Mechanicals, Round 1

Well, the house is coming along, but nothing overly photogenic has happened. We do have plumbing:

Upstairs bathtubs!

I just want to turn on the faucet and have water. I don't want to know where it's coming from. 

And the duct work for the air conditioning has started!

And the framers finished building out their part of the double-sided fireplace:

The A/C guys are messy.

In other news, those doorknobs came in, and they are enormous. HUGE. Kevin put one on a door in the apartment and they just aren't going to work, as pretty as they are. 

Delilah was not impressed. Although, she is pretty difficult to impress as a general matter. 

As far as fun things, we changed the flooring in the master bath to wood, and I'm super excited. They are going to do it in a herringbone pattern. We were originally doing a white marble tile, but the tiles came in very, very gray, and the true white ones were either ridiculously expensive or looked like they had glitter in them. And I don't exactly "do" glitter. 

This was one of my "inspiration" photos, though this room has an awful lot of yellow undertone:

I am loving gray and brass in the kitchen lately. I can't decide if I'll do white or gray cabinets, and it will probably depend on what the lighting conditions ultimately look like in our kitchen. White looks best in tons of light, and it's starting to look like we might not get all that much due to the covered porch (small price to pay for a 10-foot-deep covered porch). In addition, Carrara marble, our countertop material, has a tendency to look very gray next to white cabinetry, and combined with our black and brass stove, I think a pale gray-green or gray-blue might look less stark. Kevin is so sick of me talking about it that he no longer cares even a little bit. Whoops!

We both do love these two photos. The first is a kitchen in a bed and breakfast in Sweden by Ilse Designs that is far more "greige" in photos than blue or green. I can't remember where the second came from, but I love the gray-green island color (shout out to the stager, though: who in the hell cooks that many artichokes, ever?). 

Finally, I'm in love with this super pale gray - this color is happening if we have enough light somewhere in the house. I pulled this off my phone. Which I apparently need to charge. 

Notice the wood floor? Love. 

Gray isn't all that popular right now, but seems to be coming in style. At the risk of our house looking "so 2013" I'll probably have to mix it up a bit. That, and let's face it: no good can come of looking like Restoration Hardware threw up in your house. 

That's about it on the house, unfortunately the really fun things like trim won't start for another few weeks. We are off to St. Louis this weekend to see Kevin's side of the family. Happy Labor day weekend and GEAUX TIGERS!

The Hardware Dilemma

I know what you're thinking. "White people problems." But they told me on Thursday that I had to tell them what color hinges I wanted because they needed to order the construction doors, and even though they don't have to order our real doors for a while, the hinges come with the construction doors. Alrighty then.

I proceeded to do what I always do and compulsively researched doorknob options for 3 days because we had no idea what we wanted, and we didn't want to pick hinges and then have to match the doorknobs to the hinges instead of vice-versa.

I have a little bit of a brass obsession going on. Not the cheesy lacquered circa 1980s brass, but true unlacquered, antique, acquire-a-patina brass that looks great with age (or if you're impatient like me, ammonia fumes. But more on that in a later post.) Basically, I saw this photo:

I am obsessed with this kitchen. I think it's from House Beautiful, but I'm not really sure.

...and now I love brass. Kevin thought I was crazy to want open shelving at first, but he came around and this is almost exactly what the right side of our kitchen cabinetry will look like. Including the brass!

After being so focused on that kitchen, I was really wanting to carry the brass through the house until my friend Lina reminded me that our bathrooms are a mix of honed black granite, white marble, and oh by the way, we chose chrome faucets for those bathrooms. We originally liked nickel, but it actually has a warm undertone and looks very pink next to Carrara marble. While we picked brass for our kitchen faucets, I just couldn't picture the same in the bathrooms. So, chrome it was. But in the process, we managed to create a situation in which doing brass hinges and doorknobs in the entire house would put those two finishes up close and personal.

I told my lovely friend Meagan about this today, as she shares my love of antiques and, incidentally, has fabulous taste. I told her about my brass hangup and she found these lovely guys for me (and I love their name): Anthropologie's "Persephone" knob.

