design finch

Week 16 brought some exciting exterior changes! It’s starting to feel like we’re inching closer and closer to the finish line. Obviously, I would like things to happen much faster than they are. Our appliances were originally supposed to be delivered this week but we had to call and reschedule for September because we’re not anywhere close to being ready for those. But each week the house looks more and more like the final product we envision, so that’s encouraging.

Our new garage door was installed this week! What a difference! The glass is translucent so it lets a lot of light through but you can’t see inside of the garage. Let’s just hope that I don’t back the car into it! The cranky old man who lives next door has already informed me that he has some “concerns” with the style of our garage and front door. He is going to be a real treasure, I can already tell.

The Hardie siding finally started to go up on Friday. We’re really happy with the color we chose (Timber Bark). Depending on the light, it looks gray, brown or green. The stucco guys are supposed to begin on Monday. Fingers crossed, by the end of next week the exterior of the house will be totally transformed.

I’ve spent countless hours researching and ordering lighting fixtures. This week I created paper templates of the fixtures and hung them up in each room to get a better idea of the scale and placement. These are the templates for the four long, vertical sconces in the master bathroom. I’ll have to do an entire post on light fixtures soon.

The electrical crew has been at the house for six days already and we have at least three more days to go. We’re upgrading most of the wiring throughout the old part of the house to meet code and adding some additional lighting and outlets where they were lacking before. Let’s just say I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to know about electricity through this process. At the end of the day, I couldn’t care less about volts or wattage or circuits. Just let there be light already! God had the whole light thing created by day four, so our little ol’ house shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Right?

The house remodel is still keeping us on our toes. I swear, it could be a full time job and we’re not even the ones doing the manual labor! We try to pop by to check on progress once a day, then there are numerous phone calls to answer, decisions to be made, subcontractors to keep up with, bills to be paid, schedules to coordinate, and shopping to be done. I could use a few more hours in the day to check off some of these tasks. Or a personal assistant.

Just like magic, the old front door disappeared and became the new dining room window. Our beautiful new front door is still waiting in the garage to be installed. And I’m hoping the new garage door will arrive next week.

All of the new windows except two have been installed. It’s starting to feel like a real house now that we have windows! A rain shower rolled through when I was at the house snapping photos and, for the first time since construction began, the rain wasn’t coming inside. So that’s progress!

Interior view of the new windows. The majority of the windows in our house are operable, so we’ll be able to get a nice breeze blowing through. Our house, like most of the homes here in the mountains, doesn’t have air conditioning. There are only a couple of weeks during the summer that we really miss it. Everyone around here just sleeps with their windows open. That was a weird thing for this Texas girl to get used to!

Rough-in for the plumbing is almost complete. We’re trying to stay two steps ahead of the plumber, so we had to finalize all of the fixture purchases this week. Here’s what we decided on:

Delta Vero Shower Trim, Italia Capri Towel Hook and Paper Holder,
Vessel Sink Faucet, European Vessel Sink

I purchased everything online, and so far everything has arrived except for the shower fixtures. After researching hundreds of options for fixtures, I decided to keep it simple and order the same things for both the master and guest bathrooms rather than having to shop for different styles. I love the sleek look of polished chrome, so that’s what we went with in both bathrooms. However, I may be cursing that decision once I’m trying to scrub water deposits off the shiny new chrome.

Hahn Stainless Steel Farmhouse Sink, Danze Foodie Faucet

I scored pretty good deals on the kitchen fixtures at Costco. I think the stainless steel farmhouse sink is going to look great in our modern kitchen!  I just hope it comes with a little fairy who washes the dishes. The boxes for all of these fixtures are currently piled in the middle of our condo living room, so I hope the plumber is ready for them soon!

As I sit down to go through the latest construction photos and write this post, I’m realizing just how little got accomplished at the job site this week. A couple new interior walls were framed and some minor work was done to prepare for the new roof and entry, but that’s about the extent of it. None of these things translate into riveting blog content, unfortunately. Don’t these construction workers know that I have photos to take and posts to write? You’d better believe that this coming week I will demand blog-worthy progress!

