Any Predictions? Place your bets? -- Wks 61 - 63, August 24 - September 13, 2008

Although our builder hoped it would be true, getting a certificate of occupancy just isn't going to happen by tomorrow. It might not even happen by the end of the month, but I feel confident we will be settled in by Thankgiving!

If you haven't heard yet, we plan to give our 30 day renter's notice on the 15th or the 30th of the month depending on which is closest to when we get the certificate of occupancy so that we will have a full month to move in and do what we have to do to move out of our rental.

We hoped a lot more would have been done by the time we got back from WA on 9/8, but with the holiday and some very heavy rains while we were gone, it was not to be. So here's what I can show you for the 3-week period covered by this post.

Appliances

You may remember that the rangehood is already in as well as the base of the cooktop. The rest of the kitchen appliances were delivered while we were there on Monday, the 8th (yes, we did go almost straight to the house after getting back from WA). Here the guys are unloading the congelador. That's the freezer. I just love the Spanish name for it.

I'm not sure if these count as appliances, but the furnace, hot water heater and water softener are all in now.
Sinks

The utillity sinks are in. This is mine, mine, mine. It's in the garage and will be the one I will use for gardening, dog washing and whatever other messy work I might do. Eventually, there will be counters of some sort on both sides of it. The 13 foot stainless steel piece we got a couple of years ago won't fit between this sink and the water softener to the left, but I'm sure we will find a good place and use for it.

This is Trout's in the shop. It's his, his, his. I'm not sure what he plans to do in the way of a counter here. He doesn't have a lot of room with wall behind it, but he does have a lot of nothing to the right of it that he can do something with.
This is his shop bath sink. It was a free one Joan got from Lowe's when the one she ordered didn't arrive on time. Free is good.

Hardware

Many posts ago I put in pictures of the door handles we picked out. Now they are on the doors. This is the front door one. They are kind of rustic and feel great to the hand. You may remember that the 1st choice for looks was not the 1st choice for feel. This was our 1st choice for feel and 2nd choice for looks.
Here's an interior handle.

Color Prep

Now for all of you who have wondered, "What are they thinking?", gaze back upon the entryway star. Breathe deeply. Focus on the star. You are starting to understand. It is all coming together. By the way, the light isn't actually on here. That's the solatube shining through it.
All along I planned to have some accent walls in various locations around the house. At first I thought I would paint them. Then I decided to let the pros do it. I managed to catch one of the painters on Friday cutting in the color on this one behind the master bath tub and toilet.
By the next time we went over, he had finished it. This is on the same color path as the wall behind the range in the kitchen. It's just one shade lighter. It's called Spanish Peanut.
Here is Trout checking to see if this toilet flushes yet. It does.
After seeing how bright my vanity lights are, I decided to use the same color behind my vanity mirror on the light wall. It will keep it from being so bright and the warm color will make me look better than I actually do. Over time I plan to fill this wall and perhaps part of the side walls with other Mexican mirrors and milagros I collect. It should be interesting.
This is the accent wall that will be behind our bed. The color looks a little funky in this picture due to the reflection, but it is very similar to the Pomegranate of the shop.
This picture many represent it a little better. My feng shui book said we needed pink or red and gray or silver in this room. No remedies needed here now.
The office got two adjacent accent walls. I love bluegreens of all types. And by feng shui guidelines this room along with the guest room should be blue and/or green. I also wanted this room to be darker and more study-like.
This is a good example of camera error and lighting differences. The color is actually more like this than the blue above.
But where's the blue or green in the guest room? It will all be in the bedding, draperies, etc. This accent wall is the same Spanish Peanut as in the master bath. The bed will go between these two windows. When we get our own bed done or bought, the one that will go here is the one we use now. It's pine. I thought it would be lost on the yellow wall, but it will contrast nicely with this light terra cotta color.
This is the back hall wall between the laundry and the master bedroom. Except for the guest bath, what we have the least of in the house is green. That's not such a bad thing because we have lots of green outside that we see through all those windows, but we both thought having a green accent wall somewhere would be a good thing. It is anticipated by a green countertop and backsplash in the laundry.
This is what it looks like from the living area. You may also notice that the pendant lights finally have shades. I'm not fond of recessed lighting and we only have it in places (like bathrooms) where codes wouldn't allow anything else. But I do like to see what I'm doing, so we have lots of light in the kitchen area.

