Powder room and master bath

Looking through the doorway into the powder room. Anyone remember the old wallpaper? 

The wall is painted Naval by Sherwin Williams, and does NOT look black. 

The counter top is quartz. Plumbing should be hooked up tomorrow, and then we will have water on the first floor again!

Where the toilet will go. 

Trying to get a more realistic view of the wall color. This is close but not quite this bright.

The color is halfway between the left side and the right side here. I'm of no help here. 

Meanwhile, in the master bath, the color as shown on the wall here (Comfort Gray by SW) IS accurate. Love it.

Both sinks are in! Plumbing to be up and running by Wednesday is the goal and hope. By the way, the wall tiles and counter top are the same here as in the powder room. Just our little way to save money (and not have to make one more blasted decision).

Odds are, the next photos to be posted will be the finished, or very nearly finished results! We are hearing Friday for the kitchen goal. I'm trying to set aside all next weekend to move things back where they should go. 

The rest of the cabinets, the countertops, and paint

These views should be easily identifiable by now to anyone who's been following the process. Where the oven will go:

 The sink, facing the back yard area. Microwave will go in the open space in the cabinet on the upper right.

Facing the dining room. Still waiting on doors for the pantry. 

Facing the back door. Final decisions on paint, as can be seen above and below. We went with the lower color, Gray Screen by Sherwin Williams. The hallway will be Sand Dollar (also Sherwin Williams), which you can see in a very small swatch on the wall above the putty areas.

Yes, we are very excited, and the latest word is that we will be back in both rooms by this coming Friday (earlier for the bathroom, hopefully). Which means, the plumber, the painter, the carpenter, and the tiler will all be around most of the week. We are just going to try to stay as much out of the way as possible!

The cabinets! The cabinets! Oh, and first day back to school

Guess what?!?! The cabinets have arrived! And some are installed! And they look amazing. Plus, I spent my day working from home and listening to the Pennsylvania Dutch language and watching as the installers figured out how to get the master bath cabinets to the 2nd floor. (Spoiler alert: They brought them up through the 2nd floor window of the master bedroom! We didn't actually see it happen, because Dan and I went out to lunch at that point.)

But first, the new students:

 Half asleep brand new high school student. All reports are good so far, even though his schedule was still a bit messed up. He handled it, some of his friends are in his classes, some are in his lunch, and the carpool worked!

4th grade! Last year at this school (our 10th there as a family). He just keeps refusing to stop growing.

Now as promised, the cabinets! 

The Kitchen

 Facing where the range will be, with the sink area to the right.

 Facing the dining room. The plastic has all come down! The desk area can now be seen to the right by the window. There will be shelves above the L-shaped part. The pantry can be seen to the left by the dining room doorway.

Facing the sink area. The dishwasher is waiting patiently in the basement to be placed in that open spot. Also, it's hard to see, but to the right of the gap is our new garbage and recycling center, with pull-out cabinets that hold plastic bins (one on the left, for gargabe, two on the right for two types of recycling). Between that and having access to the laundry chute from the kitchen, our counters might actually stay clear! Oh, and the appliance garage on the left can't hurt, either.

The Master Bathroom

 Looking in through the doorway from the bedroom. There is one cabinet perpendicular to the doorway and two facing it. The one on the right of the facing ones is open at the top because the hinges aren't fully installed. Shelves and a rod also have to go in, obviously.

 Facing the perpendicular cabinet, as I mentioned above, with the linen cabinet to the right, next to the bathtub wall. We discovered, quickly, that the light in this picture will have to be pretty flush to the ceiling for the cabinet door to clear it. Good thing I hadn't made a final decision on the lights in here!

 The vanity for the sinks. SINKS, plural. Oh, the joy. In fact, I'm not sure who's happier, the one who is sick of shaving trimmings and toothpaste splatter or the one who wants to use the sink RIGHT when he's ready to use it.

 Another view of the linen cabinet, with the tub and some tile in the background.

A better view of the tile and the vanity.

The rest of the cabinets will be installed on Thursday, along with the knobs and pulls, and the counter people will come out to measure on Friday. It will probably be another two weeks before that's ready to go in, so we expect a full 3 weeks before it's all done. The restaurants around here will soon know us by name.

Nearly back to school

I really thought I'd posted more recently than nearly a month ago. There have definitely been some changes since the last pics, but it's not nearly as dramatic (at least in the kitchen) as I thought it would be by now. The cabinets, it turns out, are everything. They cost by far the most, and they set the time schedule for much of the rest of the process. And, we are still waiting on the cabinets (which is actually in the time frame of the project, I just am now feeling the "waiting" more). In fact, today may be the least productive day of the entire project, as one of the workers came by about 8, picked up the trash they'd been accumulating, and then left. Tomorrow, the floor refinishing process gets started, so then it should pick up again.

