The Master Bath Reveal

My expectations have been exceeded!  A HUGE thank you to Tim Moran for going above and beyond for our master bath.  It might just be my favorite room in the house.

Drum Roll please...

 These pictures do not do it justice!  I can't wait to take pictures tomorrow in the daylight and the walls still need to be painted.

 I took these pictures tonight.  The guy on the left is our ROCKSTAR tile guy Tim. Max and Leone in the center and the world famous trim guy Pete on the right.

 Last Friday night Tim sent  me a text at 9:30 stating he thought we should wrap the shower door opening with the floor tile not the bull nose he had already purchased.  He was right, I love it with the floor tile.

 The sliced stone is on the shower floor.  It reminds me of stone you'd see at Lake Michigan.  Once we made the decision to go with these stones on the shower floor, I wanted to include a Petoskey Stone in the floor, I did marry Petoskey Pete ya know. If only I knew where our box of Petoskey Stones was located. 

The chance of me finding our Petoskey stones in time for one to be included in our shower floor was ZERO.  I mentioned my frustration to my friend Lindsey and a few days later a special present was in our mailbox...

This beautiful Petoskey Stone

 It's new home on our bench seat.

Right before (I mean moments before) they installed the floor I remembered, Max was given a Petoskey Stone a few months ago by his principal as a thank you to his class for making a presentation board for his visit to Washington DC.   (He was nominated National Distinguished Principal for the State of Michigan class of 2012.)

 mrwheatongoestowashington.wordpress.com

Luckily this stone was in the console of my Sequioa,  so, we included Max's special stone in the floor too.  It's the smaller stone next to the large orange and white stone in the center.   

 

 Jeff our counter-top guy came last night and installed our counter.  

 Here's a peak at the laundry room.  Jeff is making a template for the tops. The crazy thing in the center is a pedestal for the washer/dryer.  My hope is to house the laundry baskets under the pedestal.  

If you need a tile installer or solid surface installer I would recommend both of these guys. Let me know and I'll pass on their phone numbers.

 What do ya think of my Overstock lanterns?  

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

We are close, and hopeful to move in the last week in February!!!  We can see the light at the end of the tunnel and ready to be home.  

Thunder, Wildflowers, Indian River, Stone Hearth, Nomadic Desert, Candy Green, White Dove, Shelburne Buff, Sassy Green, Smokey Taupe, Gloucester Sage and Roycroft Pewter.

That is the final list of paint colors I e-mailed to our painter last week and I am ready for a little color!!!  Currently, the the trim is primed white the walls are primed white and the paper protecting the floor is white.  The interior is a blank canvas ready for color and tomorrow is the big day!

For my next job, I want to be a color namer.  Who gets to do that for a living?

I let the girls pick their paint colors.  Grandpa Bill gave them new comforters for Christmas and the color choices came from their new comforters.

Here is Tori's room

And Izzy's room

Max insisted he did not need a new comforter and how can you argue with that?  I think he thought he'd get more toys from Grandpa.


Pete installed the cabinets in his office.

This is Pete's office.  He will install the crown molding after the room is painted.  He also built the counters and they will be stained ebony.  The open space is for a work surface at 30" above the floor (typical desk height).  The painters are also painting the ceiling Gloucester Sage.  

What I find interesting about this color is I painted the dining room ceiling in our old house this color and it caused a little argument between Pete and I.  He thought I was CRAZY to paint the ceiling a dark color.

Old Dining Room

A few years ago I redesigned our dining room and purchased this beautiful furniture from Liberty Square Furniture.   Not only did I paint the ceiling dark, the wainscot was a bronze metallic color.  I loved it!

 As I started picking paint colors for the new house he said to me, "would you paint my office ceiling the wet cement color like our old dining room?"  So wet cement color (Gloucester Sage) it is for his office, no argument this time!

Pete installed crown in our dining room.  Max was the official nail gun holder.

Pete also worked on the mantel and barn doors that will hide the TV.

 The recessed area will hold our TV.  We have been TV free since we moved into our rental house and I'm not sure how excited I am to have it back.

 The barn doors will hide the TV when it's not in use.

 It is almost finished it and will be painted white to match the trim.
Pete also made a piece that he can install on the mantel at Christmas time with hooks for stockings.  How he thinks of this stuff...

