Yardlicious

Now that tax season is over, the Queen has her weekends back. And when she has her weekends productivity at the rowhouse picks up tenfold. On Saturday we went and picked up some obnoxiously orange paint for the back door. While at the Despot we found an unfinished adirondack chair for $30 and also decided to paint it obnoxious orange.



The last month or so we've purchased more pots, a five sectional lounge, and a cantilever umbrella from Ikea, and had my parents snag some cushions for the lounger. We even finalized the beds and made a little litter box out of pea gravel for Wally. I was worried I had just wasted my time, but so far he uses the litter box area exclusively. The yard is really looking snazzy. So snazzy that the iPhone pics won't do it justice. Until I get out with my uber-cam all I'm going to show are pictures of the orangeness. :-)

Continuing the Closet Saga

Work continued this weekend on the closets. All of the drywall is up and the first coat of mud is complete on the new closet. While the new closet is very small at only 33" wide by 61" long, it is filled with seams so the Queen kept quite busy. It will make an awkward closet by the time we are done, but small spaces call for creative solutions. For now the plan is to install the Antonius closet system on the 33" wall (back of the closet) with clothes bars,



and float one or two Billy Bookshelf units on the 61" wall. It will be very tight, but we'll work with the space we have. In the end this will be my closet, and the Queen will get the second much larger closet.



This weekend I focused my attention on completing the wiring in the closets and running electrical for the bathroom. The plumbing rough in is done, and once electrical rough on the wall is done on we can mount the vanity.

Also, we are starting to get bids on having someone finishing the bathroom upstairs. I'm not pleased about having someone else do the job, but work has been crazy lately, leaving us with little time for renovations. We've been plugging away at things but at this pace the house will be done in 2015. Hopefully the bids come in low, as we have done a fair amount of the work already and are willing to help out more as work continues. I'd really like to find someone who is willing to work with us on this in order to contain costs. With the housing market the way it is it just isn't wise to go overboard with home spending.

Built-In Wholesome Goodness

Having limited square footage you have to get creative to make the space work. My house is about 12'-6" wide (45' deep) on the interior, with a single open space on the main floor. While this lends itself beautifully to an open floor plan, it makes room arrangement and furniture usage and placement annoyingly difficult. To best make use of the layout the Queen and I made an executive decreedecision to add built-in bookshelves. You see, I have what used to be a fireplace near the front of the house. It now contains a HVAC grate. Lovely. I can't just remove the old fireplace completely since my water heater and furnace now vents through the old chimney. The old fireplace sticks into the room, creating two 10" depth spaces on either side of it. Currently this space isn't very usable. We decided to change this. Keep in mind that living in a rowhome originally built in 1900 guarantees a couple of things.

1. Nothing will be level.
2. The brick walls adjacent to your neighbors are a combination of plaster/cement, with firring strips and drywall on them.

These two items made the decision to make built-in bookshelves difficult. We couldn't just attach some shelves to the wall, since they probably wouldn't be very level, and there really wasn't anything to brace the shelves into. Dadolescent and I ripped the drywall off the wall, exposing the plaster and framing around the fireplace. We reframed walls attaching into the ceiling and floor joists with 2x4's, which will hold approximately 1,000,000 lbs of books. Trust me, I did an engineering calculation? Since we used 2x4's the shelves can't be more than 7.5" deep or they would protrude past the fireplace - probably should have used 2x3's, but a bit late for that now. Anyways, since the new knee wall means the couch will offer a direct view of the fireplace and shelves, this offered us a problem of where to put the TV. Should it go in the cove to the right of the fireplace, or above it? We decided above since the fireplace was already a visual draw, and bookshelves surrounding the TV are flat out sexy.

With 60" of width above the fire place, we decided a 47"-50" flat screen would work well. A 36-63" LCD tiltable wall mount is now ordered, and framing and electrical above the fireplace will commence this week. I'm going to put electrical and cable behind the new TV, placing conduit for a wire chase behind the drywall from the TV to the electronic gadgetry located in the right hand cove. This means no visible cables running from the TV to the cabinet. The Queen and I argued about whether this should be a floating credenza or not (I think it should, so I can hardmount electrical into it), but the Queen doesn't like this idea. The ball is in her court to find a 48" credenza for this area that:

A. Looks Hawt.
B. Is 48" wide.
C. Is a minimal depth. The shelf depths will only be 7.5" deep or they would protrude past the fireplace, so I'd like to minimize the credenza depth jutting out in the room.
D. Looks Hawt.
E. Can hold electronics, and be able to receive an IR signal from a remote. This means it has to be either open or glass for part of it.
F. Is a normal height. A lot of stands nowadays are meant to sit a TV on top of them, causing them to be extremely low. Since our TV will go elsewhere, something higher would probably look better.
G. And Looks Hawt.