These are our friends, Don and Patsy, hanging out in the kitchen. You can see the blue accents here behind Don. That big blue nicho to his left will house the desk I got in Santa Fe. It's also pine and would've been lost on the yellow wall. The box to his right is where the freezer and refrigerator will go. The trim that will make them look like they are lah-de-dah builtins instead of Kenmores is to his right.
The kitchen sink is coming along here. It looks fabulous.
Here's a closeup of what the interior is like. To the left of the pullout faucet is a soap dispenser. No more GoJo on the kitchen counter. That will be limited to the garage and shop. The little faucet you can barely see to the right of the big one is for the reverse osmosis system. So not only will we have a water softener for the whole house, but we also will have filtered water at the sink and for the ice supply in the freezer. Both those systems will help keep the calcium deposits down and improve the taste of the water.
Here's a picture of the cooking wall with the lights.

We've been waiting forever to see how the fireplace would look painted blue. The day finally arrived this past week. I've seen many fireplaces down here with decorative painting on them. We still may do that later, but I want to wait to see if it will be needed after the furniture is in, the bancos have their pads, the curtains are up, etc.
This is the mural that is on the front porch to the left of the front door. We made a place for it in the stucco, and it's perfect. Dave (our builder) put it in and now all that has to happen is the grouting.

These handpainted tile murals are fairly common down here. This is the smallest size. They can be very large and take up the better part of an entire wall. Most are pretty primitive like this one. The mural itself consists of the twelve 4" center tiles. We added the 2" ones around it to frame it and make it a little bigger. The ones in the corners are 2" versions of the ones on my vanity.
And we'll end on an unfortunate mistake. Trout did this beautiful and creative tin work for the top section of the linen closet door, but Kelly and he accidentally made the door for a taller cabinet. So they are going to have to make a new door. Today Trout said it's small enough to just need one panel. Kelly may end up using this mistake for his examples or we might just hang it on the wall as art.
So that's where we are now. There still are many details to finish and mistakes to correct, but we are getting very close. I'd better get busy with my curtain-making.

Getting Closer -- Wks 49 - 51, June 1 - 21, 2008

We're guessing we might be able to move to La Mansión Maybe Mañana sometime in August. Here's what happened in the past 3 weeks.

More Concrete

Most of the action happened inside the house, but additional concrete was poured for the front and back porches and the courtyard.

This is a shot of the front porch. I like the way the expansion joints line up with the bases for the posts. This is the part of the porch just enroute to the front door.


This is a view of the back porch outside the great room. Both the front and back porches will be stained just like the floors in the house.

This is what we decided to do with the area in the courtyard where the stairs and the door from the garage meet. I didn't want a straight line and I didn't want the big faucet to be encased in concrete.

This is a dove's eye view of the curve Trout drew.



This is the forming for the concrete.

And this is how it came out. That box to the left is the stoop for Trout's shop.



Cabinet Men

Kelly and Trout worked away at installing the cabinets. Most of them are in with the drawers in place and ready for Dave to tile. Doors will not be added until after the tile is installed, the appliances are in, etc.

This was a common scene with the two of them pondering over a fitting situation. This happens to be in the laundry. Check the post after this for how it all turned out.

Here's Trout working on the kitchen island.

This is Kelly working on the cabinets on the back (cooking) wall of the kitchen.




This is Lo's vanity as of this past week. Isn't it fun how different the same yellow looks in different light?



Tile

Dave decided to do the tile himself and seems to be having a good time with it. We think it looks great.

This is how the guest bath looks now without any grout.


This is the mural that will go at the back of the tub.




The master bath tub isn't quite trimmed out yet, but it's almost finished. Can you find the "odd" tile?

This is the beginning of the work on the master bath shower. You can (barely) see the river rock floor and the lizards frolicing in the yellow field tile.

Paint

We decided to do some accent walls, so we tested some paints on the already yellow painted walls. Our primary colors in the house are the Mexican Talavera versions of terra cotta, green, yellow and blue you see here. Everything is a play on those.



Well, almost everything. These are the two possible colors for two accent walls in the office. They look almost exactly alike, but the one on the left is a little lighter and greener. That's the one we're going to use. And yes, it has nothing to do with the 4 tiles above. I just wanted some turquoise in the place and it's one of the colors in the Garland sofa which will be in the office.

