Home Addition: All the Trimmings

 Here are a few photos of the trim work.  The trim on the main level is painted white and looks sharp against the orange paint.

The salvaged French doors we used for the laundry closet pocket doors are painted and partially hung. We haven't taken the paper off the panes yet. My plan is to find some cool fabric to put on the back sides of each pane. The thing on the wall above the pocket doors is a mini-split air conditioning and heating unit.  Because our existing furnace and AC unit were not big enough to heat and cool the new spaces, we installed these super efficient and no-duct-work-required units in the main floor and upstairs.

The baseboards are in too.

In the main level, we were trying to match the existing trim in the old part of the house.  We were unable to find the same 100-year old tall curvy profile, so the general contractor (GC) custom routered the bottom part of the baseboard out of MDF. The top curvy piece is chair rail that we had to rip down to make it similar to the old part of the house.  It isn't an exact match, but when you come to visit, you'll probably be fooled. :-)

Our GC was too busy going back to school >-( to finish our job, so we asked him to hire a crew of finish carpenters to get going again.  He was unable to get any carpenters to work for him, so we went out and found our own.  Our teammate Ryan had an associate, Brian, who does fabulous trim work.  

He finished the narrow spice cabinet I designed. Now I have alphabetically organized spices AND a place to put the step ladder.

The trim upstairs is vertical grain fir.  The GC thought it would be more cost effective to buy it in the rough and plane and router it to our liking.  By the time we paid Brian to plane it 

and found yet another contractor to router it, we're thinking it might have been cheaper to find it finished, but at least this way we got the look we wanted and lots of sawdust for the compost bin! 

We were going for a simple mission style.

We are going to stain and seal it ourselves, after we get done managing contractors.

We reused two of the house's original doors that we removed back in May for the master bath and closet doors. 

We haven't finished stripping 100 years of paint off them yet.  Add that to the to do list.

Home Addition: We like orange, part two.

We hired the painting done way back in October, but not until the holidays did I get a chance on long airplane rides and while waiting in airports to get caught up with some pictures. 

The first step was for us to pick out the paint colors.  We had a pumpkin color in mind for the kitchen and new main floor room.  We tried four different shades and even had the Sherwin Williams guy try to “make” us a shade before, under the advice of our designer friend Rhonda, we went back to our first try, "Tigereye".

The bedroom upstairs was harder.  I wanted a neutral color because we have a vaulted ceiling and I really don't want to have to paint again soon.  We started with these three samples.

But none of them really excited us, so we got a few more samples.

After two weeks we were up to nine (9!) different colors.   

Finally, again on advice from Rhonda, I put up another coat of one of the first three we picked out and we decided that although it was basically tan (read: boring) it looked the best with the trim, the stone for the fireplace, and the hickory flooring, and would allow natural light to bounce around the room.  "Colony Buff" it is.

Then there was the bathroom.  All I wanted was something neutral that wouldn't clash with the travertine, limestone, and pebble tiles.  Before Drew knew it, I was up to eight (8!) samples in the bathroom.  Good grief.   

None of the greenish or peachish shades we thought looked good with the tile samples did anything for us when we put the samples on the wall, so we ended up going with a darker shade of the ceiling and trim paint, "Dover White".   We'll have to add pops of color with the accessories. 

The painters spent days and days preparing the trim for paint,

 during which time Drew painted the laundry closet,

and meanwhile we were hurrying to get all the trim up that was to be painted.  About a week before this stage, the general contractor (GC) ripped off the 2x4s that were being used as temporary stair treads and put down the oak treads. It was then that Drew and I noticed that the upper flight of stairs seemed to be out of level. The GC said "no problem, that's an easy fix" and he would be out the next day to fix them. A week later, as the painters were closing in on spray day, GC came to fix them.  It was then that he and I realized that the rise and run among all the stairs was not equal.  Not only is this very annoying and a trip hazard, as you no doubt have noticed if you've ever walked up or down a flight of stairs that is uneven, but some of the steps were outside the 3/8th of an inch difference allowed by code between the rise of each stair. By a long way, like, by over an inch! So all 23 treads had to be ripped off, shimmed up, re-glued, and nailed down again by the GC.

This all happened on the same day the painter told us that he couldn't make the risers look good because the joints between the risers and stringers were not tight enough (even though we had asked him numerous times about that very thing), so we had a high-priced, last-minute carpenter there tacking up trim strips to cover the joints.  That was a bad, bad day.  We were angry with the GC for screwing up the stairs in the first place, panicking to design and source materials for the decorative trim before the painters got that far, we knew it was costing us more than it had to, and we were starting to worry about the quality of the GC's work if he had screwed up something as important and code-stringent as the stairs. 

But the day passed and soon we had primer on the walls.

 

And in a couple of days we had color!

 See, we love orange!

The upstairs tan color turned out great.

And brown glaze on the textured accent wall brings some visual interest to the wall that will be behind the bed. 

The bathroom white turned out fine and doesn’t take away from the fabulous tile, but apparently I did not find it picture worthy.

I am more or less happy with the way the paint turned out, but I was never so happy to see a contractor leave. Not only did the painter mis-quote us and ask for more money, he was annoying and just plain rubbed me the wrong way.  We got to the point where Drew was the only one allowed to deal with him because I could no longer hide my irritation. If anyone needs a painter, I know who not to recommend.

Anyway, paint is up and the next post will highlight the trim work.

Home Addition: We like orange, part one.

Way back in late October when had the painters here, we decided to paint the same bright orange we painted the front door back in March on the two sets of double doors on the back of the house.  They looked so great...

that we decided to make the garage doors match.  Say goodbye to the white.

As we were preparing the garage doors, we decided to paint the inside of the front door too.  Problem was, the paint was really thick and the temperature was only about 55, so it didn't dry fast enough to get the second coat on and put it back on the hinges. We had to survive the night with no front door!