There is also the possibility of a built-in credenza. The issue with this is the space is like 50.5" wide, and my cabinet building skillz are non-existent. The shelves will go above the credenza shelves. For now, the plan is for the left of the fireplace to be all shelves.

For shelves I am still thinking of how best to design the shelves to minimize the visual impact of the brackets and my installation time, while also making the trim around the shelves (crown and baseboard) work. For now, I am leaning toward modifying Ikea's white Lack shelves to shave some depth and width off to fit the space. This would solve the problem of showing brackets, as their brackets mount inside the 2" high shelves for a seamless appearance.



There is also the possibility of going with fully customized bookshelves, but I don't know if it would look as good as the above option, and I think the install time could be a lot greater. The jury is still out on this.

*I’ll add more pics to the post when I upload them in a couple hours.

Gray Subway Tile & Design Software

It looks as if I may jump the gun and get the 3x6" gray subway tiles. After looking online for subway tiles I found prices to be at least around $8 a sq ft, and that is before shipping. Leigh looked on craigslist and found someone selling 20 boxes of 3x6" tile for $1.80 a sq ft. Here are some specs,

Sold: 1 Box
Pieces Per: 100 Piece
Avg. Waste Factor: 10
Shipping Weight: 36 lbs.
Coverage: 12.5 S/FT
Length: 6 Inch
Width: 3 Inch
Thickness: 0.313 Inch
Color Family: Gray
Shade: Medium
Surface Type: High Gloss
Design: Rectangle
Composition: Ceramic
Edges: Straight
Wear Rating: N/A
Installation: Thin-Set
Usage: Commercial; Residential



Seeing as this could save me oodles of money (while costing me a drive to NJ) I think it may be worth it. The use of gray will definitely require some accents for color, but the price is right.

+++

I also downloaded Google SketchUp and Ikea's Kitchen Planner.

I measured the upstairs bathroom last night, made a model of the room in SketchUp and started playing with some designs. The program takes some getting used to, but it's not too terribly different from AutoCAD so I'm fumbling my way through it. Once I import some cabinet designs from their library I can really start to model the room right. For now, I am just using 3D blocks to represent the major items (cabinets, shower & toilet).

I wanted to use the Ikea bathroom planner, except for the minor glitch that it doesn't exist. The kitchen planner will work, and I think I may just go with kitchen cabinets in the bathroom since they have a higher counter height. I wish I could see how Ikea's Hollviken sink would look in the space.



Some things I am considering in the design are single vanities, double vanities, various closet organizers, as well as breaking the bathroom into two rooms to seperate the sink from the shower/toilet room. I'll upload pictures of design ideas as they become available.

Cabinet Conundrum

The downstairs powder room is a tight fit at 74" x 39". The door is near the middle of the room, and the sink and toilet oppose each other on the 39" walls with a small casement window over the vanity. The vanity is nice and small with a more of an espresso finish than the one pictured below.



Over Thanksgiving I also picked up a mirror from Lowes, which was also supposed to be espresso. Apparently espresso means different things to different people, because I took the mirror out of the box and it's black. *sigh* At least the mirror doesn't go over the sink, so the mismatch won't be quite as evident, but I am a bit annoyed.

To balance out the room I am on the hunt for a cabinet to go above the toilet. Ikea's Akurum - wall cab horizontal w/ glass door, has a cool glass front, is available in a 39" width, and is running around $100-150 bucks. Score! There are a bunch of different finishes and glass combos so I'm not sold on a specific one yet, but the one pictures below painted red could be pretty hot.



If I don't go with such a wide cabinet above the commode, the red Ikea Benno CD/DVD towers could look good on each side. They are 8" wide and the toilet has 10" on each side, so they could be a nice fit.



Both Ikea items are looking nice but the cabinet over the toilet makes more sense from a storage perspective. I could fit both but it might cramp the small place a bit much, and the glass cabinet is twice the depth of the CD shelves. Either way I go the price is right, as I've really been trying to trim costs in this room.