This is the Garland sofa. It's one from the 60's that belonged to my uncle. I had it upholstered here.

These were the possible colors for the wall behind the bed in the master bedroom. We already decided to use the redder, darker one far to the right.

My Feng Shui book said we needed red or pink in that room, so I got two different quilts (on sale of course) to use in there. They inspired using this accent color. It's also very close to the color Trout wants for his shop exterior.

We really like the guest room being all yellow, but when we put the bedframe in there it will get lost against that back wall because it's natural pine, so we decided to use the terra cotta color on the left in this picture for it and for the inside of the closet. It's just one shade lighter than the color on the kitchen cooking wall. The color inspiration piece for this cowboy and Indian room is the denim quilt shown at the left.


After seeing my paint ball experiments, Trout really got into the accent wall concept, so we may do one or two in the master bath in terra cotta and maybe green. And we may do the back hall wall that you see from the kitchen hall in green. Film next week.

He also agrees that we need to paint the inside of the kitchen nicho and upper wall above the shelf in the same blue as the fireplace. This is that nicho with that blue sample.



You can see the area above the shelf in the upper right of this picture of the kitchen cooking wall.

And the reason we decided to paint the inside of the kitchen nicho blue is that I bought a piece of furniture in Santa Fe for that location. It's also a light pine color that would not contrast enough with the yellow walls. The reason we decided to paint the back wall above the shelf in that blue, too, is that it is in the same plain as the nicho.

I wanted to get a desk-type thing for this nicho and just never could find anything quite right here in Tucson. Then I was in Santa Fe last week and found this desk made by an 81-year old man named John Spagnola. He calls it a territorial desk. It's very rough and funky and we love the little details.


And the artist/woodworker put his initials on one of the legs.



Lighting


We finally finalized our finally final lighting. We thought we'd done that back in May, but the bid(s) kept being adjusted -- up, unfortunately -- so we made some changes so as not to go too far over budget. For example, we originally picked an exterior sconce from Lowe's. Then we switched to one from HiLite (an industrial light manufacturer whose fixtures you see everywhere). There are 29 exterior sconces. The bid for the HiLite sconces was $147 each. The Lowe's sconces cost $19 each. Needless to say, we switched back.

So this is what we'll use on the exterior now. We will use compact fluorescent bulbs rated for exterior use and probably yellow ones of lower wattage than the fixtures are rated for so as to keep the bugs and the lumens down. Most of the time they will be turned off.





A similar thing happened with the interior pendants. So we decided to use these in the kitchen. This will be the fixture.




And this will be the shade.

In the baths, we'll have this fixture.





With this shade.
We chose these to mimic the school house light kits on the fans we will have in almost every room. Here's the fan style. It will all be silver in color including the blades.


And here's the light kit.




All these light fixtures have an old-fashioned feel instead of the industrial look we originally wanted, but they were a close second choice.

For fun, we will have these in the entry.



And these will be the sconces in the great room, dining nook and hallways. For once the thing we liked the best was also the cheapest of our choices.


The Kitchen Sink


You may remember how excited we were about our cobalt blue 42" sink. Well, it turned out it was discontinued and no one told our builder, so when she tried to order it, she couldn't get it. We came up with 4 other acceptable options, but our favorite is this one and it is probably what we will end up with. I like the fact that the big faucet, filtered water faucet and the hand soap dispenser will all go on the deck instead of in holes on the sink.

It's only the standard 33" wide, but it's the right color, deep and the divider is shallow so it will sort of be like having one big sink. Of course, the cabinet underneath is 42" wide for the original sink so it won't match up. If we had known in advance about the discontinuation, we would have made the under sink cabinet narrower and widened the other cabinets by 9" or so. If our builder had known it was going to be discontinued, she would have ordered the sink early.

So whaddya think? Should we center this sink on the bigger cabinet or line up the main faucet and the shallow divider with the center of the cabinet?


Windows


What with all the work inside and the 100+ temperatures, some of the plastic was removed from the windows. That allowed us to get a real feel for what it will be like after we move in. This is what the guest bedroom looks like from the inside with some of the windows open.



And this is what it looks like from the outside. Perfect!