House update

Things are moving along at the new house. Between Brendan's work schedule and Levi, we are on workday number 7. Well, Brendan is, I have been able to work one day. My job has been packing as many boxes during nap time as I can. The first four days were demolition on the fireplace. Brendan pretty much took it down by himself! Yup, he is pretty amazing. And you might notice that since day 2 we have had a hole in the roof. The rock and brick went all the way through the attic and the roof. It helped cool the house off though since the demo took place during a 100 degree heat wave. Sorry honey, you are the best!!

We have framed the new wall and are working on all the non-dramatic stuff like electrical and gas. And a housing remodel can't be complete without a few changes and snafus. The electrical is taking much longer than anticipated since we are doing more than planned on. There are four switches to turn on one light, switches that turn on nothing, three-way switches that are competing with each other, and switches that have to be on for other switches to work. Make sense? We are still trying to figure it out too. We have also decided to keep the flooring as is for the sake of time and money, since it isn't as bad as we thought. Hopefully we will be able to replace it in a few years. On day 5 we finally got some much needed help.

 Here are a few before and after photos. Doesn't it open the fireplace up to the rest of the house!

Can anyone guess what I will be doing once the construction is done? Or do you like the clouded, dusty look on the floor. Oh the dust, it is every where!! The fireplace is arriving this week, and then it is on to the fun stuff of dry walling, paint and tile. We ordered a Fireplace Xtrordinair. Sounds intense, it kinda is. Besides changing the orientation of the fireplace, we wanted an efficient wood burning unit to heat the house to save money on our heating bill. After A LOT of research, talking to sales people with differing opinions and learning way too much about the inner works of a fireplace we settled on this guy.

Unfortunately for the designer, me, we had to go with an arched fireplace. Apparently the companies that design woodburning units beleive that if you want a wood fireplace you obviously live in a log cabin and only want a certain type of design. Case in point almost all the photos looked like this:

It was frustrating since gas fireplaces have really cool and more simple designs. But I was able to work around it and I like rustic, I just wanted to get away from the boulders. Here is my inspiration photo for the fireplace by one of my favorite designers, Genevieve Gorder on HGTV.

Isn't it pretty!? I love that it is a fresh mix between rustic, traditional and a little contemporary, which is what I am going for in this house. Ours will also have a bench in front (you can kinda see the makings of it in the framing shot above). I love, love, love that mantle, but not sure if we can make it happen. If not we will go with something a bit more rustic like this mantle from The Lettered Cottage.

I like the really big rectangular tiles. Genevieve used slate, we are going with a chisled and brushed travertine. Here is a photo I snapped comparing the sample tiles to the gray wall color I chose.

There you have it. You are up to speed in the life of the Coalwell's. And a post cannot be complete without a picture of our little helper. The reason I cannot get anything done on the house!