Pressure

Pressure.  Yeah I think it's safe to say that anyone involved with our project at all right now is feeling the pressure.  The hubby and I are scheduled to move back on the 10th, and it seems that ever since we made that decision, any little thing that could go wrong, has gone wrong.  For instance, we thought the city wasn't going to make us bust up that concrete slab, but of course they did, so we wound up having to waste a week's worth of grueling man hours.  The marble slab company lost one of our master bathroom sinks.  This means we can't have our final inspection before we move in (and we'll have to live without that sink for awhile).  Our brand new fireplace in the living room can't be finished because the perfect antique tile we found online was...well they just couldn't find it any more (but would we like this really ugly box of tile that they did find?  no.).  Sigh...we're all trying very hard to roll with the punches, but it's difficult to do when there's so many of them.  If this were any other time of year, the hubby and I would just try to push our move date back, but we desperately need to get at least somewhat settled into our house before the holiday season (we're hosting it for our family this year).  Enough whining, let's focus on some more positive things.   

Our lighting is installed and is now turned on.

Our front porch light looks even more awesome than I hoped.

This Art Deco beauty proudly graces our front hall.  I'm worried that it's scale is a little too small for such a vast space, but if it is, tough titty.  It's gorgeous and it's not going anywhere.

 The sconces are installed and they look lovely.

Elsewhere in the house, the office is almost finished.  We are still missing our mantle in there, our leaded glass cabinet doors, and they have a little paintwork to do, but mostly it's mostly livable.

I look forward to spending the winter at that beautiful granite desk, writing the next great American novel...or surfing the internet, whatever.

In the kitchen, they've finished tiling our stove hood.

 It's inspired by the kitchen in the movie Practical Magic.

 I think ours looks better.

They've also installed our wonderful antique 1930's sink.  The faucet is from Kohler and it's modeled after vintage faucets.

I remember watching my Nan stand many an hour at a sink like this in her 1930's bungalow kitchen.  The only difference is that she had one faucet for hot water and one faucet for cold water.  She had to keep a bucket in the sink so she could mix the hot and cold together to wash dishes.  We decided that we didn't want to be quite THAT authentic.

The master bathroom is almost finished and it looks amazing!

We decided to go with the classic hexagonal floor tiles, but to give it a little texture and interest, we went with the marble tiles instead of just plain.  It's not as costly as you might think.

 Here you can see the floor with it's neato bandito border.  Our designer Karen came up with that to add a little interest to the space.  I think it looks really cool.

As you can see, all we have left to do is a few little details.  Also, we're missing one of our sinks...stupid poopie head marble slab company!

A close up of the one sink we do have.  The hammered nickel bowl is not very historic, but damn it looks super cool!  The faucet is another vintage model from Kohler.

This is what our master bath toilet would look like if it were dressed up as a mummy for Halloween.

 

 

 And here's the shower area, almost finished.  We tried to mimic the exposed pipe look from this inspiration photo:

 We couldn't find any fixtures with that awesome grubby finish, and having a handheld showerhead kinda interferes with the antique effect, but I gotta have one to clean all my hoo hoo dilly and cha cha.  Sometimes practicality has to win out.

The hall bath floor has finally gotten it's black rosettes.

And the dry sink is now in place!  Generally, I'm not a huge fan of vessel sinks.  I think the look is too modern and trendy, and I am SO not about the trendy.  But since we are using an actual antique dry sink in there, it seems appropriate that it would have a vessel sink on top.   I love the cool faucet that Karen found.  It looks like an old pump.  I've tried to find a link to it, but I can't right now.  If I find it in the future, I'll come back and modify this post.

 Here's a close up of the vessel sink before it was installed.  It's a handmade pottery sink.  I think it sort of looks like an old bowl that you would use in the kitchen.

The laundry/pantry room is coming along.  It's floor also has black rosettes now and my Grandmother's old washtubs are being installed to be used as an utility sink.

As you can see, they fixed that cabinet, however, we just figured out that the walls have been painted the wrong shade of blue (hey! there's a lot of blue going on in this house, it's easy to make a mistake).  The wall color should match the color in the backing of the cabinet, which I believe is Cosmos by Sherwin Williams.  No worries though, they are going to be re-painting it today.

And now folks, it's time to reveal what we finally decided to do with the front hall floor.  The wonderful and talented Byron Blake who you know from our exciting Semi-Floor-A-Palooza post came up with a design that mimics an old quilt pattern (a nod to my country/primitive tastes).

We swung by the house late one night and caught Bryon working hard on the floors.

Here's what it looked like before they were sealed.  See what I mean when I say it looks like a quilt?

 

And here it is after it's been poly'd.  The poly darkened the colors a bit.  Love it!

Byron even included a little Serenity symbol, a nod to the hubby's Firefly fandom.

Folks, I cannot stress enough how much we love this beautiful floor.  To me, it is the crown jewel of the house and the first thing you will notice when you walk in the front door.

The view from the front door of our house.  I can't believe I get to live here.

That's it for this time folks.  But before we go, I just wanted to point out that I am full of durp (no surprise there).  Remember the kitchen island glass front drawers?  Well it turns out that they already have a fake back to them, so I won't have to fill up the drawers with gallons of dried beans to make them look good.

Now I just have to figure out what to put in there.  I'm thinking maybe dried beans, dried Indian corn, dried chilis, and maybe some spices?

So what's up next for the house?  Well they are still going to be working on a little more construction.  Our designer Karen is also going to be at our house supervising the delivery of the furniture we bought this summer and the installation of our draperies.   If we have time, we'll try to pop by the house and get some photos of the process.  We have a crazy busy weekend ahead of us including more packing and prepping for the move on Monday, and a birthday party for one of our littlest friends.  I will try to update the blog if I can, but no promises.  If not, I will see you all on the flipside!