House tour - mud room & powder room

One of the most functional rooms in our home is the mud room.  When we designed our house, we built the entire first floor around having a mud room.  It's a place to dump handbags, backpacks, coats and car keys.  I wanted the space to be functional and fun, with a utility sink.  We also put in a pocket door, in the event that we get a dog and need to block the space off from the main living area.

Another consideration when designing the first floor of our home was where to put the powder room.  We didn't want our guests to feel too close to the main living area when using the bathroom.  With that being said, we put the powder room adjacent to the mud room.  It feels private and since it sits on the south side of the house, we were able to put a window in the powder room to allow for some natural lighting.  Since the powder room shares a wall with the garage, we had our architect add a large linen closet.  Currently I'm storing my Swiffer and a few seasonal decorations as well as extra hand towels.

Stepping into the mud room from the garage.  Kentwood Originals Maple Del Rio flooring, Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter on the walls

Mud room bench, $36 at a flea market.  Rug by Dash & Albert, online flash sale.  Coat hooks, IKEA.

Mud room bench - one of my favorite pieces in the house! 

The door to the garage.  Knobs and back plate custom assembled by Schlage, polished chrome finish.

Pocket door, separating the mud room and main living area

 The work horse of our mudroom is the cabinets and counter.  We have all of our reusable bags and art supplies in the lower left doors.  Underneath the sink is where we keep our mop bucket and all of the cleaners for our hardwood floors.  The drawers just underneath the counter is where we keep our maps, keys and sunglasses.  The upper cabinets house our extra paper towels, cleaning supplies and baby wipes.  Costco baby wipes are one of my favorite cleaning products!  I use them on the millwork, countertops, the track of our sliding doors, virtually anywhere that requires a gentle cleaner.

Mud room cabinetry.  Kohler faucet and cast iron sink with Formica Sand Crystal counters.  Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter on the walls

Formica Sand Crystal countertops.

Powder room.  Pental Alpine quartz remnant used on the countertop with matte subway tile backsplash.   Faucet by Kohler, Bancroft series.

Powder room sink.  Kohler Bancroft lavatory faucet, Kohler undermount sink, Pental Alpine quartz counters with subway tile backsplash.

Linen closet in the powder room - custom knobs and back plate by Schlage, polished chrome finish.

 I wanted to take a minute to talk about floor registers.  Our contractor supplied us with two choices: tan or white.  Obviously neither of those color selections work with the hardwood flooring that we installed.  I scoured all of our local big box stores and came up empty.  Since I was working with a difficult size (2x10"), I took to searching online.  I was really excited to find these registers by A Touch of Brass.

Remember: when ordering your floor registers, the size that you purchase is that of the actual opening of the duct.  The actual register that you see on the floor is larger than 2x10".

Oil Rubbed Bronze floor register, by A Touch of Brass

House tour - piano room, updated for under $200

The piano room is my least favorite room of the house.  It's the room that has gotten the least attention and is really a hodge podge of random furnishings that we used to fill the room.  

Let's take a look at the before photos.  Since a new couch for this room wasn't in the budget, I had to work with just a few hundred dollars to update the room.  Sticking with the old, green couch, I wanted to add some coastal touches and make it an inviting space for people to sit and relax.  

Here's the old couch with some framed floral prints that I yanked off of an outdated calendar.  The rug is the thorn in my side, and comes from my husband's old bachelor pad apartment.  It just wasn't working for me.  The size was all wrong and the pattern lends itself to more of a funeral home decor.  Relaxing?  Maybe, if you're dead...

The old green couch with the old floral prints and the old bachelor rug

Our beautiful upright Steinway piano with the antique bow back chair from my parents' house

The old floral prints - worked in our last home, but screamingly outdated in this one

The bachelor rug, in all its glory

I had been scouring the bowels of the Internet, looking for some sort of modern rug to put in this room.  Like I mentioned, I wanted to spend less than $200 to update the room.  If you've ever been rug shopping, you know that it's nearly impossible to score a decent 5x8' rug for less than $200.

Enter Craigslist.

I randomly searched for "striped rug" and found a lady selling a brand new, still in the wrapping, 5x8' striped wool rug.  Apparently she had ordered the rug and the actual color wasn't quite what she was expecting.  Since she wasn't able to return it, she was selling it heavily discounted on Craigslist.  I hopped in the car, drove about 24 miles north and scored this great rug!  Total cost = $150.

