Interior Update Continued...



 

Besides the kitchen cabinets, there's been some other progress in the interior of the house.  The fireplace has been an ongoing concern because of the height both inside and outside.  All the rock guys who've looked at it said it was definitly a two man job and most of them work alone.  After finally finding a crew that was willing to do it, we lost them while waiting for the back-ordered stone.  The Cultured Stone was manufactured by Corning and was ordered through our friend Randy Miller and his company B.C. Brick.  When we first started looking at the sample boards at B.C. Brick we changed our minds every time we were in the store. 

Randy drove us by a few houses in the area that had stone work finished with what we were leaning towards but it usually left us less sure of our choice.  While in the store Randy gave us a copy of Corning's catalog that had a fireplace covered in stone and after seeing the picture we knew it was what we wanted.  It was actually a mix of two stone types, Southern Ledgestone, and Field Stone in the Bucks Country color.  The mantle came from a local fellow who is manufacturing our flooring.  We had told him we wanted somthing rustic and on one of our visits to his shop, he brought out a few hand hewn beams that had come from a 100 year old homestead barn in his area.  It was as rustic as they

Nosy Neighbor Checking Out The House

 come and we were sure it would match up with the rock and iron fireplace nicely.  Because the wood was still it's natural weathered color, coming up with the color was tricky.  It's made from Douglas Fir which usually goes a pink/orange color when stained so we had Rick (flooring guy) stain it with a brownish concoction of his own making.  After getting it home I mixed up a wax from a dark Danish Oil, varsol, and beeswax and gave the beam a good shot of elbow grease... the color came out spot on and left a nice mellow shine to the wood.  The two wires above the mantel are for some sconces we'll install later.

The bathrooms have been progressing slowly but given the nature of the tiles, it's not a big suprise.  Because the house was meant to mimic an old craftsman style home from the early 1900's we decided early on that subway tiles along with a hexagon mosaic floor would add some old world charm.  Hexagon tiles were used regularly in houses, restaurants, hotel lobbies etc... all through-out the early part of the last century and really have a nice effect on a space. After we had decided on the style of tiles we wanted, the difficult part was finding them.  Locally they were non-existant and even on the internet there were very few companies that dealt with them... probably not a popular choice with all the new styles of modern tiles available.  A number of years back I had lived in an old heritage apartment building that had them in the entrance as well as the bathrooms, the one thing that was different about those tile and the ones I was finding on the internet was that the originals had a completely flat surface whereas the ones I was finding had a rounded or "cushioned edge" that made them look not quite right to my eye.  It took me a while but I found two

1-1/4" Hexagon Tiles

comapanies manufacturing the flat version that we were after... unfortunately, at $14.00 sqft. we'd be coming up with a new idea for tiles.  While in a local tile supplier looking for new ideas, I happened to ask if they had any hexagon tiles (I wasn't quite ready to quit on the idea yet) and to my suprise the guy brought out a sample board that had the exact tile I was after.  I asked about the price and prepared myself to be disappointed, and although he quoted $11.00 sqft., it was still more than we wanted to spend.  Armed with the new manufacturer's name and tile style (Daltile 1-1/4" keystones) I hit the internet and found South Cypress Flooring had the tile for under $7.00 sqft.

Mosaic Floor

This was a bit more than we wanted to spend but we could make it work.  While searching for hexagon floors on the internet, I had found some photos of some historic houses that had borders or small, square tiles around the hexagons... Daltile happened to make 3/4" square tiles so we decided to add the borders as well.  South Cypress Flooring also sold the 3" x 6" subway tiles we liked so we were able to order all our tiles online at save about 45% off the local tile suppliers.  Everything seemed rosy until we found out we'd be waiting 7 weeks for the hexagons to be manufactured.  We knew it would delay everything on the house and drive Dan (site superintendant) crazy, but we also knew these tiles were going to look great.
The tile guy started about a week ago and things are going slower than we had hoped for,  but Arturo (tile guy) is doing an amazing job with the installation.

Interior Progress

The exterior of our house is almost complete with only the painting left to be finished so we have been focusing on the interior the past few weeks.  Along with the siding, windows, and doors, we decided to order our kitchen from Westside Building Supplies in Lynden, WA.  Early on we made the decision that we wanted a white country kitchen with a big ole farmhouse sink and after looking at a good number of photos on the internet we were sure we knew what we wanted.  After drawing a few kitchen plans on graph paper we started going around to a few of the local cabinet companies which was for the most part a disappointment.  We ran into everything from companies that didn't call back, didn't share our vision for the layout, or didn't know their own products.  

After visiting several companies and not really being "wowed", we came across one company in Abbotsford that told me I should plan for about two hours for the consultation.  I was quite skeptical that I'd need two hours to show my simple layout and explain what we wanted but I packed up all my photos and graph paper layout and headed out.   After wandering through the showroom for ten minutes the salesperson and I sat down, and before I could even open my photos I found myself in the midst of a 2 hour kitchen presentation.  I'd normally be thinking of an excuse to expedite my exit but the salesman brought up so many good points on kitchen design that I found myself actually listening 

to what he had to say.  While I didn't agree with all of his ideas, he did give me some good food-for-thought about how to improve the layout we had drawn.  He also pointed out something that neither Margaret or myself had realized, the cabinets we had admired all over the internet were not conventional cabinets and we could expect to pay a thirty percent premium for them.   What made them unconventional was that they had face frames around the actual cabinet doors... similar to furniture cabinets.   Later that evening when we sat down at the computer and started looking at kitchens with inset and non-inset cabinets, we realized that we really liked the inset cabinets but couldn't justify the cost.

Fireclay Farmhouse Sink

Not to be easily discouraged, I started investigating inset cabinet prices in the U.S. where they are more commonly found.  I found two companies that claimed they built inset cabinets for the same price as non-inset cabinets.  One of the companies, Canyon Creek Cabinets was only a two hour drive south of the border so after getting a quote on our kitchen plan we decided to take a little road trip and check out the quality of their work.  They had an impressive manufacturing facility and showroom and the quality seemed to be inline with what we had been looking at locally and the best part was they weren't much more than locally made non-inset cabinets...

Inset cabinet



Non-Inset Cabinet









When we originally started planning our kitchen, a feature we thought would suit the style of house we are builing was a farmhouse sink.  These are the big, porcelain sinks some of our parents may have grown up with and aren't quite as common anymore.  When we started looking at them we found there were a good number of styles but we decided on a simple white, single bowl version.  We didn't realize it at the time but we wound up designing the kitchen around the sink.   After picking the sink we found that not many modern faucets suit such a sink so we found a chrome bridge faucet with cross handles that had a nice old-timey look to it.

We had originally planned on plain, black laminate countertops which we thought would look nice with the white cabinets and save us some money over granite but because the sink is an undermount sink with the front exposed, none of the laminate companies we talked to were willing to put laminate counters around it because they felt the laminate would be exposed to water on the under side of the counters and eventually start to de-laminate.  In the end we had to either get rid of the sink or go with granite.  We didn't like the extra expense but the sink wasn't going anywhere.  

Our tile guy has started on the bathrooms and will soon be adding a subway tile backsplash in the kitchen.  After the tile is finished the wood flooring will be installed and the small details of the kitchen will be finished.