He's looking a little tired

I'm hoping to post pictures of our master bathroom tomorrow, tile and grout will be complete and the counter will be installed.  It is turning out perfect!

Yes, You Can Drive A Motorized Vehicle On Mackinac Island

A few years out of college Pete went to work for Stephanie Witt owner of Kitchen's by Stephanie in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Pete and Stephanie go way back, don't tell anyone, but Pete dated her youngest daughter in high school.

Stephanie is an amazing designer.  She was President of the NKBA (National Kitchen and Bath Association) when Pete worked for her.  She has designed for many prestigious clients, just Google her name and article after article about kitchen design will come up.

I'd have her design my kitchen if that cute guy was the installer!

He worked in amazing homes and put his God given talents for finish carpentry to work.  He once flew to Key West to install a kitchen.   I loved bringing him lunch on the job-site so I could check things out.
Here are just a few photos of projects I could find.  I don't have permission to use these so I hope I don't get in trouble.

Can you believe that staircase.  He did not work on the stairs, he did install the kitchen in this home.  

He created the coffered ceiling in this office.  This couple had us over for dinner when the project was complete.  I remember the owner saying to me how he loved coming home from work and finding Pete's notes with all the mathematical equations to figure out the angles for this ceiling.

Last year, as we were working on our floorplan for our new house, Stephanie's name kept coming up.  I knew Pete would never be happy if anyone other than Stephanie designed our kitchen. They had kept in contact and would talk every few years, but we weren't even sure if she still had her business.  She's a few years past the retirement age.  Pete called the only number we had for her and her spunky voice was on the other end of the phone.  He brought her up to speed on our house building and he asked if  she was still designing kitchens.  She informed Pete she no longer had her business, but told him, "I still design for friends and family and you qualify."

So, this fun process of designing our kitchen started.  She recommended Pennville Custom Cabinetry http://www.pennvillecabinetry.com in Portland, Indiana.  Pete and I visited their manufacturing plant over springbreak last year.  We were very impressed and I think the kids even had fun too.

Our Cabinets will arrive on February 8th, and I'm certain I will not sleep the night of February 7th.

Now, for the explanation of the motorized vehicle on Mackinac Island.  The Governor's Mansion on Mackinac Island was being restored in the late 90's, I'm not sure of the year, but I do remember John Engler was governor and Stephanie was asked to design and install the kitchen.   Mackinac Island is a very special place where no motorized vehicles are allowed.  As everything was getting coordinated there was concern about getting a LARGE commercial range and refrigerator up the huge hill to the mansion by horse.

Have you experienced that hill by the Governor's Mansion?  I had the pleasure (NOT) of running up that hill for The Great Turtle 1/2 marathon, that hill came at about mile number 7 and it was crazy hard.

Yes, that is Pete driving the truck off the barge.

Special permission was given by the Governor for Stephanie to bring all appliances and cabinets to the mansion by truck.  There is some magic date in April that this can happen.

 See the home to the left?  That's the mansion.

This is the back entrance to the kitchen.

Not a sight you see everyday on the Island.

Pete, myself, Chuck, Stephanie and Gill.
I can't remember Chuck's wife's name.

Here is where we stayed, our accommodation were exceptionally nice on the inside.

The beautiful view from one of the porches at the mansion.

I look forward to posting pictures of our kitchen in a few short weeks.
Here's a rendering of the cabinets.

Thanks Stephanie for still designing for "Friends and Family" and I am very grateful we qualify!



  

One Year Ago Today

One year ago today we closed on our 9 acres.  I knew 2012 had the potential for a crazy year I didn't anticipate how crazy though!

I believe that pine tree next to us is now center of our circle drive.

Of course tonight we were busy working on the house.  Pete is trying to finish up the last few things on his ToDo list before the painters arrive on Monday.  Have I mentioned how thankful I am that we are not painting.?

We chose Chris Batts to paint our home. His team had just finished painting our friends Bart and Kristen Kruzich's new home.  They gave his business a really big thumbs up.  So far they have been very accommodating to these Do It Yourselfers!

Pete made our handrails and they looked pretty nice when he showed them to me, but now with a coat of stain and varnish, ooh la la...

Love It!!!

Pete & I loved our locker system we built, but thought it was missing something so we decided to add the crown at the top. They are primed except the crown. 

Now for our master bath saga!  

