Overly Ambitious Home Remodel - Update 5

UPDATE: We have finally bought the two pendent lights mentioned below.  Progress.  Still, we have two more lights to buy: one for over the sink and one for over the dining room table.

As always, we haven't posted any updates recently to the blog. I know...we're horrible people. It's actually a result of being a bit busy and not having time to really make as much progress as we'd like on the kitchen/house. We'll get to the much anticipated overly ambitious home remodel update shortly. But first let me explain a little about what we've been up to.

(Halloween: White Swan and Black Swan)

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Paula is in the midst of her residency. She's actually now a senior resident and is referred to as an R3, which means she's in her 3rd (and final!) year of residency. The past couple months have been incredibly difficult for her. She's had some exceptionally challenging rotations, which is largely due to the combination of lack of sleep and long shifts, complex patients and families, difficult moral situations, and other fun stuff all jumbled up together. As I write this, she's in the midst of a 30 hour shift where hopefully she'll get an hour of sleep. The good news is that there's a few things she can look forward to.

1. First, in December we're heading down under to see our friend Rose get married in Melbourne. Rose and our other friend Lou are two great friends from Australia who made it out to our wedding. Unfortunately, we weren't able to make it to Lou's wedding, but we're not going to miss Rose's. 
2. Second, Paula is on the "Global Health" tract in her residency. This adds a unique glimpse into global pediatric medicine, which is something she's uber-excited about. So, she'll get the chance to spend 2 months in Kenya during March-April working with a Kenyan physician. 
3. Lastly, she's done in June! 

So, there's a few big things she gets to look forward to over the next few months.  FYI, she's amazing.

In addition to pretending that I've been working on the house, I've become a bit involved in my neighborhood. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm enjoying it and am currently the vice president and chair of the land use committee. I'm essentially the main editor for our community's blog and I also won a grant from the Pomegranate Center (a nonprofit design center) and Tully's Coffee to build a gathering place for our community.  The later of these things took up a bunch of time during the summer.

Okay, okay, okay...we'll get on with the house remodel update...

WE HAVE A FULLY FUNCTIONAL KITCHEN AGAIN!  We're a bit excited about it.  The counters are in, the appliances are all in (minus the hood), water is plumbed, and we have lights.  That's what I call a fully functional kitchen.  Okay, never mind the door that needs to get switched out, the floating shelves that are still under construction, the pendent lights that we keep going back and forth on, the floors that need to be stained, and the window trim that still needs to get installed.  The fact of the matter is, we can and have entertained friends now in our kitchen, which is pretty freakin' amazing to us after living in our makeshift kitchen in front of the fish bowl for nearly a year.

"What are our next steps?" you might ask.  Great question!  Well, Paula and I finally made a decision for our backsplash behind the cook top.  The backsplash will extend vertically to the ceiling from the counter and will frame the cooktop and our hood (not installed yet) that are along the green wall in the photo above.  It'll largely be a white 4x8 subway glass tile backsplash with a vein of this funky Regalia tile from InterStyle slightly off center (6x12 in the color Nip).  The tile will arrive on December 27th apparently, so it'll be a new years resolution for us to get the backsplash done in 2012.

We're busy but happy and we're very much looking forward to our trip to Australia to see our friends.  Did I mention it's summer there in December!

As always, here's our Home Remodel slideshow with a few more photos added to the bunch.

Read more...

Overly Optimisic Home Remodel - Update 4

It's been awhile since our last post.  I know you all missed us and have dealt with many sleepless nights wondering how we are and whether we have a functional kitchen yet.  Well, we're fine and still without a functional kitchen.  No big deal, right?  It's just 11 months of doing dishes in the basement laundry sink, filing up our Brita in the bathroom tub, and making do with our old stove I wired into our living room.  Somehow, Paula still loves me.

The duration of this kitchen remodel is uber-annoying.  The positives is that I've learned a lot about myself.  For instance, I'm easily distracted and overly optimistic at times, as the title of this post suggests.  However, the lack of significant progress on the kitchen is due to two distractions. 

First, over the past couple years I've become involved in my neighborhood.  It's a bit quaint, but I'm enjoying it.  In April, I put together a grant application for a community project and was both fortunate (it was a cool project) and unfortunate (super busy) to win it!  The project created a gathering place (sorta a park) on a private Christmas tree lot in the middle of the neighborhood.  You can read more about the project HERE if you want.  The project just wrapped up a week ago, so I'm able to now turn my attention back to the kitchen.  That is until I find something else to distract me. 

