Doors

The doors between the butler’s pantry and the pantry/future laundry room are going to be converging pocket doors which will be visible from the kitchen. I really wanted doors with a little something special in that area. I also wanted to make sure that the selected doors included glass to let the light into the butler’s pantry from the window in the pantry/future laundry room. We found the old doors shown below and decided they were perfect for the spot. The wood on the bottom of the doors was rotten and they were not set up as pocket doors. The company who is building our exterior doors picked them up and said they could remove the glass and build two new converging pocket doors for them. We are excited to see the final product.

Here is a look at our front door that will be delivered and installed tomorrow. We are going to stain it a dark brown. It should look quite nice when it is all finished.

First Floor Framing Update

Here is a quick framing picture update. It is changing so much each day that I can’t keep up with it. This was yesterday and today it looks totally different because they have added all the exterior sheathing and the 2nd floor decking which really helps define each space.

Front Elevation

Entry Way 

Looking into Dining Room from Entry

Looking into Living Room from Dining Room

Looking into Kitchen from Living Room

Master Bedroom

Master Bath (from Master Bedroom)

Master Closet

Back Porch

Cabinet Designs

Until now, I never thought that much about cabinets. Don’t get me wrong, I would see cabinets I liked but I never took the time to figure out what exactly it was about a certain cabinet that I really liked...until now.  Now I notice cabinets everywhere and find myself looking at every little detail, or lack of detail as it may be. When we first started with the house design, Josh and I began pulling pages out of magazines and books, marking internet pages and surveying every house we entered. We both liked really simple shaker style cabinets with exposed hinges but to us the function of each cabinet was just as important as the outward design. In order to satisfy my need to see the cabinets and to make sure that every little detail was correct and functional, I drew each cabinet in the house to scale in plan in section view. Those crazy engineering tendencies I guess.  It took a while but it forced us to think about the function and appearance of the cabinets in each room. We spent a lot of time measuring existing cabinets, and marking out spaces with furniture to get a feel for an area. We added every note we could think of to insure the cabinet maker understood the design and layout. I will admit that now that I am writing this it seems a little crazy but honestly this whole project is a little crazy so this is just par for the course.

No. 1 Reason NOT to Wear Capri Pants to a Job Site

Fall

This is a picture of our neighbor’s tree last week. It was so beautiful I had to share.

Demolition Derby

We began two weeks ago. Some guys we use to work with at the beach came up for the majority of the week to help us out. They were great! The drawings have us removing most of the walls in the house. Because the existing hardwood floors are in such incredible shape, we want to reuse them and needed to be careful not to damage them during demo. Our plan is to weave (http://www.hgtv.com/home-improvement/hardwood-floor-patch/index.html ) in new wood flooring where walls were removed and add additional wood flooring to match in the additional areas. We will sand all the floors down and stain them with a very dark stain to get a nice even feel. The roof will come off next week when they begin framing.  

The inside of the house certainly looks different with all the walls down. Here are a few pictures of the process.

Before they started tearing out the walls, I grabbed a few items out of the house that I am certain you will see again somewhere in the finished house…refinished of course.