but given that we went with "Antique Moss" glass subway tile in the shower and a dark-stained vanity, it seemed best to keep the walls light. I'll get some photos later this week, hopefully with some tiles in place too - they've all arrived and are sitting in boxes waiting to be installed. I can't wait to see how they look on the walls!

Paint on the wall, paint on the wall

Those are the words to a little ditty that I came up with today. It's quite catchy, really - I think it has "hit" written all over it.

Anyway, sorry for the crappy cell phone photo, but you guys! I loooove this color. It is "Summer Lime" by Benjamin Moore, and it is so happy and cheerful it just makes me want to do a dance - but it decidedly does NOT look light you drew it with a Highlighter marker. Dance, dance, dance. And it plays so well with the "Tranquil Blue" in the guest room - it'll be even more beautiful once the dining room is painted ("Silver Fox," which is a lovely warm gray-beige... yes, I reject the word "greige," and its equally trendy cousin "grellow," even if that is precisely the color I picked for the living room).*

*This post brought to you by eight hours straight of grading exams today. Somebody bring me a beer!

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!

Zzzzzzz

I am super sleepy right now and don't feel like writing words - so this is going to be a nearly all-picture post, with caps lock and exclamation points to convey how excited I was about all of this earlier in the day. When I wasn't so sleepy.

DIGGING!!!!!! (OK, this is always less excited, more startled.)

CABINETS WRAPPED UP LIKE PRESENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TILES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Superheroes

Tile prep has begun! The installer was at the house today putting cement board on the floor and walls around the tub.

The brand name was PERMABASE, which was written all over the place (as you can see). The edge of the cement board by the doorways also said EDGETECH, but somehow I misread it initially as EDGETRON. Don't those sound like superheroes? "Have no fear, fair lady! PERMABASE and EDGETRON are here to save the day!"

Grade grubbing

Because of what I do for a living, I must admit that I was perplexed for a few moments when I got an email from our GC with the subject heading "Grading."

Grading?! I just handed back that last set of homeworks, and the students don't take their midterm until Monday... what do you want from me?!?

Of course, that's not what he meant...

This past week the foundation guy was back to work on the rough grading to improve drainage around the house. It is tough to tell in that bottom photo, but they are knocking down part of the very steep hill and creating swales to move water away from the house. We will likely also end up with a couple of retaining walls, since the house is built into the side of a hill... the exact plan is still up in the air, but we'll have to make decisions about this shortly.

Speaking of decisions, there's also been some progress inside in preparation for the tile installer coming next week! Our master bathroom now has the beginnings of a real shower stall...

This meant, of course, that we really needed to stop procrastinating on making paint decisions, since we wanted to paint BEFORE there was brand-new tile on the floor. So this morning we got up bright and early (for a Saturday), and headed over to the house to prime over all of the various paint samples that we've put up over the last couple weeks. Blank slate! Then we headed over to the paint store to pick up a couple gallons of our choices for the downstairs bathroom and guest bedroom. The guest bath is the room that has changed the most from my original paint scheme. I really love several of the burnt orange-y tones that we tried out there, but they were all just too dark, especially given that the room is an odd s-like shape and part of it won't get much natural light. I tried going lighter with these types of colors, but was aghast (aghast!) to realize that they turn into peach! Which basically made the whole main floor take on a tropical cabana sort of vibe. Much as I dig pina coladas and palm trees, it wasn't really what I was going for.

Sooo, I needed plan B. Luckily Mandi (interior design guru) met me at a paint store last week and listened to me whine about colors and made several fantastic suggestions - including the idea to let the bathroom be a lighter version of the blue in the guest room. Because of its odd shape, the room needs something light and airy, and going with a blue would sort of visually join it to the guest room... so y'all, now we have a GUEST SUITE. Look out!

We ended up trying several blue combos, and I did my best Goldilocks impression... "too bright... too gray... juuuust right!" The color we loved for the guest room was Benjamin Moore's "Tranquil Blue" (2051-50) - even the name is perfect for a space predominantly used for sleeping, right? So we went two steps lighter in the bathroom and used "Crystal Blue" (2051-70) - although we actually got this paint sample for free when the paint store employee mixed it by accident when I asked for the Tranquil Blue... so we started calling it "Accident Blue" or "Mistake Blue" and now we can never remember the actual name. I just had to look it up.

So this afternoon we bit the bullet and got a coat of each of these up on the walls. We bought the new low-VOC interior paint by Benjamin Moore, called Ben, and it is aaaaawesome. We are going to head back tomorrow, but I actually suspect we may not even need a second coat - the coverage is fantastic. The sad news is, I couldn't manage to get any photos where the colors actually looked true-to-life... The Crystal Blue is so light that it just looks really washed out in the photos. Here it is next to a white wall (hallway) for comparison:

I promise it's really pretty and not at all as boring as it looks here.

And here are a couple shots of the Tranquil Blue in progress in the bedroom:

I am really happy with both of them, and they should look great with the other colors we picked for downstairs - Summer Lime (2026-60)  for the kitchen/living room, and Silver Fox (2108-50) for the dining room. Upstairs colors are still up in the air a bit, but we may use one of the lighter versions of Silver Fox for the bedroom or bathroom... pending tile decisions... which have to happen by Monday. Eek! I have to say, though, despite the short timeline - it is a total blast finally seeing some color up on the walls!