Yes, it's time for the "pretties" :) Or as Paul calls it, the "details" :) We're both right! To pick up where I left off in my last post with the mudding/sanding/drywalling...
Even though Paul wasn't quite finished with the sanding and mudding ( he still had several corners to do, and the bullnose, which was the rounded corners I chose), we decided to have Paul's parents come up to help us. Because Paul has the best parents, they were soooo extremely gracious to offer up their services to us in the phase: the tile, floor laying phase. Paul's dad had laid tile before so he had experience, though he had no clue what was in his future:) (Yes, I chose slate tile, subway tile and brick to be laid, all of which he had never done! As you will see in my next post he did a gorgous job!) We all determined that Paul could finish up the mudding stuff while his dad worked on the tile laying. Good plan and for the most part worked out beautifully.
Painting was also involved which kind of rushed me. Let me just say, that picking out the paint colors was the hardest thing for me! I am sooo indecisive!!! I was poring over magazines, internet pics and people's homes just trying to think of the best colors for mine. It was actually not that fun! Not only the paint colors, but which brand? Also, should we go for the way more expensive low VOC version of the more expensive or less expensive brand? And should we get ceiling white or another white color? Because I have a large and open kitchen/dining/living area should I "separate" each room with it's own color or make it all flow with the same? I'm telling you there were a million other questions we asked ourselves and I dreamt about. But we finally decided! So here is a quick rundown:
We chose Valspar paint and mostly colors, with the boys rooms, mudroom, master bedroom, kid's bathroom and under-the-stairs reading room having the low VOC paint. Here are the colors:
Master bedroom/bathroom - Valspar's White Smoke
Kid's bathroom - Valspar's Cabin Plank
Kid's bathroom - Valspar's Cabin Plank
Mudroom - Olympic's Limish ( I matched it as closely as I could to a mudroom bench I bought last year)
Kitchen/dining/living/library/halls/closets - Valspar's Suisse Coffee
Boy's rooms - Valspar's "something" Gray ( I can't remember!!)
Under-the-stairs reading room - Valspar's Ruby Red
And ceilings? Yes, just plain old Ceiling White! Paul would have killed me if I picked colored ceilings or something. I thought I would be nice.
So, back to Paul's parents. They got here June 13th and pretty much started straight away painting the kid's bathroom
. And here's a pic! We will be having white beadboard halfway up the walls, also. The painting needed to be done before Paul's Dad laid the tile. We got one coat paint, but realized that the semi gloss paint we got showed roller streaks pretty badly, so we ended up doing two coats (actually, thanks to the Ewer's for that!!) As I said, here's a picture of the one coat.
. And here's a pic! We will be having white beadboard halfway up the walls, also. The painting needed to be done before Paul's Dad laid the tile. We got one coat paint, but realized that the semi gloss paint we got showed roller streaks pretty badly, so we ended up doing two coats (actually, thanks to the Ewer's for that!!) As I said, here's a picture of the one coat.
Here is a picture of the tile. I just texted Paul to ask him what brand and color name the tile was and he told me "brown" hehe:) I'll have to get the tile name. It is 12x12 from Lowe's. A ceramic tile that we found discounted from $1.29 to $0.78 a sf. Great savings! I overestimated the sf and we were able to take three boxes back. Those litle white things in between each tile piece are spacers, used to measure the exact distance between each piece so it comes out perfectly. We used the 1/4" spacers, but they can go up to 2" However wide apart you want!
And now a picture of the inlaw laying the tile! Hard, hard work! His poor knees!! He did a fantastic job though. After he was through laying the tile he had to grout it (which is the colored cement stuff you see between the tile). I wanted a white to brighten up the room, but Paul warned me against it seeing as it would be hard to keep clean, so we came to a comprimise! :) We chose a bone color (light brown) instead. The grout in and of itself is a process! It takes a while to dry, but as you can see in the last picture, it came out beautifully:) Thank you so much, Dad Edes!
As of today, we are much further ahead than this. We have laid all the tile and brick flooring as well as the subway tile in the master bath. The mudroom, masterbedroom/bath is also painted. All the ceilings are orange peeled (lightly textured) and mostly primered. This week we will be finishing up the painting and then begins the wood flooring next! Yippee! :) I will be posting the rest of the pictures on my next blog post. So....stay tuned!
On to build,
Rachael