Instead of the usual mediocre photos, today I’ll share the finishes that I’ve been pulling together in hopes that we’ll eventually get to the fun part of the construction process. Who cares about joists and insulation and ventilation systems anyway? I want to talk color palettes, cabinetry and flooring!

One of the hardest parts of this renovation project has been sourcing the finishes, as we don’t have a plethora of home improvement stores up here in the mountains. I’ve done a lot of online research, but I really have to touch and feel (and over-analyze) all of the materials before I can commit. That being said, I think we’ve finally pulled together a cohesive palette of finishes that Jason and I both agree on. We prefer to keep the palette mostly neutral and bring in bright pops of color with furniture and artwork. Keep in mind we have neither said furniture nor artwork, so this is a long-term vision.

We spent the majority of our weekend agonizing over the merits of color swatches with charming names such as “Parkside Pine”, “Honey Twist” and “Chocolate Fizz”. As much as I wanted to pick “Georgia Peach” and “Sweet Potato Pie” as a nod to our southern roots, we are apparently more “Mountain Fog” and “Timber Bark” kind of people when it comes to jazzing up the exterior of our home.

And because I’m nothing if not a wee bit obsessive about these sorts of decorating decisions, I spent a few hours too many mocking up various color combinations in Photoshop. I believe this is the exterior palette we have settled on….for now, anyway.  Jason finally agreed to the red accents when I sold it to him as the “Boomer Sooner” palette. Obviously it could also pass as “Fightin’ Texas Aggie” in the right lighting conditions. And that is what I call a winning color combo.

On the bright side, the staircase is underway and coming along nicely! Both the stringers and the treads are made from parallam beams. I think they’ll look really cool once they are stained and the texture comes through. They will also be sturdy enough to support a herd of elephants….

….or at least a couple of crazy hound dogs! On second thought, maybe we shouldn’t add the final few treads because this gaping hole is proving to be a pretty effective dog barricade.

This is the view standing in the living room looking back towards the front entry. The kitchen peninsula will be to the left of the steel column.

The master bedroom roof is beginning to take shape. In the meantime, it feels like a treehouse in there.

This is the view of the master suite looking towards what will become the shower. Some of the interior walls still aren’t framed out, yet.

And the view looking into the master bathroom towards the future vanity.

Here’s my love standing in the study. We’ve been working on designing the workspace and built-ins for this room and are excited about how it’s coming together. That’s a future post, though!

In the meantime, you can find us curled in a fetal position clutching our Excel spreadsheets.

Right now construction is about a week behind schedule due to some delays in getting our structural steel. According to the contractor’s schedule, the walls should have been completely framed by now and work should have already started on the roof. Other than that little hiccup, things are going relatively smoothly.

The big steel column that we’ve been waiting on was finally delivered and installed this week. We lovingly call this thing “the flagpole”. It’s the primary structural piece that will hold the existing house and new addition together and bear the weight of the roof, so it’s kind of important. And also very expensive. I can think of lots of things I’d rather spend money on than a big hunk of steel that will be hidden in the walls!

The west wall of the second floor went up! This is the exterior wall of the master bathroom.

We discovered that we’ll be able to see the top of Basalt Mountain from the clerestory windows above the master bathroom vanity! We had hoped that would be the case, but weren’t certain until it was all framed out.

We’ll have a view of this sweet, historic barn from our master bedroom windows. It was originally the horse barn on the homestead of one of the original pioneering families of Basalt. A few years ago it was restored into a living history museum.

The excavator came back to do a little more site work around the property. I tried to take it for a spin when no one was watching, but they keys were nowhere to be found.

The excavator dug a trench from the existing mechanical room to the new addition. I’m told this is where the plumbing for the radiant heat will go, but I was really hoping for a moat.

What can I say? The construction process is exhausting! A girl has gotta catch a nap when and where she can…..