Uncategorized | my inspirational home

Decor Advice Please!

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Sophie

We have a large dead space on the stair landing. (I’ll post pictures when I get them.) It’s the front of the house, under a big window, so there’s lots of light, but it’s currently just an empty ledge a bit higher than eye level. I need ideas of what to put on it!

(Yeah, I know, I’m getting ahead of myself. But I like to look for things when I have spare time, so I may as well start browsing now!)

I don’t want planters because I am a plant assassin. I have killed every house plant we’ve ever had. So plants are out…

I found this vase at Home Goods:

The colors pick up on the carpet that we chose. (I’ll post a picture of that too!) But it’s just one vase, and it’s a pretty long ledge. What can I put in it (maybe tall branches or bamboo?) and next to it?

Thanks!

Our New Linen Closet

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Sophie

With the nasty weather we’ve been having, a lot of the reno is being held up. We need to hook up the house to the gas line (until now it was on oil heat) but we can’t until the ground thaws… not sure when that’s going to be. So we can’t work on the heating and cooling, which is slowing down a lot of our progress.

In the meantime, Juan is working on the smaller things that need to be done. We now have a linen closet where there was once dead space at the end of the upstairs hallway!

We’re also putting in bookshelves where the work table is now.

What do you think?

Termites… Round 2

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Sophie

Like I mentioned, we found termite damage on the other side of the house (living/dining room) now too! We’ve had to take down the Sheetrock and are going to replace the beams. Oh, and we discovered that the insulation in the back is moldy, and there is no insulation – AT ALL – in the front of the room. Isn’t that lovely?

Front window (sorry for blurriness). Note the absence of insulation!

We are dropping the center beam a bit (so the ceiling will make more of an “A” shape than an inverted V) for electrical purposes. At least something’s getting done here!

And we’re also trying to decide on a light fixture. More on that when we narrow down the choices a bit!

Living/Dining Room Floor!

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Sophie

Well, at least something is decided. We found distressed wood-look porcelain tile that we loved for the living/dining room (we also found a gorgeous area rug at the carpet store, so no worries about the room being too cold) and were going to order it from our tile guy. Then we went to Home Depot that same day to look at lighting at lo and behold! The same tile for $0.80 less per square foot! Considering the fact that we have to cover about 350 square feet, we saved almost $300. Not bad!

MS International Redwood Mahogany 6x24 Inch Porcelain Tile

MS International Redwood Mahogany 6×24 Inch Porcelain Tile

We really did well at Home Depot! Just a word of warning (according to our tile guy): if you’re buying in bulk from Home Depot, make sure that all boxes are from the same dye lot. Otherwise you may get halfway through your kitchen/hallway/dining room/whatever and realize your tiles are two (or more) different colors!

Isaac loaded them up on a friend’s truck and lugged them over to the house – 35 cases!

We weren’t taking any chances with these – wanted to make sure we got them before they sold out.

Now we found termite damage on that side of the house too, and we’re being delayed by that. It’s so frustrating. But – on the bright side – at least we have the flooring ready!

…aaaand Back to the Drawing Board

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Sophie

Well, the granite was too good to be true! We need 60 square feet so for most granites we’ll need two slabs, though there’ll be a lot of waste that way. Turns out that the Black Forest slabs that we liked are unusually large, 64 and 68 square feet – so one is not enough, but two would be waaaay too much (and will cost us an unnecessary fortune).

So now we’re back to square one. Frustrating!!!

We’ll probably end up with either the Super White quartzite:

(and we’ll have to drag back out to the marble yard to pick out the slabs)

or we may go with engineered quartz. Our stone guy (shout out to Ben at SSG!) says that there are some that we may like, despite the fact that most quartz is speckled or very plain, which we don’t like. I’ll go there tomorrow (and will update afterwards!) but am browsing the web in the meantime. I found these two that are really interesting:

Carbone Caesarstone, via marble.com

Black Knight Caesarstone, via marble.com

But with our luck (and good taste!) these may very well turn out to be out of our price range.

