Progress in Pictures

 

 

A crane was used to get all of the drywall into the house.

Here it is being put into the window.  These are the type of things I never would have thought about.  I'm so glad someone else did.

Future Kitchen

Looking into the living room area.

Another view of the living room.

Looking through the first floor.

We hired an insulation contractor.  It is not common in our area, but we found someone out of Rochester, NY who was willing to come down to Corning.  We don't know how, but it was less expensive to hire the contractor to buy and install blown in cellulose than for us to put up the fuzzy pink stuff. We've been told that cellulose holds up better over the long term.  Call us a few winters from now and we'll let you know how warm we are.

Surprise!  We have drywall.

The Mudroom

Don't get too excited, this is another view of the mudroom.

Running out of ideas for captions.

1st floor bath and pantry area.

Main Entryway

   Thanks for taking a look.  We hope you have a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Utilities are a Necessity

   It's been a while since I've posted.  This is due to lack of progress on the house and lack of creativity on my part. I'm sure I could have come up with something to write about, but that would have required 1) effort and 2) a strain on my brain. If I were to engage in either one of those activities I or my children may not live to tell about it. 
     Our contractor, Brian is dutifully filling our walls with electrical wire and plumbing pipes.  Unfortunately, neither of those things are very useful unless there is actually electricity to run through the wire and water to run through the pipe.  The good news is that we got electricity last Monday.  Yeah!!!  The bad news is that when we ran the water it ran for about 15 minutes and then the well ran dry.  Boooo!!.  With the Thanksgiving Holiday in full swing last week, we were unable to get the well looked at until yesterday.  The latest good news is the well is producing enough water for the house.  We were running it at a faster rate, so it ran out sooner than expected.  We may need to get a holding tank to make sure we don't run out mid shower, but the well driller felt that we had enough to keep the household running.  Now we need to check the water quality to make sure the water doesn't ruin the instant hot water heater.  If we have hard water (which is very likely), we will have to install a water softener to insure we don't get build up in the instant hot water heater.  What? Another appliance to spend money on?  Of course I want it!  Once we get the water tested and properly softened.  We can start running the water through the Pex Tubes and voila, we will have heat!  Our contractor will be very excited to have both heat and electricity.  He's been working in less than ideal conditions these past few weeks.  We'll be having major labor negotiations if we don't start providing him with some basic creature comforts pretty soon. 
     Some of the drywall has been installed on the 2nd level to have a surface for the insulation to sit on when it is put in the attic. 

 Here is a Pinterest craft that I've made for Christmas.  It's an advent countdown board that I will clip small gift, Christmas verses, and Christmas activities for us do during the Christmas season. 

I was inspired by this Pin.

 I think working on my photo taking abilities, lighting techniques, and maybe actually hanging it up will improve the wow factor of my little craft.  We're back to that whole "effort" thing again.  Maybe next year?  Any other fun Christmas crafts out there or are you focused on the edible Christmas treats?  We'll be making some of those next week! 

 

 

Counter Culture

Counter tops are expensive!  Almost as expensive as the rest of our entire kitchen put together including appliances.  Who knew?  We've redone 3 kitchens previously and in each of them we chose laminate counter tops.  I liked them.  They did their job and the cost was extremely reasonable.

Kitchen counter in our house at W. William St.

 

 

 

 

In our current house we have laminate for our counters along with a butcher block top for our island.

Current House

 I think the laminate has worked in these houses for two reasons. 
     1. The kitchen counter space is not a large amount of square footage.
     2. The price point of the houses did not call for a high end surface.
  I really like the mix of the butcher block and laminate in our current house.  The butcher block was bought on the cheap at Ikea.  I think we got a 40"x72" (20 Square feet) for around $130.00.  That doesn't include the cost to drive there, but I love Ikea, so the trip worth the gas money.  It ended up being around $6.50 per square foot.  Not bad once you look at the other options available out there.  Let me put that $6.50 in perspective.  Here is what we are going to pay for some other counter top options.
Laminate $23.00 a square foot installed + tax
Corian (Solid Surface) $ 59.00-89.00 a square foot installed (there were some cheaper options, but I didn't like them.)
Quartz $54.00 -89.00 a square foot installed
Granite $49.00-89.00 a square foot installed
  I learned a  couple of things during my research.  Granite, Corian (solid surface counter tops), and Quartz are not subject to sales tax (at least in New York State) because it is considered a capital improvement.  Laminate is subject to sales tax.   I also learned the pros and cons to these different materials.  I know many people who have each of these and are happy with their choices, so I am not going to bore you with my take on the benefits or drawbacks of any of these. Have your counter top and cook on it too! To be honest with you I really wanted concrete counter tops, but for several reasons we felt our money, energy, and time would be better spent on other projects.  Really we just didn't want to screw them up.
   We will have about 75 square feet of counter surface.  We quickly realized that any material we chose would be A LOT of money.  We considered doing the butcher block from IKEA, but since we are doing an extra deep peninsula to accommodate for seating we would have to seam it in the middle.  Neither one of us was thrilled with the amount of seams it would require.  We are planning on using the butcher block in our mudroom area since the space is smaller and won't require any seams.
  We then looked at laminate.  The cost by far was the best, but we didn't think that amount of laminate would add value to our kitchen.  We would rather pinch a few pennies in the flooring department for the bathrooms and put something a little nicer on our counters.
   After checking out Lowes and Home Depot we found that there were a few options in Granite that were cheaper than Corian and Quartz. I never would have thought that, but apparently Granite is so 2010 it's being put on the clearance rack.