It was shocking to watch the painter spray the front door and garage doors.  Wow, that's a lotta orange!

But it looks good and we love it.  We love orange!

Home Addition: flamin' hot master bedroom fireplace

This post is a little out of order. I have several other posts in the works to show you progress on the addition to date, but this one is quick and easy so I'll put it up even though the fireplace was done just last week.

We found the mantel, which was installed while we were in Europe this summer, at George's Architectural Salvage way back in July.  It is a floor joist from the Oquirrh School built in 1894 as I explained in this post.

Last week we had a really great tile guy come in and put the rock on the fireplace in the upstairs master bedroom.  We found this "tile"

while shopping for bathroom tile. We both liked it, it was real stone, it was on clearance sale, and it was the look we were going for.  It was one of the easiest decisions of the whole remodel and we love the way it turned out.

Here is the space before.

And here is the space after.

It has a rustic and warm feel and will look great with a sheepskin rug in front of it. We can't wait.

Moab in the Spirit

Drew and I sneaked away to Moab in early December for a sort of early Christmas by ourselves.  It was time for the annual Moab holiday festivities and the air quality in the Salt Lake Valley was horrible, so why not?

Moab is such a small town in the wintertime.  We went for a great walk along the urban path and made it to city hall in time for caroling,

announcement of the citizen of the year and business of the year by the mayor, and the spectacular (I'm being facetious) lighting of the Christmas tree. 

The next day, since I outlawed the bikes on this trip, we were forced to hike.  I took Drew up the Moab Rim trail that I had done on my solo trip back in August.

And then it was the event we had come for: the annual Moab Light Parade!  The Light Parade had 22 entries this year, including this one with an Egyptian theme...

And this one with, as you would expect for outdoor capital of southeastern Utah, a camping theme.

We were not sure what some of the floats were supposed to represent,

But we still enjoyed cheering and watching them go by on main street while we sipped our cold beer and stomped our feet to keep warm.

 
There was no marching band, but there was this:

Golly, isn't that excellent!

This was my favorite float, of course.

We enjoyed the small town feeling for another day before heading back to our busy pre-holiday schedules. 

And so with this post we wish each of our 10 readers out there in blog land a very ...

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Kitchen debut: Friends gather.

It was time to put the new kitchen to the test.  No, the kitchen isn't 100% complete yet - there are still shelves to put up, an island to buy, lighting to install in the upper cabinets, and a back splash to fabricate and install, but the appliances all work and we are at a point where friends are not scared they will get lung infections from inhaling dust anytime they visit. So it was time to host a gathering or two.

Gathering #1 FRIENDS!


For our first official party in the new space, we invited our good friends Jeff & Lisa

plus their two little boys and Keri & Jeff from Sandy

over to visit while Jeff & Lisa were in town visiting from Wisconsin.





For appetizers we ate moose meatball kabobs which I made using some ground moose we received from our Alaskan friends.  They were so yummy the kids even enjoyed them.  The main course was beef vegetable stew accompanied by Keri's cornbread and crunchy salad.  The food was all great, but it was even greater to see our friends again.

Jeff and Lisa's cute kids William and Noah entertained Drew all night long.

Jeff & Keri's adult son Clay and his wife Lisa stopped by later.  It was great to host such a lively and fun party.


Gathering #2   THANKSGIVING!

Drew, being the junior captain that he is, had to work on Thanksgiving. But being the savvy captain that he is, he was able to trade his assigned trip for one that had a Salt Lake overnight on Thanksgiving.  Yay!


Drew talked about inviting the crew that he would be flying with over for dinner. I was game, but he told me not to count on it.  So we also invited bike friends Rhonda, Andy, and Carl.  As of Monday, we had 5 for dinner.  The flight attendants accepted our invitation on Tuesday, so we were up to eight.  I thought I could handle that, but since this was the first whole meal I had cooked for that many people, there was some apprehension.  Wednesday after work I made the pies and prepped and cleaned and had things pretty much under control.  Off to the gym on Thursday morning for some pre-pig-out calorie burn.  Drew called while I was watching the Macy's parade from the treadmill with news that he had invited the first officer too so now we were nine! No matter that our table barely seats eight. Not a problem that we only have place settings for eight. We had lots of wine.

The first and last turkey I cooked 12 years ago turned out raw.  If you have not cooked a turkey before, take it from me, they don't always thaw as quickly in the refrigerator as the package says. This year I made sure the bird was completely thawed.  I dressed it with sister-in-law's herb butter, placed it in the new roaster pan we got five years ago for our wedding (proof we don't roast large things), and into the oven it went. The oven automatically turned off according to the internal temperature probe two hours before the turkey was supposed to be done. Oh well, that just left more room to cook the scalloped corn and sweet potatoes.  Guests arrived just as I was finishing up.  It seemed that Mandy, Mike, Constance, and May were happy to be celebrating with all of us instead of hanging out in the hotel.

Appetizers of cheese and crackers, fresh vegetable tray, and hot sweet peppers, went well with the first bottle of wine while I made the gravy using pan drippings.

Happy hour...

was over and it was time for the man to carve up the bird.

It was finally time to eat our feast.

Everything was good, except the gravy got a little too salty.


But we still had room for dessert.  I made two pumpkin pies and a strawberry rhubarb. Yum.

Pies are even better when eaten with friends and served on fancy heirloom china with coffee in fancy china cups.

Our Southwest guests were fun to have and I thought they were excellent guests - they did all the dishes!  They can come back anytime! It is always fun to hang out with Rhonda, Andy, and Carl and they lingered longer chatting and finishing up wine bottle number four.  So all in all, we called it a success. Drew and I were proud to host our first Thanksgiving for such as fun crowd.