The second distraction, albeit minor, was that I took a week of vacation to to fly out to Boston to help Eirik drive back to Seattle.  He, Heidi, and Skye moved back to Seattle for those that weren't already aware, since it's been nearly 3 months since they've been back.  Very cool having them back!

Okay, so we've been slowly plotting along on the kitchen over these many months due to these two distractions.  Recently though, the kitchen has begun to take shape and we've begun to get really excited.  The cabinets are in and the counters were just installed.  Just need to plumb everything up and install the appliances for us to have a functional kitchen.  Totally doable in the next couple weeks.  That is until I find something else to distract me. 

As always, a few more photos added to our Home Remodel slideshow showing the new cabinets and countertops.

Read more...

Twenty Two Colors!

UPDATE: After writing this post, I thought it would be fitting to say thank you one last time to Margaret Radmaker, who lived in our house from 1956 after it was first built until selling it to us almost 2 years ago. Margaret passed away earlier this month.  Here's a slideshow of our time meeting the Radmaker's after we agreed to buy the house from them.  She was  lovely and had many lovely bird houses. 

Happy Easter! 

Throughout this overly-optimistic remodel, the thing that has been the most challenging for Paula and I is conceptualizing what this whole thing is going to look like when its done.  Having moved into a 1950's house complete with the colors and style of a '50s home...you know, the blond wood trim, pink tiles, and flowery-drapery.  This remodel necessitates us defining our own style...which is?...well, that's the tricky part for us.  It's made even more challenging when I have some priorities (like buy the most local, sustainable, and 'green' products that are affordable) and Paula has her's (dark cabinets, white countertop, bright colors, and affordable).  It's why we got off to a much later start to this whole thing and why it's taken 22 paint samples to figure out what colors to paint the kitchen!

Back when Paula and I were hunting around for cabinets and countertop materials, we both fell in love with this bright green quartz countertop.  We knew it was too much for our countertop, but Paula likes bright colors and we thought it might be a great color to paint our floating shelves.  Now, we've decided to paint the entire eastern wall a bold greenish-yellow color, but which one?  Turns out there's tons of greenish-yellows made by each brand known to man.  Heaven forbid this be an easy process, right?!

For this blog post, I thought we'd unveil our 'style' for the kitchen, which is definitely a work in progress.  This weekend marks a breakthrough for us though.  We've selected Grape Green from Benjamin Moore for our eastern accent wall with the complementary Dune Grass and Timid White for the other walls and ceiling, respectively.  So, now that we've got the color picked out, we can move forward and get this puppy wrapped up.

Here are some other aspects of our remodel that we've settled on too. We got our cabinets from Pacific Crest Industries, located in Sumner, Washington.  I liked that they're a family business that uses locally sourced FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) wood products, developed a formaldehyde free eco-box of FSC material, and donate money and time to Agros.  However, to keep things relatively affordable, we used their Amero line and stuck with the standard MDF material.  Their MDF is still a pretty good product, but it's no eco-box.  We chose the Wyoming door style, which is pretty much a standard shaker door with slab drawer, and upgraded it to the dark 'Java' stain color. 

For the countertop, we exhausted all of the available ideas.  We looked at several iterations of recylced glass/concrete slabs (this and this) made in south Seattle, recycled glass/epoxy material made on Camano Island, reclaimed wood slabs from urban forestry, looked at butcher block, stainless steel, tile, and recycled paper products.  We stayed away from granite since I didn't want to use anything that came from a quarry.  However, in the end, due to cost, style, and maintenance, we went with quartz.  Quartz is a byproduct of quarry's, so it's a bit better...I guess.  We chose the Chroma line and the Crystal White color.  While this will be a beautiful countertop, I think, I believe its quarried in China.  So, that sinks my locally produced hopes and dreams.

