More Home Progression Pics

(The view from our front porch)

I thought I would just post a few pics I've taken lately on our house progression. It's looking like we're most likely going to be moving in the weekend of February 18th - which is literally the day after they get the carpet installed. Ha.

Anyway...

Music Studio

Since my music studio butts up right next door to the boys' bedroom, Will has done a lot of research on soundproofing walls, and has taken great care to make sure my studio will be sound proof.  This will be great - especially since I do a lot of my work late at night after the boys have gone to bed.

The above picture are some of the soundproofing supplies.  I personally cannot tell you what they all are, but I do know that there is special insulation, special sheetrock, special rubber padding, and other, uh, special stuff.  In the end, several layers worth of materials to soundproof the wall.   

We will also be doing a portion of this soundproofing to the downstairs bathroom that is near the kitchen and family room.  So if you come to visit us, you won't need to worry about people outside the bathroom hearing you tinkle. You're very welcome.

Kitchen

The kitchen is definitely the biggest place under construction in the house.  We've all spent a lot of time this past week finalizing our appliances.  We've been trying to get a good deal on our appliances, but also getting good quality.  The hard part about all of that is that you'll find a really nice appliance at one store, but then you've got to match it and you don't always find the matching one for a discount.  

We did finally luck out though.  We found this GE Profile range, normally for $1700 then marked down to $1422 with an additional 30% off on top of that - all because it was a 2011 model that they wanted to get rid of. I really wanted the double oven style and loved this one, and it was a really great range for the price.  So we did get this one.

The problem now, was that we bought the very top of the line range from GE, and couldn't find matching microwave or dishwasher (in the "profile" series) for discounted prices.  However, with a lot of searching, we found some GE rebates and were able to get the matching M/W and D/W at a discounted price as well. So we will now have all matching appliances.

That is, with the exception of our refrigerator....

We found the above Frigidaire appliance, normally a $2200 fridge that we got for $1,000.  It was hard to find a fridge that was this great in the same price range, and so it will be the only non-matching appliance. We are okay with that since the fridge will not be on the same wall as the other appliances so you won't see them side by side to compare.

The photo below is a comparison photo of the kitchen last week, to now.

As you can see, it's kind of a mess right now.  The new cabinets are shipping from Ohio on Feb 7th, so will most likely arrive sometime that 2nd week in Feb.  

The photo below is yesterday - the guys tore out that back sliding glass door, and installed a single glass door (which I didn't get a picture of, sorry).

These are the coordinating lighting fixtures for the kitchen and family room.  The left light is the flushmount for the family room. And then we have 3 of the pendants on the right which will go over the bar in the kitchen.

Stairs

So, the part of the house that I've always really disliked was the staircase.  You open the front door (new front door in the pic below, by the way) and basically walk right into a coat closet, and the staircase is all sheet rocked in an very claustrophobic feeling.

So far, Will has removed some of the front coat closet, and within the next two weeks he will have it all torn out and be installing wrought iron balusters like below, only with white posts.

Bedrooms

So this was the boys bedroom before....notice the gross dirty walls, etc...

 I spent most of Friday painting their bedroom.  I will be continuing with the nautical theme in there.  So I painted a half wall of blue (called "Liberty").  On the bottom half will be white waynes coating, a chair rail, and white base boards.  The room will also have touches of red in it, and they have white furniture. 

I had a heck of a time trying to get the line going along the ceiling perfectly straight.  I used an angled brush and still wasn't happy with it.  Someone suggested getting an "edger", and so I bought one from Home Depot...and oh my goodness, BEST INVENTION EVER.  I'll never draw my lines ever again.  

This is how it looked after I used the edger...

I never ended up getting a photo of the actual lighting fixture, because it was too dark by the time he got it installed, but here is Will putting in the fixture in the boys bedroom. It's a sun & moon fixture that glows in the dark after you turn it off.  We tried it out last night and they were so excited about it!

And then finally, our bedroom....

I've had a hard time trying to figure out what to do with our bedroom.  For the past several years since we've been married, the colors in our master bedroom have been gold-toned, with red accents.  Very rich.  I'm kind of tired of it, and especially now that our living room is going to be red, I don't want our bedroom with the same colors.  And besides, we've had all the same stuff since we got married and it would be nice to switch it up.

I recently came across a theme idea having to do with Paris, anything French, etc.  I want to make our room romantic, and a place we can escape to and feel peaceful in.  So I chose this sagey green color called "Scotland Road".  The above picture doesn't do it justice, as that was taken on my phone.  It dried a little darker than that.  Then when we add white baseboards, new carpet, curtains, lighting fixture, etc...I think it will look really great.  It's an entirely different color scheme than we've had in our bedroom, so it will be different that's for certain.  I want to find some painting/photos of Paris, and eventually get a canopy bed with romantic drapery.

Carpet

We should have ordered carpet weeks ago, but being something we needed to pick out together, we just had a hard time getting together in order to do it.  Seattle had a crrrrrrazy snow storm last week that shut the city down, with causing a state wide state of emergency.  I know, I know, you laugh because Seattle freaks out when it snows. But with good reason.  It all iced over and then we had windstorms, which basically wiped out a lot of our lovely trees. It's a sad sight now to drive down I-90 and see all the trees blown over or broken on either side of the freeway.  Our home in North Bend lost power for 4 days, and some people had it even worse.

But we finally were able to go carpet shopping. NOT AN EASY TASK.  I guess I never really cared about carpet before because I'd never had to shop for it.  So I was really unaware when going to the store to pick it out.  And Will and I realized that we had completely different tastes in carpet.

For one thing, Will has been in the home/commercial building market for years, and is really up to date on current home trends.  He showed me the current carpet trend that they were installing in the John Buchan homes when he was working there, and my reaction was "Ewe."  It is that shaggy twisty type of carpet.  I really thought it looked like 1970's shag.  Not interested.  I wanted more traditional carpet, but super soft and lush.  And that's the thing about me - put two items in front of me and I will no doubt always inevitably pick out the more expensive one even without seeing the price.

It took an entire week of carpet hunting, and feeling hundreds of different carpets, comparing prices, and yadda yadda before we finally came to a compromise - if you can call it that.  I don't know if Will feels it was a compromise since we still ended up spending more than he wanted, but at least we both agreed on the carpet itself.  We went with a traditional soft carpet for the living room, and a twisty carpet for the stairs and upstairs.

Anyway, that's all for now. Our new hardwood floor is sitting in boxes out in the garage.  As soon as the guys are done texturing the sheet rock and done sawing stuff up and framing stuff, we'll be done with all the messy stuff (oh, except for the stairs) and Will can get started installing the flooring.  Then cabinets, then granite, then carpet....somewhere in there new interior doors, baseboard, and staircase. Haha.  Lots to do in the next 3 weeks!

Oh, and thank you Elizabeth and James for watching our boys on Friday and Saturday!  We were able to get so much done. Normally one of us is having to watch them, while the other gets something done.  And it's crazy trying to keep them from the nails and scraps laying around the house.  Not to mention all the painting stink, the noise, etc.  So it was nice to have them get to play with their cousins and have a slumber party!