This made my life easier. I obviously had to have them. 1) Ordering these required brass hinges. Done. And 2)  I could stop bothering Kevin, who was desperately trying to work and get me to stop asking him about metal colors. AND they were under budget (hahaha THAT never happens). So Meagan, we both thank you. 

Since the Persephone knobs don't come with locks, we decided instead of trying to retrofit them, we'd just mix in other knobs. We both have been loving the crystal knobs, especially the "Waldorf" style. No, they aren't very Louisiana, or even Southern. But I lived in NYC for a while, so I guess it deserves some kind of representation, right?!? 

Our builder likes to use Emtek, and since the Anthro knob is probably going to be a pain in the butt (sorry Colin) we thought we'd make the rest of them easier on them. Emtek's Waldorf-knob equivalent is the "Old Town" knob. We both love the knob but can't decide on the backplate. We'd love some opinions! I won't tell you which one of us prefers which yet. The color of these is called "French Antique" and it looks different in every photo on their website, but it's actually darker than these pictures would indicate.

Here are the options:

The great thing about Emtek is that you can select every piece separately without extra charges, so if we did decide to use a silver-toned backplate in the bathrooms, we could do a two-sided brass-and-nickel backplate. But I can't decide if that looks more strange than brass in a chrome and marble bathroom.


Then there's always this option for two LSU grads:

The "Geaux Tigers"

Don't worry, Kevin already vetoed it. It's a good thing he doesn't let me use the credit card while we're drinking wine on a Friday night.

We have a second story (and a roof!)

The last 15 or so days since I updated the blog have been extremely busy. We traveled to Nashville to see my sister receive her Master's degree in Nursing, we have a new nephew, and we had a wonderful visit from Matt & Jen Nomey! It's been a wonderfully crazy two weeks, but I have been remiss in updated the house photos.

They have made TONS of progress. We even have a scheduled completion date: February 26, 2014! If I knew enough HTML to put that in Hollywood-style lights, I would.

Around July 30, the framing of the second floor was underway.

It was at this point that I started getting very worried about the proportions of the house.

The upstairs was "walkable" for the first time about August 3:

Kevin heads up the stairs for the first time

View looking to the front of the house from the top of the stairs

The back bedroom (Hellooooo neighbor's yard....)

 The framing of the roof started really quickly,

I didn't realize how blurry this was until I posted it. Oops.

And two days later we had this!

Then the dormers started to get finished!

The interior started to change a bit too. They framed the archways between the kitchen and living rooms. The wall will be reclaimed brick, and a double-sided fireplace will be in the center. After much drama regarding whether we could have a ventless fireplace, mostly due to our architect's decision to be an idiot rather than admit that Houston's Code had changed until long after we had settled the plans, we finally ordered an Isokern unit that looks the way I want it to (Kevin doesn't exactly get his panties in a twist over fireplaces) and won't get us into trouble with the city. We aren't planning on doing it on a regular basis, and maybe never, but this fireplace CAN be wood-burning, which is kind of cool.

View from the kitchen side

View from the living room side

 They framed the shower (Kevin's excited)

Where my clawfoot bathtub will be (I am excited)

And, the views from the back yard:

View of the master bedroom windows:

Late this week, about August 7, they started doing the plywood sheathing around the house. You can see a big difference in the upstairs bedrooms:

The same bedroom, a day later

 Our stairs got a very swanky city of Houston required railing.

 What will be unfinished storage space over the kitchen:

The view of the upstairs, looking to the front of the house.

The study, starting to look like an actual room!

This is the house as of today, August 10. They are working to get the fascia on so that they can get the house "blacked in" - it won't be completely dried in at that point, but we won't be getting the second floor rained on, either. We have been extremely fortunate with the weather! It rained a lot at the beginning of July, but our framing has only been sprinkled on a couple of times.

Back of the house

My favorite part of the house - our back porch

Kevin says hello

 I can't wait to be able to hang a swing on this porch. Which reminds me, I need to remind our site supervisor that I'll be hanging swings!