Our next great decision will be the tile for our back splash.  We both like recycled glass tiles and I've scoured this amazing local tile maker (Bedrock Industries) for ideas, but aren't sure its exactly what we want.  What I've recently found and really like are two recycled ceramic tile products made in San Jose and Portland.  The first is Fire Clay and the second is Clayhaus.  I really like the glossy, crackled look that both companies make.  The Debris line from Fire Clay has much more recycled content and more colors, but Clayhaus has some different tile styles that are nice too.  Paula hasn't had time to see these up close and personal though, so we'll see what she thinks.  

Oh well, we've made progress and both Paula and I continue to find new ways to compromise.  She's entertained my expensive taste for 'green'er products and has interjected well to keep us on budget...or at least closer to budget.  It'll be a great kitchen, we hope.

Of course, here's our updated slide show of the house.

Read more...

A much needed cure for SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)

As a native Seattlite, I have never been too bothered by the winter weather.  It's grey and rainy, annoying no doubt but it's what I'm used to.  Even trudging a half hour each way to class in college in something like 81 straight days of rain (a record)...up hill both ways of course...didn't get to me.  But, second year of residency has (this is Paula by the way).  I leave home in the dark, get home in the dark and never get to see out a window during daylight.  My outside time consists of walking to the car in the dark and rain/scraping ice of the car in the dark.  This combination of long hours, lack of sleep and constantly dealing with very sad situations has been a struggle for me this year and, for the first time, the grey and gloom has really tipped the scales.  I'm now a firm believer in SAD and, more importantly, a firm believer in the power of sun, sleep and relaxation. 

Per and I got to head to Cabo for a week (thanks so very much to my parents for sharing their timeshare).  For those that followed our blog while we were in Europe, you know that my ideal vacation does not involve sitting in one place doing nothing.  I like to explore, adventure and get out to see and do everything.  Not so on this trip!! 

Our day: wake up whenever, lay by the pool til whenever, wander the beach and into town til whenever, eat some food, lay by the pool some more, eat some more food, go to bed (AMAZING)!

We did do a few things.  We did a sunset dinner cruise...all you can drink.  A snorkel adventure on a random pirate ship....again, all you can drink.  Whale watching, a trip out to Lover's/Divorce Beach which is by the famous Cabo arch.  While there we saw some dumb tourists nearly drown because they wanted to swim on the Pacific Ocean side in the waves which were 20 plus feet...bad idea (as indicated by the numerous signs that say DANGER! NO SWIMMING) but luckily they were ok thanks to some locals.  We also took a 2 hour trip to Cabo Pulmo which is in a marine reserve for more snorkeling with fishies, sea lions and a school of thousands of skipjacks...craziness.  We saw more whales there too!

It's the only vacation I've ever taken where I don't feel like I need a vacation from my vacation.  I'm back at work now and feeling so much better!!  I'm sure my patients and coworkers appreciate it (I image Per appreciates it too!) 

Here are a few picts:

Read more...

Overly Optimistic Home Remodel - Update 3

In our 2nd update to our Overly Optimistic Home Remodel, Paula and I had wrapped up the installation of our plumbing and electrical.  The guts to our glory if you will.  I'd also already installed some custom brackets for floating shelves.  Since then Paula has essentially been sequestered over in Port Angeles on a two month WWAMI rotation working at a pediatric clinic and studying for Step 3 of the USMLE.  My intent was to take these two months to make some serious progress on the kitchen/dining room, but like always, I was slightly more optimistic than realistic.

Over the last couple weeks, I sealed up too many cracks to count with that expandable foamy-stuff, hung batts of insulation in the walls, and installed sheet rock on the ceiling.  Turns out, all that stuff helps keep the heat in the house... I hired a couple experienced guys to install the sheet rock on the walls and tape/mud the seems.  Taping and mudding, from what I had heard, is an art form.  Since Paula and I didn't want any seems visible in these high traffic areas, we decided that hiring that out was a good idea.  In hindsight, I think we were right. 

Today, a couple things wrapped up:

1. Paula finished up a marathon of studying and completed the Step 3 test.  Good job, Honey!
2. The dry wall guys finished up the taping and mudding and now the kitchen/dining room is beginning to look like a kitchen/dining room.  

This weekend, Paula and I head south to Cabo San Lucas, MX for a little sun.  This has been a particularly miserable winter (we're currently on flood watch here), so the sun will be a god send.   When we get back, its time to sand the floors, paint the walls, and install the cabinetry.  The end is getting close...er. 

As always, we've added some more photos for your viewing please.  

Read more...