Piano room with new rug - starting to look a bit more updated

I picked up a curtain rod at Lowe's for about $35 when I realized that I had some simple tie top curtain panels tucked away in the guest room.  I've always outsourced the curtain rod hanging to my husband, which he gripes about incessantly.  This time I decided to give it a whirl myself, and I think I did a pretty good job!

The updated piano room - Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter on the walls

The old green couch, striped rug and bow back chair

The top of the piano is mostly uncluttered with the exception of a small orchid and a set of candlesticks that my grandfather picked up during a Naval deployment.  Familial rumor has it that they're either from India or Africa (and yes, they're made of ivory).

The small frame that sits above our piano was a simple craft that I completed in our old house.  I typed out a portion of our wedding vows on printer paper, and then soaked the paper in a pan full of coffee.  Basically I stained the paper to look like parchment, giving it an antiqued look  A cheap and easy way to bring memories from the past to the present!

Coffee stained wedding vows, candlesticks and an orchid on top of the piano

 This bow back chair needs some love.  I thought that I might want to tackle recovering the cushion myself.  I even went to unzip the bottom cushion to see how I might be able to deconstruct it and the foam inside has crumbled.  Eventually I'm going to update this chair with a new cushion and some modern fabric, but that will have to wait for now.

Remember those horrendous floral prints that I snagged from an expired calendar?  They had to go.  I wanted to bring something fun and nautical into the room.  I found a great website that sells "pocket size" prints of most NOAA nautical charts and ordered a set of 3 to group on the wall: Chicago Harbor, Elliott Bay (Seattle waterfront) and Cleveland Harbor.  I thought it would be a nice way to bring our birthplaces and our current home on to one wall in the house.

Seattle Harbor nautical chart

Cleveland Harbor nautical chart

Chicago Harbor nautical chart

Tucked in the corner of the room is an antique that my aunt handed down to me.  It's a handmade end table, made by my great great ________ on my Mom's side.  It's not known whether it was a grandfather or an uncle as there were 10 children in that generation - 5 stayed in Sweden and 5 immigrated to the United States.  My brother has the Swedish Bibles that were housed in this great, little piece.  It's pieces like these that I absolutely love - the pieces that have a story behind them.  

Handmade Swedish side table made by my 

As always, thanks for reading!  I'll be sure to come back with a few more tours: powder room and mud room are next.

Things that I love - a brief update

We've been in the house for a little over 3 months, and obviously I've been a slacker on updating this blog.  What can I say?  Boxes needed to be unpacked, we don't really have a functioning computer, and my little family seemingly stays busier than ever.

I recently checked my stats and have over 10,000 page views with some of my pictures ending up on Pinterest!  I never thought that this blog would become popular enough to make Pinterest, so if you're a regular reader: thank you.  I'm not a professional blogger, I have no idea how to take great pictures (other than by accident) with our digital SLR camera, but it's really fun to know that this blog is helping people in their quest to build and decorate their dream home.

I've gotten several e-mails in the past few weeks asking about paint colors.  One reader said that she had a custom color consultation with Sherwin Williams, hoping that it would lead to picking the perfect gray.  In the end, she thought that the color suggested by the consultant was a bit too green.  One of the biggest lessons that I learned is that choosing a paint color takes time.  You want to splash the color up on the house, preferably on walls facing in different directions, and then take the time to look at the walls in different lighting.  I can assure you that a paint color will look different in the morning, noon and night, so be sure to take the time to look at your favorite swatches throughout the day.

I took a couple of pictures to show you some of my favorite things here at our house.  I'm going to come back and take you on a tour of each room, detailing what I love and what I would do differently.  But in the meantime, here are a few things to get you started!

I love the way our front porch turned out!  I have yet to hang a wreath on the front door, because I'm too afraid to scratch the finish.  I'm sure that will change when Christmas rolls around.  In the meantime I'm content to just let the front door be the focal point.  We used a chrome handle by Schlage on the front door and it adds a nice touch of visual interest to an otherwise classic front porch.

You might be wondering what my thoughts are on Sherwin Williams Cityscape Gray:

I love it!

