(Not so) Suddenly Done!

After many months of neglecting this blog, we're back with an exciting update...the house is officially finished and under contract!  Happily, we negotiated a long close period so we have a couple of months to figure out our next move/project but for now - the professional pictures from BTW Images (with commentary, of course):

All the landscaping work paid off - looks lush and green!

Walking through the front door - the formal living room.  And so much wood floor!  We remember installing every piece...

Close up showing the fireplace with reclaimed barn wood beam for the mantel

To the left of the front door, a den/reading room

Moving into the family room/kitchen space, featuring Brian's custom built barn door to the pantry

Close up of the island with marble countertop and walnut bar top slab

Eat-in kitchen, featuring custom walnut table built by Brian and built-in banquette

Same space, different angle

More kitchen

Is this overkill on the kitchen pictures?  Probably, but I never get tired of this space

I'll miss you, Wolf range

One of my favorite features (and one that was replicated from our last house): double outswing French doors.  It feels so airy and spacious when they're open

Just rounding off the kitchen space - please note the stairwell, which very nearly killed us with its difficulty and stress

Finally moving on - into the pantry (with giant wine fridge because...wine)

Formal dining room (with yet another custom-by-Brian table)

Mudroom with built-ins

And starting the parade of bedrooms and bathrooms.  With six bedrooms and five and a half baths, I'm not sure I'm going to post pictures of each one but this is the first floor bedroom (with en suite bath)

And one of the five full baths (so much tile work)

Moving upstairs - hello stairs!  You look so nice for something that was so time-consuming and stress-inducing!

Entrance to what we like to call the second-floor living room (but will probably end up as a kids playroom in its next life).  More barn doors.  Barn doors seem to be becoming our signature look

Master bedroom with accent wall

Some of my other favorite spaces - the master bath

Definitely going to take at least one more swim in this tub before we leave

Hello closet!  You make it so easy to be organized.  I'll miss you when we're living out of boxes again

Another bedroom

Another en suite bathroom

And another bedroom

The jack-and-jill bathroom with double sinks

Down to the basement - another reclaimed barn beam mantel over the fireplace

Wet bar in basement

Another bedroom

And another bathroom (no wonder we're tired of tiling!)

And, finally, the media room

The outdoor patio with fire pit

Longer view

The twilight photo shoot!

And from the backyard

Have a seat

It seems as though there is no end to the things that can be built around here!  Even as the house inches towards the finish line, Brian is tackling new projects and acquiring new skills...and new tools, of course, as well.  He already started his woodworking career with the table for the kitchen banquette; now he's gone ahead and built a custom dining table for the formal dining room.  He took the old 2 x 8 rafters from the old roof and repurposed them for a table.  Off to the pictures!

First - a before and after of the basement.  Using and/or discarding a lot of the leftover wood has made a huge difference in space and organization.

The before picture - not a lot of room to move around here

And the after - so nice and clean now!

And moving onto the table construction.  The wood was decently straight but in order to build the table well, we needed a new tool - a jointer.

Hello jointer!  We think you'll be very happy here

Now onto working with the wood:

This is not ready to be a table yet

But skipping ahead many, many steps, this is starting to look like a table.  Here, the wood is glued and clamped together to let it set

Skipping over even more steps, now cut to size and with end pieces attached

Seeing how it fits with sawhorses as legs before we finish it with three coats of a matte finish poly.

Now starting work on the real legs.  These are built from wood and primed for painting

Painted and working on spacing.  As you can see, Brian initially planned to use three legs but once we got the table in place and set the chairs next to it, it became clear that three wasn't great for chair spacing.  So we experimented a bit and decided on this....

Clean, simple, and chair-spacing friendly

And done!!

Ready for a dinner party!

Closing the door on the project list

Another week, another project done!  We've been waiting to get to the finishing touches for awhile now and the first project up was a set of barn doors for the second floor living space.  We're using this space as a den right now but since it's right by the smaller bedrooms, someone with kids might want to make it into a playroom...in which case, doors would be key for closing off the area!  We built custom barn doors for the last house so this was an easier project in that Brian already had a design in his head and knew how to execute.  But, instead of going with regular white doors, we took a leap of faith and went with a bright color.  We both love how it came out...hopefully others will love it too!

Onto the project:

We didn't take many pictures in the building of the door - this is made from pre-primed (by us) 3/4" veneer plywood with floor trim ripped to size for the detail

Moving onto setting up the track.  Laser level is key here

There it is!

Dryfitting the doors - looks like they're the right size

Doors set up for painting

And painted!  We went with a really bold color - Sherwin Williams Lakeshore (SW 6494), using Sherwin Williams Emerald Urethane trim paint in satin 

Ta-da!  Open...

and closed!

 We also took some "after" pictures - even though there are still a few small projects to do on the first floor so it's not completely finished yet.  But it's getting close!

The kitchen/family room area.  There will be another barn door on that far wall to the pantry in the not too distant future

Looking into the kitchen/family room from the front door/living room area

Formal living room

Finished fireplace in the living room

And more kitchen/family room area pictures

From the other side of the room

Looking out towards the front door and living room area

Hello stairs

So many stairs (looking up from the basement)

More stairs (this time, looking down

Painting progress and finishing touches

It always surprises me how the house can look and feel so unfinished, for so many months, and then all of a sudden it comes together.  We're finally at that point after what feels like miles and miles of trim installation and other detail work.  It helped immensely that we hired out painting for the first floor and, after it took three guys six full days to prep and paint, we're glad we did.  There's still some touch-up to do, little details here and there to clean up, and a handful of additional projects on the list but for the first time, the house does not look like a construction zone!  That alone is cause for a celebratory post, but add in that Brian had the time to build a custom dining table and I have another foster puppy (I might be starting a foster puppy mill here), and there is much good news in this update!  Let's start with a couple of "after" pictures:

Stairs are done and painted!

Another angle - walls are also finally painted too!

Brian also went ahead and started the install on the crown molding in the kitchen

And finished the install - we forgot to take pictures of the rest of the cabinets but they all look like this now!

Then it was time to work on a fun project - building the walnut base for the custom dining table.  Brian made a prototype awhile back from regular 2x4s and has been waiting to have time to build the real table from walnut.  We picked up the walnut pieces when we bought the living edge bar top and it looks like they came from the same tree.  After Brian bought some new woodworking equipment (a planer, drum sander, and other fun things), it was time to make the real table.

Just three pieces of walnut right now

Getting the legs notched out

Yep, that fits together!

And a close-up of the joints

A few coats of rub-on poly in satin will finish the wood off

And now it's time to glue and clamp it all together

Now that's a custom table!  

And a wider angle shot with the living edge bar top from the same tree

The kitchen is finally coming together!

And here's our current puppy resident, Ella!

Such a sweetheart!