Trim and Other Details

Yesterday and today when I drove up to the house I saw about 5 trucks and vans there.  That meant lots was happening!  The trim is going up and looks so good. I feel like trim work can really set the tone and add so much to a room.  Here's a sneak peak at some of our trim in progress!  

Also, the mason workers were starting outside to repair and tie in to the existing brick outdoors and today they completed the brick fireplace. It was one of the only original things we kept from the house, but because we raised the ceiling height, there was a weird gap left between the top of the old fireplace and the new ceilings.  They carried the new brick straight up and we will have the brick painted so you will never know it was pieced together.  

I've also been working on paint colors. Y'all, I have been looking at paint colors for months and months. I've searched Pinterest for inspiration, asked friends about colors used in their homes, and made more than a handful of visits to Sherwin Williams. I thought I was prepared.  However, when our builder asked me to email him paint colors the other day, I totally freaked out. It just seems so final and I know we can always repaint, but that isn't going to be happening anytime soon so I just want to get it right.  I went back to the paint store again today and spent the better part of an hour comparing colors and now I need to go back tomorrow!  Crazy, I know. I should have just bought a color wheel.  I did get a sample size of the color we were planning to use for the main part of the house just so I could test that on the walls and reassure myself it was going to look the way I envisioned.  As soon as Hudson saw me whip out that paint brush, he was all into the idea of paint.  He waited so patiently while I was at the paint store earlier and I let him help me do a few brush strokes of the test color.  It seriously made his day!  

I've also been on a fabric hunt.  I wanted to take advantage of this waiting period before we can move in and go ahead and make some of the window treatments.  My goal is to at least get the kids' rooms done so that when we move in I won't have to fuss with them.  Again, Hudson has been my little assistant in this process and he's been SO good.  He had fun pointing to ones he liked and kept saying how much he loved the orange and yellow fabrics. I had to break it to him that his room will be navy, light blue, and red.  He didn't seem bothered though. :-)  I also discovered that if I gave him my phone to take pictures of the ones he liked, he stayed so entertained and I also got some cute pictures of him, too!  

I carried each of the kids' pillow shams with me so I could see what different fabrics would look like and how it would coordinate with their bedding.  Here's what I'm leaning towards using right now for each of their rooms. 

Cabinets

The kitchen cabinets are one thing I've been really excited to see in the house.  It feels like we picked them forever ago and stopping by each day to see the kitchen come together has been such a treat.  All of our bathroom cabinets are complete now, too.  The installer was putting the finishing touches on the cabinets today (trimming out the last of them, adding the knobs, etc.).

Secondary bath cabinets 

Master bath cabinets 

Master Bath Cabinets 

My command center/desk area 

The over feel of our house is a craftsman style.  We wanted our house to have a comfortable, relaxed, easy-to-live-in kind of feel.  After all, it is where our kids will grow up and I don't want it to feel overly stuffy or formal. That's just not us.  In sticking with the craftsman feel, we went with an antique white mission style cabinet for the perimeter.

I knew I wanted our island to be a different color and originally we were thinking grey, but the grey was too grey (if that even makes sense) and I kind of fell in love with the khaki color (Pebble Java is the name...to be exact) with a glaze.  I liked that it was different, but not too drastically different from the other cabinets.

I also love the little details like the corbels and the vent hood to add just a touch of sophistication to an otherwise simple cabinet plan.  I feel like it adds a little bit of fancy to the kitchen.

Now that the cabinets are in I'm looking forward to nailing own our tile back splash and counter tops (still hoping to make a wooden counter top for the island work) and I cannot wait to see our copper farmhouse sink installed!

The next phase

Today when I stopped by the house I saw this:

Inside all of those boxes are our kitchen cabinets!  I can't wait to see them installed and see what the finished product will look like.

Also delivered to the house this week was all of the trim materials and our interior doors.  I'm hoping the trim will get started tomorrow and the real details of the house will all start falling into place.

