Dining Room lighting?

Should I put 4" can lights in the soffits in the dining room? I will have a chandelier centered in the room for sure

Paint palette

Here's my paint color palette: we're keeping the soft yellow as the main body color, also the white trim. The new shake siding in the gables will be the grey/lavender color and the shutters and new front door will the the steely eggplant color. The dark color is not as dark here, as I painted it over yellow. A 2nd coat should darken it to nearly charcoal with a hint of plum.

Subs R Us!

This is the week for subcontractors to do their thing: electricians, plumbers, and HVAC crew joined our ever-faithful framer. Now every day the place is crawling with workers! Not much change on the outside, but with all the guts completed this week, we will see sheetrock and siding go on soon.

My focus this week has been to plan for cabinets in bath and laundry room, plumbing fixtures, paint colors, flooring, and preliminary landscaping design. I have spent 3-4 hours stints at Home Depot 3 times days in the last week. I know several employees by name!

Notes on the pictures of the day: Michelle asked for a photo to see the tie in of old to new. We'll be working on landscaping (including an arbor) to soften this front.
2nd photo: view from the new laundry room. This is Carter's old bedroom (front bedroom) and soon the wall with yellow insulation will be torn out to make our new dining room with vaulted ceilings. Oddly, from the inside of the house, everything looks the same. Only when you open doors, do you find cavernous new rooms and hidden staircases!

Last photo: from the loft down the stairs. We'll keep the ceilings framed high and use can lights above, with low steplights on a photocell to turn on at night. Don't you love the window at the top?!

The door at the bottom of the stairs is our OLD laundry room door - we cut the corner out, so we can shut it easily and keep the dust and noise to a minimum, and keep the kids out of mischief. Eventually, we'll open up that doorway and the stairs will end squarely at the end of our hall. And yes, I'm upgrading the master bedroom door to a sound-minimizing solid core!

I should have more decorating stuff to share soon! My scanner is still down, so by the time I post the floorplan, this house should be all finished anyway. ;-)

Lighting in the Loft

Demolition inside

Today the framer broke through Carter's bedroom wall. The old exterior wall and window were removed, and now it is 1 big open space from the bedroom door into the new laundry room. When the interior wall comes down (next week), the old bedroom will become space for the new dining room. Neato!

We also have the new, slightly smaller laundry room window installed. I like it better, not even much smaller than the original opening.

See my last post and post your thoughts on tigerwood flooring for the downstairs!

Tigerwood... Whadaya'll think?

More Tigerwood photos... http://www.br111.com/tigerwood_photos_eng.html

Windows and Wood floors

Last week most of the windows went in, and the roofing has begun. Now the guts of the house are where most of the work is happening, tomorrow the electrician, Friday heating and cooling (our friend Chad).

Over the weekend we moved Carter out of his room and into the den. Demolition to his old bedroom may not begin until next week, so he's opting to spend a few more nights in his sleeping bag in the empty room.

I'm been up to my eyeballs in carpet, hardwood, and paint color selections. what do you think of this tigerwood flooring? Its an engineered hardwood, prefinished click & lock, so we can install it ourselves. If this color matches, it may be perfect for the downstairs (entry, kitchen, nook, new dining room, hallway, and front den). We had been planning on bamboo, but tonight we dropped a fork on the sample and it make some serious pinholes in the surface. Yikes!

I found an awesome sale on carpet at Home Depot (midrange frieze, $14/yd installed!). Though I usually order carpet directly from Georgia, this price is unbeatable. We may consider replacing the carpet in the ground floor bedrooms too.





We're toying with the idea of adding on a 6' deep porch to better transition the existing bay window with the new section. Some drawings are being done on that this week.

The MONSTER House!

The roof is going on, the gawkers are driving by, this is a SERIOUS addition!

Trusses and a BIG CRANE

Sorry for the blog hi-jacking on the topic of mosquitoes and West Nile Virus. Steve thinks this is our family blog, so he gets to write too. My only recourse is a new post to keep my long-distance friends entertained. ;-)

Today I invited a few friends with preschool boys to join us to watch the really big crane lift trusses to the roof. All the Jr "Bob the Builder" fans loved the idea of a crane, but quickly lost interest and just ran around the culdesac. Then a strange car drove up, parked across the street. I wondered aloud who could this guy be...? He walked up to my house, greeted the crew, then I remembered I HAD AN APPOINTMENT TODAY AT 11AM with the California Closets guy. OOOPS... I was thinking this was Monday. I certainly didn't know we would be hosting a preschool crane gawkers meeting at the same time. So I waved goodbye to my friends, ran inside to discuss storage designs for my new laundry room.

We had a big weekend, and my brain is still recovering. I'll post some photos and notes of our party party party weekend, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

I just found out that we have 10 days before demolition indoor begins. Whoa Nelly, here we go!

Eliana's 1st Bday Party

More upstairs walls...

Lots of sawing and hammering upstairs, mostly for the opening of the new stairs through ou

r existing laundry room. You can see the framed area in the back, near the peak of the existing roofline. I'm liking all the different dimensions and planes, and glad we didn't have a flat-faced design.

PS What do you all think of that lower window now? Would something more square be appropriate?

We've finally got a room with a view! This is Carter's bedroom window facing the foothills, this is Lucky Peak. His room will have a popout window seat from which I'm sure he'll sit like a cat in it's perch (Cheshire Cat, I suspect) and drop water bombs on unsuspecting guests. (Not our sweet lovable Carter! Oh no.)



Today (Tuesday) we got a few more walls. Moving along nicely in 80 degree weather.

Here's Aliya, on her Heelys, practicing how she's going to break her next arm.

A Hollywood Set

Though work is progressing every day upstairs, there hasn't been much to photograph until today. We have a movie-set style wall on the east side, a room with the view. If it weren't so high off the ground, it would make a great place for the kids to perform a puppet show!

Climbing up there tonight, I'm thrilled that we decided to put a window seat overlooking the foothills. This will be the only room in the house with such a view! Also it breaks up the plain 2 story wall next to the front door.

Trusses were delivered today, we should have the up by the end of the week.

The BIG window

COMMENTS, PLEASE! I'm looking for comments on the size of the front window. The new room will be a large mudroom, with a full length counter and cabinets on the front wall. The window opening is currently 72"x42", but was supposed to be only 60" wide. From inside it looks HUGE, but in general I think large windows are a plus. Also there will be planter box and landscaping beneath, plus side shutters on the sides. The window on the existing den is 72" also, so it kind of matches.
We can easily change the framing for a 60" window, but thought we would wait to see how it looks with the 2nd tory.
What do you think?!?! Please post your comments and honest opinions here! v

World's Best Boss

Steve's coworkers threw him a 1st Anniversary party today. For Fans of "The Office" think Dundie awards... ;-) These photos look remarkably like some college photos we found the other day. I think it's the haircut - my fault, I gave him Carter's haircut last night. At least it will grow back.