Sherwin Williams Cityscape Gray has proven to be the perfect gray.  It's not too blue, not too green, not too light and not too dark.  How's that for an overall description for you?  I can honestly say that I've never had a moment looking at the house where I didn't love it.  I was recently across the Sound near a naval base, and I said to my husband "The perfect color gray is the color of naval ships."  I think Sherwin Williams Cityscape Gray is really close to that.

The flowerpot by our front door has been with us through 1 apartment, 1 house, 1 18-month stint living with my parents and now graces the front porch.  It was given to us by our landlord in our first apartment.  This year I went with hues of red and put in 2 varieties of geraniums, creamy orange petunias, white and red "million bells" and a small fern.  

Our front door with Sherwin Williams Cityscape Gray and pine tongue in groove ceiling

 One of my favorite rooms in the house is the kitchen.  It's the heart of our house, where we spend a lot of time and a place where visitors congregate.  I can honestly say that I adore the quartz countertops.  They're easy to clean, seem to take a beating with pots/pans/baking dishes and have a distinct look that is different from granite.  You may remember when I was selecting the quartz for the kitchen countertops - and now that we've put the Pental quartz to the test, I have absolutely no regrets!

A tip: Our particular quartz is a brushed finish, so it doesn't have the sheen that many other quartz countertops do.  Upon installation, someone ended up sealing the quartz by accident.  If you know anything about quartz, you know that it doesn't require a sealant.  With a bit of acetone and some strong elbow grease, we were able to get the residue off, bringing the quartz to its natural and intended look.

Once we decided that we were going to put quartz throughout the house, I decided to e-mail Method.  It took a few days, but the customer service folks got back to me and assured me that my favorite products were safe and effective on quartz.

I've been using two Method products to clean my quartz countertops:

1. Method Daily Granite spray.  This spray can be somewhat hard to find, but I did find it sitting on the shelf at my local Target.  It's exactly what it says: a daily spray for natural stone, including quartz.  Don't let the black bottle scare you as it smells like apple.  It's not too strong or too heavily scented.  I like to use it when the counters really need a good cleaning.  Otherwise I use #2.
   
   
   
2. Method All Purpose Pink Grapefruit spray cleaner.  This is by far my favorite spray cleaner.  It smells nice, cuts grease, does a good job cleaning up the counters and an entire bottle seems to last for several months.  I like to keep one bottle downstairs and one bottle upstairs.  Again, this product is safe for use on quartz.  It's also safe to use on marble, which we put in our master bath.
   

One of my favorite features in the kitchen is the small 8" pendants by Kichler that sit above the island.  I was worried that they wouldn't be the exact look that we wanted, as they don't have a diffuser.  Pendant lights with a diffuser were significantly more expensive and generally tended to be 10-12" in diameter.  These 8" mini pendants are perfect!  The inside of the pendants are white and since the actual pendant is pretty deep, you don't really even see the bulb - even when you're sitting right underneath them!  In hindsight, I might have moved the pendants about 6 inches towards the center of the island, but that's neither here nor there.

Pental Riverbank Brushed quartz counters, Kichler 8" mini pendants, Kitchen Aid stainless appliances, Moen prep faucet, stools from School Outfitters (approx $30/ea!)

 My next "thing that I love" is the keypad on the outside of the garage man door.  My Dad installed this for us during construction and it was a great way to access the house without a key.  We were also able to give individual codes to our subcontractors so that they could show themselves in and out.  It's easy to use, codes can be added and deleted at any time, and it's great to have access in and out of the garage without raising and lowering the main door.

Garage man door keypad, by Schlage

 Our master bath soaking tub is awesome.  Our builder gave me two choices for tubs.  While I attempted to find this tub in real life so that I could actually sit in it before purchasing it, I wasn't able to.  Thankfully, the Maax Slimline Oval has been a dream!  It looks unassumingly small, but let me assure you: this thing is plenty big and deep.  The drain is in the center, just below the hand shower.  My only word of caution with this tub: if you're changing from a drain at the end to a drain in the center, don't forget to watch your toes!  I ended up giving myself a pretty good slice on the drain.

Maax Slimline Oval with Kohler Bancroft fixtures

 The last thing on my list for today is the caulk job that I miraculously did adjacent to the master bathroom hutch.  If you've ever seen my parents' kitchen sink (sorry Mom & Dad!), you'll realize that the picture below is nothing short of a miracle.  Let's just say that I had previous tendencies of applying caulk a little too thick.  After reading an online tutorial and a few plumbing message boards, everyone said to line your area with blue tape.  Why I never did that, I have no idea - but that explains my prior caulk jobs.  Lining your work area with blue tape allows you to get the perfect amount of caulk into the space.  Put the tape on, dispense caulk, smooth with a wet fingertip, remove tape and voila!

My best caulk job yet!  Silicone, white caulking

"Houston, we have a problem..." - problems with your builder/contractor

You may remember my post on selecting a builder.  I've been meaning to revisit that post and give you some suggestions on how to avoid the problems that we had with ours.  To make things easy, I'm going to cut and paste my original post and add new comments in bold.  

Selecting a builder is probably the most important decision that you'll make when building a custom home.  I won't get into a lot of boring details about the process of interviewing builders, but here are some important points when it comes to picking one:

• What is your gut feeling?  In our case, I had a pretty strong gut feeling about our builder.  I appreciated his confidence, trusted his judgement and was impressed with his honesty.  As with all things in life, I think it's always good to trust your gut.

I still think it's exceptionally important to trust your gut.  Problem being: our builder's confidence was really an inflated sense of importance and a blatant misrepresentation of his abilities (or lack thereof).  While we did see several of the homes that our builder had constructed, we didn't actually talk to his prior customers.  That was a HUGE mistake on our part and one that I'm still angry at myself for.  

He talked about his decades in the construction industry, his longstanding connections and relationships with the folks at the City (planning, public works, etc).  As it turns out, people at the city had heard of him, but no one really spoke that highly of him when we were knee deep in the process.  

It's also important to ask your builder whether they've been building spec homes or custom homes in the past.  As it turns out, our builder had been building spec homes.  That means the client came to purchase the home after the construction process was completed.  Any error, rework or cost going over the budget was rolled into the final cost of the home, without the purchaser's knowledge of the builder's ability.  There's a BIG difference between building a spec home and a custom home.  Pick a builder who is well versed in building custom homes and working with clients every step of the way - particularly if you're on a tight budget.

• Is your builder on time?  Our builder is consistently on time, and this tells me that not only does he respect my time, but he also respects his business and reputation.  

I will say that despite all of our issues, our builder was consistently on time - and I do appreciate that.

• Can you have an honest discussion about finances?  Building a home is a huge financial undertaking, for both you and your builder.  Both parties have to come to the table knowing that there will be some pretty frank discussions about finances.  What can you afford?  What is your budget?  Is your builder pushing you to go above and beyond what you're comfortable with?  (Big red flag!)  Has your builder fallen upon hard times during the subprime lending crisis and subsequent economic slump? All of these questions need to be answered before applying for a construction loan, because the answers will come out in that process (more on that in another post!)

Oh how I wish I could go back in time and do this one over.  In hindsight, I've come to the realization that our discussions about finances were more about our finances and not about the builder's.  

Each month, our builder would submit an invoice to me for the monthly charges.  Since I am obsessed with being on time and paying vendors promptly, I would usually issue payment to the builder on the same day that the invoice was received.  When we started having issues with the cabinet maker (more on that later), I started to withhold parts of our monthly payment to the builder.  This was a way to ensure that we were protected from getting shafted by the cabinet maker who disappeared without providing all of the product we had contractually agreed to pay for.  

As it turns out, the builder had absolutely NO reserve or cash flow to pay the vendors, unless we paid him in full each month.  He had NO line of credit with the bank.  I CANNOT URGE YOU STRONGLY ENOUGH TO MAKE SURE THAT: YOUR BUILDER HAS A LINE OF CREDIT. 

Instead of paying our vendors (who had already completed their portion of the work, and deserved to be paid in full), our builder began holding money for himself.  Perhaps to pay for his trip to the Bahamas when our final inspection was scheduled.  Yes, you read that correctly, and yes, I'm bitter...

One of the most telling interactions that I had with the builder was during a meeting with our designer.  He kept telling me that I shouldn't be putting a laminate counter in the mud room and in the laundry room - and that high end custom homes always have slab surfaces.  By the time I left the meeting, my designer said "If you had listened to his suggestions during this meeting, you would have spent an additional $2,000."  That was a big red flag that our builder had no respect for our budget and how we wanted to distribute our funds.  

• Will your builder provide you with a few references?  Ideally, your builder will have past clients who are very pleased with his/her work.  Word of mouth seems to be everything in the construction business, so it's important to get connected with people who have worked with your builder.  These references can come from subcontractors, lenders, and ideally past clients.  In our case, we were able to tour a recently completed home, and the quality of work spoke volumes about our builder's work ethic and capabilities.  

Again, it's totally our fault that we didn't actually talk to past clients.

• Do you like your builder?  If your builder is a major jackwad, you might want to look elsewhere!  I'm a woman, and I also happen to be the "project manager," because I work odd hours and my husband spends most of his week at work.  Believe it or not, even in 2012, I've been stereotyped and talked down to by some of the "ol' boys" in the business.  Obviously those men didn't get my business and never will.  Bottom line: I like our builder.  He's on time, has a pretty good sense of humor, doesn't talk down to me despite a gap in gender and generation and he's easily accessible by phone/text/e-mail.  You have to like your builder, because you'll be communicating with them several times a day, every day.   

This actually makes me laugh (and cry) now that this whole experience is said and done.  There's one situation on particular that makes me want to smack the guy:

During a meeting with the builder and our jackwad cabinet guy, I was pressing both to commit to a final finish grade of paint.  I wanted to make sure that the cabinets came in painted, finished condition.  The cabinet guy said "Well, the problem is that when people say that the cabinets aren't finished, it's a woman touching the cabinets and they're looking the other way."  Instead of sticking up for me, the client, our builder just laughed like a frat boy.  If there's one thing that irritates me, it situations where women are being put down by men.  I'm pretty sure that my sleep deprived, decaffeinated brain still has more intellect than their brains put together.  

• Does your builder respect your vision?  This one is pretty simple.  If your builder thinks that you're an idiot because you want to put cork floors in your man cave, it's probably not going to be a good match.  Obviously your builder will have different taste than you do, but part of the builder's job is to be an objective party in creating your dreams.  A good builder will tell you if you're making a huge mistake, but they'll also allow you, the client, to make decisions based on your needs and wants.

I can't really say for certain that our builder respected our vision, because as we worked toward completion of the house, I pretty much ignored him in every way possible.  Thankfully, I had a great designer who helped to affirm that our choices were both financially and aesthetically sound.

When Cameron was in Egypt's Land...

I'm a bit under the weather and have caught the crud from our resident young Petri dish.  I'll be back next week with another post about our breakup with the builder, and some updated recommendations and revisions on selecting a builder.

I also have some things that I would do differently and things that I would keep exactly the same, along with some product reviews headed your way.

As always, thanks for reading - I'll be back!

"Houston, we have a problem" - the basement flooded

You may remember in my last post that I eluded to some issues with the builder.  Now that we're moved in and we've officially broken up with said builder (ie: we came to financial resolution and a separation agreement and Waiver of Lien was signed by both parties), I think it's time to share some of the things that ultimately eroded our relationship.

Back in November, Seattle had some torrential rain showers.  Rain showers that ended up flooding our basement.  I arrived at the house early on Monday morning to find the builder in poor spirits.  When I asked him what was going on, he said "There's a little water inside."  I almost sharted when I heard the words "water" and "inside" used in the same sentence.  Our hardwood floors had just gone in, and I assumed that there was some water coming into the first floor.  I was wrong...

As it turns out, the water was pouring into the mechanical room, which is in the basement.  I went downstairs to find that the drywall was totally soaked, about 6 feet up on the wall and the water was flowing from one end of the house to the other, much like an overflowing toilet.  In a panic, I called my Dad.  If you've had the pleasure of meeting my Dad, you know that he can do anything.  He has almost every tool known to man, and if you have a problem, he can most likely fix it.  He came right over (the perk of having parental units that live 1 mile away) and immediately took a hand saw to the drywall.  Here's what we found:

Water, pouring down the walls of the foundation.  A foundation should NEVER look like this.  You can shart now.  I did.