I was talking to a friend earlier this week and explaining how I was so naive going into this whole building process.  I imagined the whole time would be this "fun" part of seeing all these design details going in the house.  That certainly hasn't been the case.  Instead it's been a lot of 2x4's and mud for the majority of the time, but I am really happy to finally be moving onto the next phase.

Reupholstering Dining Chairs

I'm finally getting around to posting about the dinning room chairs I recovered.  I'm so in love with them and can't wait to see them in our new house.  Let me back up a little bit...

When we were at my parents' house over Christmas we brought home a few furniture pieces that were family antiques.  I had always loved the round dining room table that was at my grandmother's house and mentioned to my dad that I would like to have it someday.  Since, at the time, my grandmother was in a nursing home, he told me we could go ahead and take it back to Atlanta with us since we had the trailer to bring back the other furniture.  We were originally planning to get new chairs for it because I remembered that the ones there were in pretty bad shape.  While we loading up the table Robby started inspecting the chairs and felt certain he could tighten them up and repair the ones that needed fixing, if I was up for recovering and using them.  I figured it was worth a shot to see how they turned out so we brought all 6 of the chairs home with us.

The table went into storage so I don't have any pictures of it, but we kept the chairs out so we could get to work on them. This is what they looked like to begin with.  Might be hard for some to see the inspiration, but so thankful that Robby convinced me to bring them with us.

I found fabric to use and loved the idea of a monogram on the backs of the chairs so after prying all of upholstered pieces off I cut fabric to fit over the current seats and backs and got busy monogramming.

Next, I visited JoAnn to get something to cushion the seats.  Over the years the foam that was there had really deteriorated and I wanted to make them really comfortable to sit on.  Again, I used the seat bottoms as a guide to cut the correct sizes.

In the mean time, Robby worked his magic with all sorts of wood glue, metal plates, L brackets and good old fashion elbow grease to make the chairs more sturdy than they were.

Finally we both worked together to add the new fabric.  I just left the old plaid on there since it wouldn't show and I figured it would save us a step. One of us pulled the fabric over the new cushion tight while the other staple gunned. It really was a two-person job to be able to get the fabric really tight and fitted looking, but it wasn't hard at all.

Robby screwed the seats back on the chairs and we glued the backs on and voila!  Our new (old) chairs!

It's amazing to me the difference in the BEFORE and AFTER:

It turns out this table and chairs originally came from my dad's grandmother's house, so my great-grandmother.  I love the history behind it and can remember sitting at the round table, looking over the waterway, while we ate suppers together at my grandparents' house. This will be our kitchen table and chairs and I know we will continue to have lots of wonderful family memories around this table.  My grandmother passed away a little over a month ago and now this furniture means more to me than it ever could have before. I am so excited to use it in our new house and just love the new look of the chairs.

I believe it

The drywall has been sitting at our house for almost a month now.  Because of snow, ice, and hold-ups with inspections, the drywall process kept being pushed back week after week.  It was scheduled to officially begin this late week and earlier in the week Robby asked me if I thought we'd see drywall on Thursday (the day it was set to begin).  My response was that I wasn't holding my breath and I'd believe it when I saw it.  Well, when I went by on Thursday afternoon I finally believed it.  I have never been so happy in my life to see drywall hangers there working!  They started upstairs and had the kids bedrooms pretty much done. When I went back on Friday I was SHOCKED by how much had been completed in basically 24 hours.  All of the upstairs was done along with all of the ceilings and the upper half of the walls on the first floor.  It's a lot of space to cover and I couldn't believe how fast they had worked.

I loved this stage because it really allows me to see what each room will feel like.  Before I could stand at one end of the house and see through the framing all the way to the back of the house.  Now I can picture where furniture will go and how the room will flow.

We were told that once drywall began it would be about 8-9 weeks before the house was complete.  I really feel like things will be moving along now and the fun part of seeing the house really come together will begin.  Our kitchen cabinets are done and ready to be installed as soon as the drywall process is complete.  The decisions about the trim work have been made and will begin right after drywall and then next week I have several meetings about flooring and our mudroom cabinets that will keep the ball rolling.  This is the part of building a house I've been looking forward to the whole time!  I am so happy we are finally to this point.