Interior Fun Stuff

After insulating the house, they cleaned it up very nicely. All of the sawdust, extra cables and other construction debris was swept up and taken out. I was very impressed!

Miles and I spent 4 hours with the carpet, tile, wood floor, granite, etc. person last Friday, then I met Jamie and the flooring designer again on Wednesday for another 2 hours. I am very happy with the tile and flooring decisions we've made. I'm very excited about the tile for the fireplace and the way we tied it into a decorative insert piece above the range - very cool.

We also pretty much settled on the granite for the kitchen, but need to see if the fabricator has a remnant piece for the powder bath and the master bathroom. We may go with something simpler for the master bath. Then we'll need to decide about what we want to do for the backsplash - tile or a piece of the granite. I sort of prefer tile, but I want to see what kind of remnant piece or other we decide for the master bath.

I think we've also settled on Hickory for the floors. I was hoping/wanting to go with something darker like Mahogany, but I was talked out of it because a dark floor will show all the dirt and animal hair that we will have living out on the farm. I like the variation in Hickory, though, and am starting to like the lighter color. We've got a lot of dark colors in the kitchen, so it will be better probably.

We also decided not to do a wood hallway upstairs, we'll carpet that. We were also contemplating a tile entryway, but because of the way the floor and stairs and rooms came together, we couldn't get a good spot for that. We decided to keep it all wood and I think we'll be happy with that. We'll define the dining room floor with a big area rug. Cost us less money as well, so Miles is happy. Sounds like we might be at or under budget, so that's good!

Progress Meeting

We met with Wayne on Friday to go over a few things.

1. Fireplace design. I roughed out a sketch of what we want the fireplace wall to look like. I'm very excited about it.
2. The second furnace for upstairs is going to be located in Tyler's attic. I'm not so sure about it, but Wayne assures us that it will not be a noise nuisance and that it is quite common in other parts of the country.
3. Started on fascia and soffett work.
4. Finalized the decision to frame Cory's room in.
5. Need to discuss all the arches with Jamie K. (interior designer) and Troy again. We're now not sure that we want to arch everything.
6. Made decisions on door to garage and then garage door to exterior. We're going with fiberglass for the mud room/garage door and steel for the garage/exterior.
7. Doing our electrical walk through on Tuesday with the electrician, the light designer and Jamie K.

Wow, now some of the fun things are starting to happen. I think I'm going to start getting anxious. We have hardwood floor decisions, lighting, tile, etc. coming up. I ordered samples from Armstrong floors for Mahogany, Brazilian Cherry, Hickory, Maple, Walnut and Birch (my preference is in this order). Our trim work will be in Alder. The built-ins will mostly be Alder, but may do Cherry in the great room. The kitchen and master cabinets are Cherry. Cabinets in the mud room and kids bathrooms is Alder. I hope we don't regret that decision since it is a relatively soft wood. Oh well.

Staircase to the bonus room: