My Cornice is Showing!

I've never thought much about the color and shape of cornices, but now that's all I notice on houses! As I mentioned before, Mike and I had to choose historic paint colors for the bay window and cornice. We were really at a loss, because there are SO many more bad paint jobs for row homes of our style than good ones, so it was hard to find some good precedent colors.

Fortunately for us, our contractor introduced me (Mike was still out of town) to the KING of cornices and historic paint colors! Honestly, this guy is a TRIP. I just tried to Google him, but all I know is his first name so unfortunately I couldn't find anything. I want to write a story about him, or at least go have a few beers with him. He's absolutely crazy, but in the best way. He recreates historic cornices by hand, not only to be historically accurate for the city, but historically accurate for each BLOCK. He knows everything about the cornices and historic paint colors in the city. He saw that I was struggling for color choices, and reassured me that I can give him general ideas of what we are looking for, and he'll pick colors that "will make me CRY!" And if he doesn't make me cry, then he'll keep trying until I do! I wish I could do justice in describing this guy - just full of energy, full of passion, full of obscure analogies and full of crazy. Jon said that when this guy dies, a piece of Baltimore history will die as well. I believe it!

So this is what the cornice and bay window looked like, primed and ready to go:

My boy Adam recreated the corbels to their historic integrity

Closer view of the corbels. Also notice the decorative boxes. Love them!

 

So what colors should we pick? Green? Yellow? We settled on "Greige" (love that name - Gray + Beige!), a cream, and a dark blue accent.

 

And this is the result! But...it's not perfect yet. The blue is a bit too light and purple-y. Guess I'll have to go back to Adam and ask him to make the blue darker! I'm glad Mike will get to meet him. Do you think it's awkward or inappropriate to ask your painter to grab a beer with you?

 

 

Hopefully we'll get it right soon! We still haven't finalized our tile choices, but we need to give them to Jon by Sunday.  I know you're on the edge of your seat in anticipation! :)



The Lay-Out

Decisions are coming at us so fast! The framing is all done, so I thought I'd give you a tour of our house before the drywall goes up, which should be this week! I feel like the drywall will make it feel like a real house, instead of the construction site it has felt like for the last six (!!) months. It's all very exciting!

Without further adieu, our house pre-drywall:

The scaffolding is back up! They are fixing the cornice, and putting on the final coat of exterior paint. We need to decide what color we are going to use - it has to be "historic" colors, so we're not even sure what that means. But we need to make a decision by tomorrow, so hopefully we figure something out! It's tough when Mike is out of town...he's on a 10-day trip, which makes it tough to make decisions!



Walking into the house, we love the open layout that is: living room, dining room, kitchen, with upstairs and downstairs on the right.

Standing in the kitchen, you can see our pantry! We are debated whether to make that  coat closet or a pantry, but ultimately decided to make it a pantry. Now you can also see the stairs going down better.

 

Standing again in the kitchen, you can see the great exposed brick, huge front window, and can kind of see the coffered ceilings.

 

When you  walk down the basement stairs, you enter into our TV room downstairs. There is a storage closet on the front right, and some light from the window (it's not going to be as covered - there is plywood on it now).

 

I didn't know how to demonstrate the layout with the plywood up, so excuse my lame rastafarian attempt :) This is the basement, standing in the TV room.

 

Now we are right at the top of the upstairs, looking at the master bedroom. Mike's closet (although he'll argue with this...more about that later) is first, then the master bath, then our room with the bay window!

 

At the top of the stairs, looking towards the guest room. Bathroom in the foreground, and MY closet beyond that.

 

TAA-DAA!! My beautiful, large, walk-in closet!! Mike pretends like he's going to get this closet, but we all know who will REALLY get it :)

 

 

So that's it! We have a LOT of decisions coming up - paint color, appliances, and TILE! Lots and lots of tile - three bathrooms, basement floor, kitchen backsplash, and entryway. That's what my next post will be about - stay tuned!

 

 



Crazy about Cabinets

Great news all around about our house! Last I wrote we were heading to the hearing for our BS $500 fine from the city. While we didn't get off scot-free, it was lessened to $100. It could have been worse, but it's still annoying to pay that when it's not our fault. We talked a big game about contacting the Title Agency to pay it, but so far we have not. The Judge hurried through all of the hearings so she could attend the Ravens rally!!

But in other news, we picked out our cabinets! As I mentioned before, we had an inspiration kitchen that changed our minds from an off-white more rustic cabinet, to a more modern style white cabinet. We ended up going with a "shaker style" cabinet, that in its most basic format looks like this:

Pretty basic, but provides a clean, modern look.

Mike and I know everything there is to know about cabinets now. We exhausted ourselves learning about cabinets, and getting not two, not three, not four, but FIVE quotes for cabinets (six if you include our walk-through Ikea before deciding getting a quote wasn't worth it). Seems like a bit excessive, but every meeting we walked away from we weren't 100% sold. And interestingly enough, the last place we visited was Home Depot, and I think that one will be the winner! We will order on Thursday, since they said our brand is going to start running a promotion that day. It's one of our most expensive purchases, so I'm happy that we were smart about our choice.

So some basic cabinet knowledge, for those who don't know. We ended up choosing a "full overlay" style, which means that there is no space between the two cabinet doors. For example, these are NOT full overlay (they are called 2" overlay):


See the wood between the two doors?

We think the full overlay are nicer to look at, and they save space without having wood that separates out the two spaces. It's easier to get a long tray in a full overlay cabinet. There are also other features to consider: soft close for both doors and drawers (which we got), plywood construction vs. MDF vs. themofoil (I think ours is a mix of plywood and MDF), glaze vs. no glaze (we didn't get a glaze, but for some reason WHITE is a premium color with an upgrade charge! How is something void of color an upgrade?), and of course just the overall look. The brand we went with is American Woodmark.

I'm really happy with our choice. I feel like if we'd gone with any of our first four quotes, there was a part of each of those cabinets that we weren't too happy with. Either they had an overlay, or not soft-close doors, or felt cheap. Or they were just way over our budget!

Our next big decision - and this one is a doozy - is tile. We are tiling SO much - three full bathrooms, basement floor, front entrance, and the backsplash. We haven't really started looking, so we have a lot of work to do!

**UPDATE TO PREVIOUS POST** - The reason our basement dig-out felt so luxurious is because there will be 8" of concrete poured on top of the dig-out. So when we were there, it was almost 9'. In reality, it'll be a little more than 8' tall. Oh well. Still exciting!

 

 



Luxurious!

The digging out of the basement is underway and really cool! When we went down to the basement and got a sense of the ceiling height, I exclaimed "This feels luxurious!" Meanwhile, this is what we were looking at:

Mike's a lucky guy, since I think this feels luxurious! :)

This is how they get the dirt out of the house.

We didn't realize how many steps would be needed to get into the basement bedroom - that's high up!

Oh, hello! Thank you for working on a Saturday!

It was really cool to see this process in action. Definitely got us excited!

We've also met with a few cabinet people - that is our next big decision! I think we're looking at a "shaker style" cabinet, which is a nice, clean look. The inspiration kitchen on my previous post is shaker style. It's pretty cool to meet with cabinet people - they work within a CAD program and can produce images of your kitchen design pretty quickly. Even though I work with architects and know sort of how it works, it's still neat to see it applied to our own house! This is the most current design:

Love the large island with seating, and the window above the sink!

Even though we aren't chefs and don't really NEED it, I love the look of the hood.

The island is super cool - wine cooler on the left, microwave in the middle, garbage/recycling on the right.

The microwave's location has definitely been an issue, since we want the hood. There is a cool microwave that is actually a drawer, so it's really hidden. BUT they are super-expensive (like more than double a regular microwave), so this was the alternative we came up with. It's not ideal, but we don't microwave a ton so it'll be fine. It's all about compromise!

Tomorrow morning is a big day - we have a 9:00 hearing to fight the $500 fine that we got for "not registering our house as a vacant" - whatever that means. Wish us luck! It's coincidentally at the same time as the Ravens Super Bowl parade, so downtown will be INSANE! Hopefully there will be a Ray Lewis/Joe Flacco/T-Sizzle/Ray Rice/Boldin/Ngata/Torrey/etc sighting...I'll take seeing any of the Ravens! Love them all! We also have a meeting with the contractor to decide the final layout of the basement. Exciting!

On-ward and Up-ward...or actually DOWN-ward!

Digging two feet down for an 8' basement has officially started!! We had another slight delay with our neighbor, because she got the flu so her house couldn't be inspected until she was feeling better. What's another week after waiting almost two months, right?!?! I don't have any pictures of it yet, because Mike and I have only stopped by at night. I could barely see what was going on, much less get a decent picture of it. But we are back to thinking about house stuff, which is great!

Next up is that we have a meeting with the contractors a week from Wednesday (Feb 6), after the basement has been dug out, but before they frame it. So we'll walk through with them and figure out the exact layout of the basement. We want to fit in: a decent-sized family room, a full bath, decent-sized bedroom (with its own exterior door), and a laundry/storage room. I hope that we can get the storage room to be large enough to fit all of our crap - suitcases, golf clubs, skis, tools, etc. We've accumulated a lot!

The decision after that is kitchen cabinets! As I've mentioned before, we've spoken with a couple of places about cabinets. We had been set on an off-white cabinet, but with all of this extra time, we may be changing our mind. Mostly because we were inspired by this kitchen that we saw on House Hunters Renovation:

Yes, this is a picture of our TV. We are very sophisticated here at Putting the Can in Canton.

Love the white cabinets, white subway tiles with gray grout, the hood, colored knobs, and splashes of red accent (hard to tell from the picture, but they are there). Mike had been talking about white subway tile backsplash for awhile, but I was never convinced until I saw the tile with the gray grout. I like it a lot better, so I may be convinced now! We would not want glass cabinets though - we would just keep solid white.

Any thoughts?

FINALLY!!!

(alternatively titled: SHE SAID YES!!)

So, I’m BACK! I know there has been a void in your heart for all of my loyal blog followers, but it is officially official. OUR NEIGHBOR SIGNED THE CONTRACT! WE CAN DIG OUT THE BASEMENT!! WE WILL LIVE IN THIS HOUSE!! WE CAN ENJOY THIS PROCESS AGAIN!!! I FINALLY HAVE STUFF TO WRITE ABOUT AGAIN!!!

This is HUGE HUGE news. Not a thing has been done on the house since November. Bye-bye a month and a half of mortgage payments!! And up until November, our contractor said they have been working at “60%”, since they knew there was a potential that they’d have to stop working.  So we are super, super psyched that starting on Friday, it’s full-steam ahead. They still have to pull the permits and do an inspection of the neighbor’s house, which is why the demo on the basement won’t start until Friday.

It’s one of those things – I don’t think I realized how stressed out I really was about the neighbor until it was all resolved. We found out at 4:30 on Friday that she finally, finally, finally signed the contract. It was as if a huge weight was lifted off our shoulders. Mike was sick (damn flu), otherwise we definitely would have gone out that night and had a big celebration. Instead, I woke up Saturday morning and went for a long run. It was a combination of a randomly beautiful warm day in January, the fact that the Ravens were playing in the playoffs that afternoon (and I just KNEW we were going to win, despite the 10-point spread against them), and our neighbor had finally committed – I just felt so incredibly amazing. What a great feeling! We can continue this process with full hearts and all of the initial excitement that we had, knowing that we WILL be living in this house and all of these decisions will be for US! AHHHHH – SO AMAZING!!!

Some major kudos definitely go to our contractor, Jon. He worked tirelessly to get this done. He helped our neighbor out during Hurricane Sandy, which in turn made her trust him. He convinced her to get a lawyer to look over the construction drawings and insurance, and explain to her what everything means. Then he followed up constantly to keep them on track. After she talked to the lawyer, she agreed to sign the contract that states that she won’t be responsible for ANY damage to her house as a result of our rehab – even above and beyond the basement. She also threw in a clause stating that our contractor has to install a sump pump in her house – at no cost to her. So there were definitely some sacrifices made (luckily all paid for by our contractor), but the end result is that the contract is SIGNED and we can finally move on.

PHEW.

So in other news, we have also been dealing with a super-annoying city fine on the house that we received right before Christmas. It was a $500 fine for not being registered as a vacant. WHAT? It is under construction! Not a vacant! After countless calls to the City, emails with our contractors, two visits to the Housing Authority, hours of internet research, and verbal fights with our title agency (who we think is ultimately responsible for this fine), we finally actually figured out the reason we received the fine. It is crazy that it took so much time just to understand why we got the fine and how we rectify it. Loooooooong story short, we had to pay a $130 “vacancy registration” fee, and we scheduled a hearing to dispute the $500 fine. The fact that all of this happened while no work was being done on the house anyway was extra frustrating.

So, onward and upward!! We are going to meet with the contractors when Mike gets back from Italy to find out the schedule. I’m anxious to find out when the new move-in date is scheduled to be. Originally it was tentatively scheduled for February 1^st. Considering that is only three weeks away, I’m guessing that it will be pushed back. It would be amazing to be moved in by April, but we’ll see.  I’m excited to make a million more decisions, keep up with this blog, and see what this house ends up looking like!!!

I also have to mention the AMAZING win by the Ravens against the Broncos. I went out that night (sans Mike unfortunately, since he still had the flu) and had such a fun time watching the game with friends. It was one of the best games I've ever seen - of course, it helps that the right team won :) Next stop: Foxboro for the AFC Championships!!

Deck the Halls!

Our deck is built!! We can see so much from the deck - we are SO excited for dinners up there when the weather is nice, views of the fireworks on 4th of July and New Year's Eve, or just relaxing in the sun. You can see everything - vast views of the water, downtown skyline, Domino's Sugar sign, the Natty Boh guy, the pagoda, Ravens stadium, Johns Hopkins, everything!! It is perfect. If the weather was nice right now, we would take a bottle of wine up there to celebrate! But that's just silly...it's freezing out :)

We also did a walk-through with our contractor and the electrician to figure out where all the canned lights will go, where the lightswitches will be, and any other special lighting requests. We had originally had a line item in the budget for the master bathroom to have heated floors, but that was when we were picturing a MUCH more expansive bathroom than we ended up with. So we decided against that, which means we get to spend that allotted money somewhere else! Upgraded tile, perhaps?!

Still no neighbor updates. Sigh.