It all started early this fall when I helped my friend Lindsey with tile for her master shower.  She chose this stone, and once you touch it you are hooked.   I assumed it was out of my budget for our shower, so I didn't go there. 

Lindsey's Shower

  

Didn't she do a great job? The tile on the lower portion of the shower is actually stone and it is beautiful.
She must have had a really great tile guy to layout that pattern and make it look so great!

I'm not sure what details I should bore you with now about our shower?  It started with a quote from a contact I had from my National City days.  His quote for labor only for the shower was more than my entire budget.  After shopping a few other tile and carpet stores I chose to worked with Wenke's and received a quote from them trying to replicate Lindsey's tile in a ceramic (to save money) and was still over budget.  Then I got a quote from my counter guy to do solid surface (Corian) on the walls of the shower,  back to way over budget.

This brought me to the beginning of December and I was beginning to not care what we put in our master shower, see even interior designers get stuck!  I just knew I didn't want the master shower to hold us up from getting an occupancy permit and sometimes tile has a long lead time, so I needed to figure it out.

To this point I had  purchased all the tile for the house (outside of the laundry room) from Wenke's Tile and Carpet and really enjoyed my experience there, the only glitch was it was getting cold, we spend a ton of time at this house, and I WANTED an indoor toilet.  The tile was available for all the rooms I had picked out, but their tile guy wasn't available until December 19th to start the install.  If I used their tile guy, I probably wouldn't have indoor plumbing for Christmas.  Never thought indoor plumbing would be on my Christmas List!

So, I decided to ask Lindsey's tile guy Tim Moran about his availability and install price.  He was reasonable in price and available (because he works 12+ hour days, 7 days a week) to start right away.  I was sold!

As I posted before he did the laundry room, kids bathes and mudroom.

Fabulous mudroom tile!

I gave him my sob story about my master bath and I mentioned I might want to travel to Grand Rapids and check-out Miles Distributing's showroom where Lindsey purchased her tile.  So, sick and coughing, coughing, coughing I headed to Grand Rapids to  meet with their designer Bethany.

I probably spent an hour walking around the showroom trying to pull something together.  Finally, we discussed Lindsey's stone for her shower and how much I loved it.  Her showroom had just received in two new sample boards of stone similar to Lindsey's. This particular one was a plank style and I loved it.
This is what we pulled together...

Paint and vanity sample 

Sliced stone for the shower floor, 20 x 20 dark gray for the shower walls, with a metallic pencil rail and a textured ceramic for the upper portion.

I decided to not use the stone in the shower and to use it on the floor.  

I came right home and picked out this counter top that pulls out the colors of the sliced stones.  Phew, I finally nailed it and the best part, I will come in right at my budget.

The floor was ready for install and this past Thursday afternoon Tim was going to start.  Our painters were working on another job, so I decided to take Thursday morning and finalize all my paint colors.  The last room I worked in was our master bath.  I laid everything out including my paint color and I didn't like it.  It was too matchy, matchy with the tile floor.  I thought, "wow, what was I thinking when I picked this out?"  Since I spent most of December sick, I thought I must of had an off color day and went downstairs to get my paint samples to choose another color when I saw the sample board I had brought home from the showroom.  I stopped dead in my tracks!  This was not the same tile I had upstairs, just hours away from being installed.  I brought the sample board upstairs and placed a tile on it.

What do you think?

This was NOT the same tile.  No wonder I didn't like my paint choice.  I thought oh no, the designer ordered the wrong tile.  I grabbed my project binder with all my quotes, my quote said Driftwood, the back of the sample board said driftwood, no I had the correct tile on my quote. Then I tried to reason with myself, stone is a naturally occurring material, there will be color variations from piece to piece.   I knew better, this is the wrong stone.  I called Bethany and she did some investigating

Here is the back of the sample with the name and board number.
  Someone at the Elon Tile and Stone placed the wrong label on the back of the sample board.  Their new stones are beachwood and driftwood.  The board I brought home is beachwood with a driftwood sticker on the back.  You can check-put their website and clearly see the mistake. http://www.elontile.com/collections/marble-onyx/driftwood-vein-cut/
  We are still getting to the bottom of this.  I'm hoping they will expedite the correct floor, as I mentioned earlier, I don't want the tile in the master bathroom to hold us up from getting an occupancy permit.  I'll keep ya posted.

Here's a sneak peek at Tim working on the shower today.  I'll post more about the shower soon!