Freedom of Choice

When we decided to go with a remodeler/contractor rather design-build firm, we knew we would be doing a lot more leg-work in figuring out design and picking out various options. It is surprising how much time it takes to pick everything out - and how distracting it can be if you try to do it with kids underfoot. So we're thinking of just having a weekly babysitter to try to go remodel shopping once/week. Even without kids, the choices can be overwhelming, and it is hard to know where to start. It is true, though, that once you make one decision (for us it was the hardwood flooring) the rest of the choices become a little easier. For us, some of the harder decisions have to do with the bigger picture, like what color should we paint? The only one that has a strong feeling of what colors to use is Reid - who wants his room to be his (current) favorite color, red. A red room? Scary visions of Twin Peaks dream sequences went through my head...My plan is to accommodate him to an extent - and have one "accent wall" (you can tell I'm addicted to HGTV, can you not?) in a brick red. But for our bedroom, we just have no clue.
Last night (with the help of said babysitter) we were able to get closer to a decision for the carpet portion of the upstairs (who knew there were so many choices for carpet!), finalize our choice of bathroom vanity and mirrors, and pick out some shower and sink faucets. 3 hours well spent. Next up, floor tile and shower tile - woo-hoo!
On another note, recently my older brother linked to this website from his own remodeling website (they are much further along in a very similar project of their second floor). I will return the favor by linking to his Remake and Remodel page. Note the obscure Roxy Music reference - of course we opted for Elvis Costello for our title instead.
Stay tuned for more pictures later today....I'm home with our younger son, who is now sick.

We've been framed!

Some of the framing has been done, and today it was a whirlwind of activity, with the plumber and electrician here too (unfortunately, Scott and Reid were home because Reid has strep, so it wasn't quite as restful as it normally would be.) I've just been informed that Scott is going to contribute a first hand account of his experience today in a separate post. So I guess I'll leave it at that.
Here's some of the framing - first the hallway at the top of the stairs:


Here is the framing for the bathroom - somewhat hard to see because of the angle:


Here is the north side of the house. The slope of the east side is actually slightly different than the west side - something that wasn't picked up on originally. This results in a slightly higher wall on the east side than the west - but that will actually work to our advantage, giving us more storage above the clothes railing on that side.


And finally, we have a new addition to the soil stack in the basement (along with lots of other piping running this way and that, that I didn't find very interesting to photograph) and a new pipe in our current bedroom closet (Devin thinks when the camera is clicking, he must be in the picture).



Meanwhile, we have picked 1/2 of our flooring (found a good deal on some solid oak wood flooring at Lumber Liquidators), and we will be picking the rest tomorrow. The master bedroom will be the wood flooring, and the hallway and boys' room will be carpeted. We will be meeting with a small local store tomorrow to learn the ins and outs about carpet - which I'm finding I know nothing about.
We are also very close to ordering our bathroom vanity, and vanity top. Originally, I thought that there was no way we could afford a granite vanity top, but to my surprise, Home Depot actually has some mass-produced granite that is cheaper than the Corian that we were considering. So Granite it is - we just have to pick the color.

A busy day

Hi. I stayed home today with a sick son, and it was hoppin' here. Chris was here, Tony the plumber was here, Pete the electrician was here, with helpers for the last two. So there was lots of bangin', sawin', and thumpin' going on most of the day.

Which is great; it's good to know that things are getting done. The soil stack for the new bathroom went in through a closet on the first floor; looks like the electrical outlets are partially in in the boys' room, and some more framing was done too. The bones of the bathroom are coming together, some pipes are in place.

We've been doing a lot of research and shopping around for things like floors and carpets and stuff. It can be quite confusing and overwhelming; sometimes I feel like I'm totally in over my head. I call that "a Sarah Palin moment." As in, "I was totally doing a Sarah Palin at the tile store."

But as our favorite Alaskan will tell you, there's nothing like learning on the fly.

Stairway to heaven

The very first sign that something was happening was the lovely stairway our builder, Chris, built from our patio up to the second floor. This will make it easier for him to bring in the wood, drywall, etc. - AND much easier for us not to have people tramping through the house. Neighbors were curious, needless to say.

More 'before' pictures

I'm still getting used to the way this blogger handles photos, so this post is really just a continuation of the previous one, with some more pics.
These are the exisiting stairs from the landing to the attic space.


Below is the view from the front of the house to the back of the house (before we cleaned out everything).


This is the north side of the house (where our walk-in closet will be)


The view looking to the front of the house (looking east). This will be the sitting-room area of our master bedroom.


This is looking south (see stairwell). This will be the area of the master bedroom.


This is looking out the west wall, where the boys' room will be (similar to the view above).

In the beginning...

So. We have owned this house for 7 years, and bought it partially on the potential that the upstairs expansion space had for us. In retrospect, this was not the most cost-effective way to buy a house, but we were newbies, so there it is. Now, we were finally able to finagle a way to finance this venture (one less kid in daycare helped!) and we decided to go ahead with our plans to finish the upstairs 1/2 story with 2 bedrooms and one bathroom. The 2 bedrooms downstairs will become a family room (yyyyes!) and a guest room/office-type room. AND since we have a porch off of the soon-to-be family room, we will convert that to a mudroom of sorts - which will further reduce the clutter of the front room. Here are the photos of what the expansion space looked like before we got started:

This is the view of the stairs from our hallway to the exisiting stairs going up.