We are "primed" for a lot of progress

I went by today to check out the house and was very happy to see that the drywall in the basement was being taped and that the walls on the first and second floor have been primed. Above is a shot of the study.
This is a shot of the kitchen.

And above is the living room.

You can see the difference in the ceiling color and the primer. The primer, along with the paint that will be put on, is going to be a low/no VOC (volatile organic compounds) product from Sherwin Williams ( http://www.sherwin-williams.com/pro/green/greensure_designation/).

We can't wait to see the colors we chose up on the walls soon. We stuck with a very traditional arts and crafts palette from Sherwin Williams (http://www.sherwin-williams.com/do_it_yourself/paint_colors/paint_color_palette/color_themes/interior/int_arts/index.jsp)


The house is looking more like a home every day. The wood floors should be delivered in the next day or two. After a couple of days to acclimate they will be nailed in place. The front porch and stairs should be poured either Wednesday or Thursday. Then the front columns can be completed and the true face of the house will be revealed.

Long awaited update

We apologize for the long delay in posts. Not intentional, but a busy life has gotten in the way of our blogging. Just because we have not posted anything does not mean things are not progressing. The drywall has been put up and the taping/mudding is basically complete. Above is a view of the dining room.

This is from our master bedroom looking into our bathroom.

This is our kitchen.

And this is the view from our study into the living room.

The drywall team has done a great job with all the mudding and taping. After the paint is put on (which starts with the priming Monday) I don't think any of the lines will be visible.

The next couple of weeks are going to be BIG. Wood flooring, cabinets in the kitchen and the aforementioned painting will be done soon. So we will keep you posted!

2-8 driveby update

After meeting about the newel posts we drove by the house to see what was done Friday afternoon. To our delight almost all the exterior siding and trim work was complete and it looks fabulous.

As we were walking around the house (since we could not get into our home) our soon to be neighbor, Kevin Baum, poked his head out the back door to say hello. Kevin was nice enough to give us a tour of his home (we kind of forced him into it, really). I think he got more than he bargained for since the kids were with us! Their home is going to be beautiful, that's for sure. Outdoor speakers will provide the perfect party patio, and plans are definitely in the works for a BYO event. They anticipate moving in sometime in mid-March.

We also saw two gentlemen looking at the still-vacant lots just north of the Baum's property. Rumor has it, those lots have sold as one... hopefully they'll be on board for a Boone's Farm Party, too!!

And it would just be wrong, wrong, wrong if we didn't mention meeting one of our younger neighbors, 10 year-old Ray. Ray lives just across the street from our home, and he serenaded us with a little Iron Butterfly on his un-amped guitar. He's a boy of few words, but he made it quite clear that John shouldn't call him "kid," because he's 10 years old and NOT a kid.

Big week coming! We'll keep you posted, of course.

Newel Post Meeting

Today the whole family took a trip into Richmond Heights to meet Bill and Julie Newberry to talk about the design of our newel posts at the new house. They first showed us around the "green" town home they built and currently have for sale. It was beautiful. It was neat to compare notes on green construction. We knew when we walked up we were in good hands since all the woodwork you see above was done by them.

They then took us to the woodworking workshop in the basement of the adjacent town home. It was a pretty neat operation they have. They showed us some examples of what they have done and the type of wood they use. They let us know our posts are going to be made from quarter sewn oak...should make a beautiful set of posts. The original design for the posts were not going to work with our railings and spindles so they came up with a couple of new designs to compliment our craftsman theme. It may be hard to make out on the picture, but we decided on the drawing on the right to be the design for the posts.

Above is the stack of quarter sewn oak that will be used to make our posts. If anyone is interested in what Bill and Julie can do please check out their website, http://www.newberryfurniture.com/. We are excited to be working with local artisans that obviously puts a lot of care into what they do.

Insulation Everywhere!

Amanda here... This morning I drove by the house on the way to work and there was so much to see! I haven't been to the house since Monday and I can't believe how much progress everyone made this week.