This is Lowes most affordable option.

I liked the pattern of this granite, but I thought the black and white would make the kitchen look too sterile, but I was willing to settle to save $1,000.  Good thing Dan scoured Craig's List.  We found Granite Creations by Anthony.  He had some lovely pieces of stone starting at $40.00 a sq. ft.  We walked away with these 2 samples.

Yvara ($50.00 sq. ft)

Santa Cecelia $45.00 ( I have no idea if this is how it's really spelled.)

Being the discriminating consumers that we are we quickly decided to go with the cheapest option.  I don't think anyone is really surprised by this news.  It does help that we all preferred the Santa Cecelia.  It had a warm neutral tone to it, and I hope it will it better match the rest of the decor.

 I'm sorry if you wasted some of your very valuable time reading about our counter top decision making process. I will make it up to you with a good cup of coffee and my newly famous pumpkin cake.  Have any of you  made a counter top choice recently?  How did it all work out?  In other house related news, we should be getting electric service this week.  I can't wait for lights and heat!



 

 

 

 

Mud on your shoes?

    Got mud on your shoes?  That's okay, come on in.  We have an entire room dedicated to mud and the removal of it. Erika Powell  and Leigh Ann Harris of Urban Grace designed this beautiful space.  We will be using many of these ideas as we build the mudroom.  I've been told that eventually we will be putting things in like walls and flooring.  The big questions is when?   

 

Layout

North Wall

South Wall

East Wall

West Wall

Pantry

 I am in awe of people who can take a blank space and pull together such a beautiful space.  Thanks Erika and Leigh Ann.  I can't wait to get me some mud on my feet!

On the Market!

     So I know I've been talking about this for months, but we finally got this stupid house on the market.  It took a lot of pain, sweat, tears, and cleaning.....oh so much cleaning, but it is officially listed on the Elmira Corning MLS  Click on the link, take a look, and tell your friends and family about this awesome house.

 This is what the dining room looked like while I was taking pictures of the kitchen.  It was my technique for picture taking. One room looked fabulous while the rest of the house....didn't look as fabulous.

     Meanwhile back at the farmhouse..... work is still continuing with electrical, plumbing, and heating.  Word on the street is that we will be moving into insulation and drywall territory in about 3 weeks.  That will be exciting!

We have already have our new garage filled.  nothing like getting a move on the move.  (I plan on refinishing  I hope my mom refinishes the upside down blue sofa and gold chair.)

Our heating system that we just found out is installed wrong.

 The pic below shows a picture of the radiant floor heat.  Nothing says home like warm feet in the winter.  One of the downfalls of radiant heat is that it takes longer to heat up.  We are looking into a secondary heating system to make up for this shortfall.

Master bath tub.  

   I know these pics are not too excited, but it is where we are at.  I am actually starting to think of colors, fabrics, and finishes.  That my friend is where the fun begins.  Here are a couple of sites that I am getting my inspiration from. Pinterest  and Houzz.com.  Both of these sights allow you to search pictures and add them to a "virtual pin board" or "idea book"  I haven't completely figured out either of these sites, but I'm sure my 10 year old can help me figure it out.  Let me know if you have any good sites you would recommend.  I definitely should be spending my extra time looking at more websites of beautiful things that I can't afford and don't have time to make.  Do you think web surfing counts as a hobby?  If it does, I've found myself a new hobby.  

Slow and Steady Wins the Race...Right!?

       So here's the update (or lack of one).  We've been pretty busy trying to get our current house ready to sell.  This has involved a lot of packing up, putting away, touching up paint, decorating and redecorating. I Pretty much have been making the house the way I've always wanted it in order to let someone else live in it.  What can I say, I've got a generous spirit.  This is what home sweet home has looked like over the past few weeks.

I like to call this look  shabby chic.

Organization waiting to happen.

Here is what I hope I the rest of the house will look like.

The reason this looks so clean is because everything that was in this room is now in my hallway.

This buffet is my latest Salvation Army project.  I wish I had taken a before picture.

Progress is being made on the new house. This is where the SLOW and STEADY part comes in.  Plumbing fixtures are being placed.  Here is the downstairs bath.

Eventually there will be a wall and then I hope to put tile on that wall.

This is the tile I hope to put on that wall.  I also hope to hang this shower curtain over the shower...but first there needs to be a shower.

I would like to buy the toilet in the middle for all of the bathrooms in the house.  The only problem is that it doesn't have the traditional flush handle on the side.  It has the buttons on the top.   Anyone have one of these?  How does it work for you?

    Here are some other random shots from my phone.   I think this is the bathtub fixture I bought for the master bath.  I have three pictures of shower fixtures in my phone, and this is the one I like the best, but I'm not 100% sure it's the one I bought. I guess I can always take the one I have back and buy this one if I didn't already.

Possible paint choices.  I think I'm leaning towards the strip in the middle, the second and third colors down.

 

I guess that completes the non progress report.  I've spent a lot of time getting nothing done.  This however is going to be the week of change.  I can feel it in my bones.  Can you?