Paint colors; Inside & Outside

So so so so many choices!
From left to right:
1st floor man cave
1st floor main area (none of these worked)
2nd floor office
Exterior

Exterior options

Chris painting (from left to right) exterior options
number 1-7

We took our favorite exterior options (#2 &
#3) and painted them around the house!
In the sun & shade, plus on the old &
new siding!
We chose #3 - shown on the right here!

Some of our first efforts on the 1st floor color.
We wanted a light gray....darker than the white trim but
lighter than our cabinets. Harder to find than you'd
imagine! This includes living room, dining room,
 hall bathroom, kitchen, family room and our master bedroom!
I struggled mightily with this choice!

2nd floor color options - we wanted an off white that would
show off the trim but not be too bold. This paint is for
the foyer, front stairwell, upstairs hallway, guest rooms &
the hall bathroom. Bottom row center is the winner!

Gray, gray, gray.
I painted lots of color options on this wall
in the kitchen! We wanted to be as sure as possible we were
making the right choice! We went with the color on the lower
left (its repeated on both sides of the door).

We are rocking the man cave like it is
a transplant from our condo! It will be painted
brown & have virtually the same furniture :)

The winning man cave color is on the right.
The one on the left looks too much like a dirty diaper :(

Chris showing off the office window with the color
options. The darkest one won here :) Its in the center

I DIYed the basement laundry area wall....because it is in
the basement & it doesn't matter! The middle color won!

I wanted to go bold & fun. One might think this is too
dark of a color for a basement; I went high gloss to
bounce the light around the room. Our basement has some
above grade windows which give it some natural light,
which helps!

In case you care to buy any of these colors, we used all Benjamin Moore paints. Here is a list of what we bought & where we're using it:

Exterior: Deep Royal

1st Floor + Master Bedroom: Whitestone at 50% strength

2nd Floor + Foyer/Stairwell: China White

Man Cave: Whitall Brown

Office: Van Deusen Blue

Laundry Area: Old Navy

Drywall! Drywall! It is EVERYWHERE!

Rewind to Tuesday. We passed our insulation inspection in the afternoon & our contractor confirmed the drywallers to start Wednesday. Jump to Friday afternoon. The drywallers have hung drywall throughout our entire house! The entire 1st & 2nd floors & a bit of the basement; all in 3 work days! There were speed demons! We have been waiting since mid-December for another big "oh my goodness" moment. We hadn't seen a dramatic change since the framers built the start of the side & back porches and framed the new floor plan inside. The months in between have been spent filling the space between the studs those framers installed. Electrical, plumbing, HVAC and finally insulation all needed to happen before we got another dose of drama. Good drama I should specify. Well, here it is, in pictures; the work of the wild men drywall crew. Starting tomorrow they will tape & sand the whole beast! Stay turned for photos of that.

It may not look like much, but to come into the house &
see these first glimpses of drywall made me act like a
fool! I was jumping up & down, clapping my hands &
squealing. I think the drywall guys thought I was insane.

View of the kitchen into the dining room.

View the opposite way - from the dining room
back into the kitchen

There were stacks of drywall everywhere
on Wednesday. This is the view from our
bedroom up the hallway to the front of the
house.

View up the stairs to the outside wall of
Chris' office

More photos - can you tell how excited this stage made me??

Chris loving his new office drywall!

Chris admiring the mess & drywall in the 2nd
bedroom

I am profoundly excited about the kitchen,
even partially drywalled!

Don't mind the mess- check out the drywall! Also note the
yellow walls are holdovers from our plaster days! We kept
5-10% of the plaster walls.

The stairs are starting to look legit! Except
for the whole not having a banister for
the landing.........details.

I hadn't played with the panoramic feature on my phone in awhile - drywall inspired me to take one of the kitchen and
family room. 

I continue to be unreasonably excited about the
basement laundry area; which got drywall too!

Our bedroom is starting to take shape!

Update March 25, 2016:

This is just too funny not to add:

The drywallers rocking their stilts to get the mud on the tops
of the walls & the ceilings

Just another day at the Grant St circus!

Marking Our Territory & Basement Progress

When opportunity knocks.......you put your initials in the concrete of your new (old) house!

One of our plumbers, Julio, was working in the basement at the house late in February. I was chatting with him while checking out the freshly poured concrete that filled in the trench that had been there since early in January. I was quite pleased to say goodbye to the trench; it was disgusting & made the house feel like a total mess. 

The trench is now filled in! Yippee!

Julio mentioned that my Dad had asked him if he could write his name in the wet concrete & I laughed and told him my Dad would absolutely do that, but I was pleased Julio put him off. Thanks Dad for inadvertently giving me the idea to put our names in the freshly poured concrete!

This is the wall where the laundry machines will go. Our
laundry sink will be on the far right, standing proudly over
our initials!

I'll write a much longer post about why my Dad was over at the house chatting with the plumber...it involves an old piece of furniture my Dad is making new for our house!

I would love to know if you've ever written your name in concrete! My big brother (& many others) always alleged that I wrote my name in a sidewalk near our childhood home. I didn't, though no one believes me despite the intervening 20+ years & my best protests! I hope someone has a good place they've put their name or initials :)

Laundry Area Shelf Project

Things are relatively slow on the reno front; HVAC & plumbing are in full swing - but the progress isn't as dramatic as it was during demo & framing :)

So, left to my own devices, I gave an old wall shelf new life today! My parents' have lots of treasures for their children to sift through and adopt, this shelf falls into that category.

Straight from my parents' attic; freshly washed.

I washed it with a drop of dish soap & water and let it air dry for several hours. In those several hours; I went shopping for pretty papers at Paper Source (love that store, love that they have a location a mile & a half from our house!).

Who doesn't love pretty papers?

After measuring each opening, I measured out the shape on the back side of the paper & cut them out. The measuring/cutting by far took longer than any other piece of this puzzle. I didn't want to re-buy the paper; so I followed the rule "measure twice, cut once" and ended up with almost perfect pieces.

All done! Now to see if our contractor will hang it up.....we're not
quite ready yet - but we will be!

Just an idea of what it will look like when in use :)

Ta da! Now we will have a shelf for laundry soap, etc in our (currently horrible) future basement laundry area. I'm hoping the rod on the bottom will be able to accommodate a few hangers to air dry clothes. We'll see how the space shapes up before we know if it will work.

Yeah, so this is what the basement looks like now. The area
on the right with the giant hole is about where the
future laundry area will be. Have I mentioned we're
not quite in need of my project yet?