I will keep you posted!

Decisions, Decisions…

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Sophie

It’s unreal how many different types of granite there are! We’ve been having a really hard time deciding. Plus there are plenty that are just beautiful to look at (even though they’re way out of our price range…) – I love just roaming the marble yards to check out the incredible slabs. Check these out!

It’s amazing that these are all natural.

And it looks like we’ve found a winner! It’s called Black Forest:

When we went to ask the workers about it, we came back to find it gone!

Apparently someone else already “called it.” But not to worry, there were a few other slabs left for us!

We picked these two:

I loved watching how they pick them up.

So cool! So now we’re just waiting on pricing, but I think we’ve finally found what we’re looking for. Hooray!

More Kitchen Demo!

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Sophie

Now that the kitchen’s ordered, the tear-down is getting serious!

The original doorway to the kitchen is going to be closed up, and the area to the left of it will be the new doorway. (Picture taken from the entryway.)

We really wanted to put in a pocket door there so that we can close off the kitchen when necessary (like if guests are coming over and the kitchen is a wreck!) but it didn’t work out well with the wall structure. We don’t want a full door because it’ll close up the nice open plan that we have, but we are considering decorative French doors. What do you think?

These pictures were all taken at night, hence the dark blurriness. Here’s a better view (and with the beams taken out of the doorway):

The ceiling’s gone too for electrical purposes, and the new window is framed out already.

We’ve also decided on a floor tile:

MS International Eramosa Grey

It’s 12″x24″ porcelain tile which is exactly what we were looking for. I found it by accident when I was in Home Depot for something else and stumbled across a huge display of it – at the crazy-low price of $1.67 per square foot!

Now we’re just waiting on the granite… I’ll post an update when I have one!

Kitchen Design

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Sophie

We have our kitchen planned out! Our cabinet doors are Formica, with a gray geometric-patterned lower door (I don’t have a good picture but I’ll post one when I get it) and white uppers. We’re having a hard time deciding on the countertops, though. We both loved this one:

Black Marinace

We decided it’s too much for the kitchen. If we can get a small piece we’ll use it for the powder room counter.

We want something in the gray/black/white family, with waves rather than speckles. We’ve found these two:

Astryx

Mystic Black

…and we’re trying to get a hold of something like these:

Silver Waves

Silver Paradiso

Especially the Silver Paradiso. But we’re having a hard time finding it!

This is the final kitchen layout:

The cabinets over the oven between the two windows (surrounding the microwave) are going to be brushed stainless steel with frosted glass.

Tell me what you think of it! We can’t wait until it’s in.

Now for a Dose of Humor!

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Sophie

Yesterday’s termite discovery left me a bit shaken up. So when I found this gem while Googling “home renovations” it was a welcome relief!

diy-home_improvement-project-diy_project-improvement-house_painting-cwln2184l

(And very, very true at this point in our lives!)

I’m going to keep looking out for things like this, I’ve got a feeling we may need them over the next few weeks!

Opinions Please!

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Sophie

We’re in the process of ordering our kitchen! I’ll put up pictures when we have the layout, cabinets and counters finalized. We’re doing a two-tone kitchen with gray lower cabinets and white uppers.

Right now one of the faucets I’m considering is on sale and I want to decide on those ASAP.

This is the sink we’ve picked:

Elkay 281610 undermount sink

And these are the faucets we’re considering:

Grohe Ladylux faucet

Hansgrohe Talis C faucet

The Grohe Ladylux is selling for a great price, but it’s an older version and doesn’t lock into spray mode (if I want to use the sprayer I need to hold down the button). There’s a newer model that does lock into spray mode but it’s more expensive. The Hansgrohe Talis C does have a locking spray mode.

This is the soap dispenser that I like and matches both faucets:

Grohe Timeless soap dispenser

I like them both! The Ladylux is a better deal but I think I like the Talis C better. What do you think?

my inspirational home

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