First, the exterior - I/we couldn't be happier with how it is turning out. As Adam has explained, they placed the Hardy Board on both sides of the house, and on the sides of the porch. Once the siding is around the master bedroom windows, it will really look complete! Also, they installed a bronze-colored flashing, which I absolutely love.

Second... INSULATION!!! Woo hoo! The guys worked hard yesterday and almost finished insulating the second floor, and they were already back there this morning at 7:30 working on the first floor. I'm glad - they gave me a little lesson on the stuff. I thought we were just getting the standard pink stuff on rolls, which can be pretty good. I was quite wrong! The top picture of insulation gives you a good idea of what we are getting. It is blown insulation that - according to the installer - is a fancy version of recycled paper and corn starch. I think he was dumbing it down for me, but that really helped me understand it. So they spray it in place and it will dry today & over the weekend. The big yellow thing in John's bedroom is a heater so they can accelerate the drying process.

Because our exterior walls are built with 2x6 construction, the exterior wall R-Value will be about an R21. He said that the interior walls (including the mud room wall that's shared with the garage) will be and R15, because that's a 2x4 wall. Pretty amazing. Evidently rodents and bugs hate the taste of this insulation - so there's a little extra bonus.

Next week... DRYWALL! Stay tuned! Have a wonderful weekend, and as always - "big ups" to the folks at Sage and their subcontractors. Thanks for the education and for another great job!

Our first decorating post

We may not even have drywall yet but we are going fast and furious on making final (or near final) decisions on how things are going to look on the inside. Tile has been a major area of discussion in our house recently. We got a great deal on some floor tile to be used in our bathrooms and laundry room so we were able to look into glass tiles for some other areas. Always loved the look but did not think we could swing it.

We met with Jason Stone from Sage Homebuilders today at Capital Group Kitchen and Design Center (http://capitolgroupkitchenandbath.com/) to compare our cabinet choices with countertop samples and some glass tile samples we ordered off the internet from http://www.theglassmosaicoutlet.com/. Above is the Key West color tile with our cabinet and cambria counter top for the perimeter of the kitchen. (Note: the counter top looks more green in this picture than in person...it is more of a grey)

This combo is the green color cabinet and countertop for the island with the tile sample.
We are very excited with how it is all looking together.

I could not post on this blog without talking about the green nature of the products. If you are interested, check out the websites for cambria (http://www.cambriausa.com/learn_green.cfm) and Merillat Cabinets (http://www.tomorrowsthinkingtoday.com/green/index.aspx and http://www.merillat.com/).

Exterior Update

Quite a busy day for selections and progress on the Pocius palace project. On the outside the siding has started to be put in place. We are using a James Hardie cement board product (http://www.jameshardie.com/homeowner/). The picture is a little washed out but we chose a color called Timber Bark.

This product is, of course, quite environmentally friendly. To see all the reasons it is considered green check out http://www.jameshardie.com/homeowner/green_testimonials06.shtml. The most important in my eyes is the durability of this product. It has a 50 year warranty so we should not have to worry about it for a looooong time.

The crew started on Monday but had to stop for a while due to the cold. It has been freezing here. We also had to choose the aluminum fascia wrap color so they could continue. We decided on a color very close to the color of the window exteriors. It should be pretty sharp.

Cool Website

We were introduced to the walk score for our last home on St. Vincent Ave by our real estate agent Dawn Griffin. It is a calculation done based on how many conveniences you can walk to from your home. Things like grocery stores, restaurants, movie theaters, parks, coffee shops and on and on are used to give a score. 0 is horrible, 100 is you don't need a car for almost anything. Our last house was a 72, not shabby (very walkable). The new home's score is a 95, aka walkers paradise (http://www.walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=1061+yale+63117). Now we are not planning on giving up our cars anytime soon, but we are really excited to be able to walk around our new neighborhood for most of our everyday conveniences.

For those living in more urban areas check out the site to see if you can beat a 95. There are just over 140 walkers paradise neighborhoods in the biggest 40 cities around America (of course Richmond Heights did not make the list because of the size of the city). We are stoked to have this opportunity at our new home.