The concrete just underneath the black tube is dry.  Everything else is wet.

I think it's safe to say that one doesn't need a degree in construction management to know that we had a big problem.  Our builder proceeded to run around like a moron, neglecting (this will be a key term in this whole debacle) to make contact with the excavation company who poured the foundation and placed the drains that penetrated said foundation.  Instead, it was me, the homeowner, who stood on our front porch and started making calls.  Within 10 minutes, I had the owner of the excavation company on the phone and they were sending someone out to take a look.

Meanwhile, the dirt on the exterior of the house that had been sinking for several weeks (note: our builder said "that's just typical settling") had completely opened up into a sink hole.

Water adjacent to the foundation - this was just the beginning of our problem

The hole, starting to open up.  That's my husband in the hole, running the commercial pump that my Dad rented.  Note: the builder doesn't even have rubber boots or a pump.  Instead, he's standing on the edge of the hole. Just writing this out is making me irritated.

The sideyard eroding before our eyes.  If you look closely, you may be able to see the water pouring out of the dirt, just below the wooden stake adjacent to the large shrub.  

The temporary drain that my Dad and I rigged up to divert water into the driveway.  Note: the builder had nothing to do with this manual labor.  Thanks.

While waiting for the excavation company to come and assess the damage, we learned two important things

1. The builder neglected (there's that word again!) to put in appropriate drains on the side of the house when the dirt was open during excavation.  In other words, despite being on a hill and a well shown on the documents of the property provided to us by the city planner, our builder did nothing.  All of the water from the torrential rain, coming down the hill and the water bubbling up from the existing well was pouring into our basement, because the builder didn't tie any drains into the storm sewer during excavation.  The existing storm sewer sits just underneath the black drain that we ran down the driveway
2. The excavation company never sealed the pipe that penetrated the foundation with cement grout.  That's a HUGE problem.  Naturally, any water that sits adjacent to the foundation will seep through an unsealed penetration.  That's why we had water pouring down the wall of the foundation around the pipe.  You might be wondering if the excavation company took any responsibility for this: they didn't.  Neither did the builder.  

After discovering these 2 very important facts, we realized that we had to solve the problem ourselves.  We rented 2 commercial grade pumps and pumped out the hole every 4 hours over Thanksgiving weekend.  This allowed us to mitigate any further damage to the basement by keeping water away from the foundation.  We also put in that black, temporary drain to divert water away from the house.  One of my most vivid memories was mixing cement grout in the basement with my Dad, in a plastic Happy Meal bucket, by flashlight.  Listen readers, I'm not a girly girl.  While I don't mind getting dressed up, I'm much more comfortable in a pair of jeans or in this case: rubber boots and a headlamp.  I'm perfectly capable of mixing up cement grout in a dark basement, but for me it's the principle that the builder was nowhere to be found - and this was a crisis.  

Thankfully, we have a dear friend, Bernard Finney of Lawnscapes who came to our rescue.  Our family has known Bernard since 1989 when we moved to Seattle, and I can personally attest to the quality of his work and his character.  Bernard came out with a crew of guys over Thanksgiving weekend (who does that?) and worked through the storm to install a French drain.  Basically, Bernard saved our rear end (and our basement!).  Thank you Bernard.

You might also recall the installation of our retaining wall.  Bernard and his crew put that in, by hand.  If you need an honest, personable and knowledgeable landscaper in the Seattle area, please visit Lawnscapes and give Bernard a call.  I promise you won't be sorry!

Now let's get back to the flooding in the basement.  Once the French drain was installed, we were able to dry the basement out.  Here's a picture of the wall after the cement grout was installed:

After cement grout installation - see the difference?

Thankfully our flooring was not installed at the time of the flood - otherwise fixing this problem would have been even more expensive and would have required replacement of vinyl, cork and carpet flooring.

In my next post, I'll talk a bit about the cabinet debacle and the fact that our builder was pocketing money for himself and underpaying the subcontractors.  

Progress update - we're in the house!

We've officially moved into the house.  The excitement of being in our beautiful, new house has been somewhat overshadowed by some issues with our builder.  I will definitely be back when I'm in a better frame of mind and can put forth the time writing about wrapping up this experience. 

As always, thanks for reading!