Kitchen with new oak floors that will match (as closely as possible) the existing ones in the rest of the house. Also, all wood framing is up except that one window on the left.

Facing the dining room. We still have lovely plastic sheeting about. Probably is keeping a lot of dust out of our remaining living areas, but we still have a LOT of dust everywhere. All our allergies are acting up.

Facing the back door.

Where the sink will be.

Tile in the powder room!

Still powder room, where the toilet will be. There will be a decorative tile above this and then I've chosen Sherwin Williams naval paint to go above that. I'm waiting for the day, soon, when I walk into the SW store and everyone says, "Hi, Lynette!" because I've been in so often.

Sink area of powder room.

A better view of the floor tile.

 Master bath, where the bulk of the recent changes have occurred. The blue tape will, of course, be removed. We had a little mishap with the glass tile, in that we ordered the "natural" (which is shiny, see-through glass) but they sent the "silk" (which looks like it's been sanded). The guys started installing them before we realized, and it would have delayed things 2 weeks anyway to get the correct ones in, so our contractor used some product that basically got the tiles back to looking transparent. I may or may not have had to sing the "Let it Go" song in my head while this was happening.

The quartz outlining the cut-out area is the same as will be used for the counter top in this room.

Have decided on the color swatch on the left: Sherwin Williams comfort gray. I brought home every possible variation of teal/aqua/blue/green, none of which was correct, before just googling "blue green gray paint" and coming up with the SW one. I don't know why I try to do things on my own anymore.

Just got word that the floor people can be here today due to a problem at another job (so I have to get everything we need for the next few days out of the basement, as we won't have access) AND the cabinets will be arriving next Tuesday. Yay!!

As of today (Friday)

Finishing of the drywall, I think. I'm a bit unclear on this part of the process, but it looks nice! Facing the stove/oven area. You can now see the vent area for the hood. The white cords hanging out of the wall are for the under cabinet lighting.

Old breakfast nook/toward dining room. The wood at the bottom is the flooring. We are attempting to match as close as possible to the existing oak floor.

Sink area. I've been in search of lighting today for above the sink, the island and the desk area. Lowes didn't have anything that grabbed me for these, although I did choose the pendants for the bathroom. On to Home Depot and a local lighting store tomorrow.

Facing the back door. Hasn't really changed much since before, except for the drywall finishing.

Doorway into the master bath. The wall ahead is where my closet used to be, for reference.

Where the toilet and sinks will go. The inset area will be a small cabinet.

Bathtub shower area. The tub is under the cardboard. The grey stuff is special drywall for wet areas (wetwall?). I'm realizing how totally ignorant I am about this whole process as we go.

Where the window was (and still is, behind the drywall). I still can't quite get over that there's a window! Behind there!

Facing the bedroom from the bathroom. The built-ins in the distance were recently installed, and at first I thought they were too big but now I love them. It will be so lovely to have our bedroom back when this is all done, and I can make it all pretty again. We are also getting a king size bed, and I'm looking forward to new bedding and drapes. We will have to repaint the bedroom, but we'll most likely stick with a similar color, since it is FIJI purple and makes Dan happy.

Wednesday this week (just the kitchen), and how we're living during the renovations

Mudding! Of the drywall! Apparently the least favorite task, according to the workers. Dan asks these kinds of questions of them, sometimes while offering them some of his beer collection. I'm thinking they hope we come up with more projects for them.

Facing the stove/oven area.

Old breakfast nook, looking toward the dining room.

Sink area. 

How we wash dishes. Hence, we are using LOTS of paper & plastic products.

Welcome to our litchen - living room/kitchen hybrid. There is barely space for two people to sit anywhere. The microwave is in the dining room, so at least we have that.

Two holes have had to be cut in the wall/ceiling of this room to access pipes & such. We will be tackling this room right after the current renovations are done, needless to say.

As of this week, Monday-ish

A tub! Installed! I was very tempted to climb in.

Drywall! In the kitchen! I'm definitely a fan of drywall, although the smell is a bit overpowering during some of the process. This is, in case you haven't been following along, facing the sink area.

Stove/oven area

Was the breakfast nook, dining room is just beyond, will now have the fridge, pantry, and a desk area.

Facing the back door from the mudroom. The dark square to the left is the laundry chute, which used to be covered up (on this floor - we've always had access from the 2nd floor). This will now be accessible from the kitchen. I've been finding random items to send down just for fun. Perhaps the drywall fumes are getting to me.