Progress??? And plans

First up – Pictures. I’m uploading progress pictures on Flickr. I will add interesting ones to the blog – but, well foundations are boring, but if you are interested you can find them here J Foundation Pictures

The backfilling is mostly complete, they were just getting to the finishing/smoothing when the machine broke… Great – oh well. It will get fixed today and the backfill with be completed. The contractor dropped off the scaffolding yesterday and they will start on Wednesday with the framing.

We had to choose window sizes last night so they can be ordered and they can frame everything around those measurements. After some thinking we decided to go with all double hung windows. We have new double hungs in the old part of the house, which we had put in 3 years ago, and I really like the ability to lower the top – especially on the second floor. I feel it’s much safer for small children, as we can still have the window half open and not worry about DD around the windows. I also think it looks much better on a century home than casements – I find they just look too modern… looks fine on a newer home and yes they are more efficient, but well windows are just not efficient anyway, so may as well stick with what you like. On that note though, we did choose to go with triple glazed windows to increase the R value of the windows.

Having to choose the windows really hits home the fact that we need to get off our butts and get choosing everything else too!  So we stared with the kitchen, with this image for inspiration:

Image found here 

Now our kitchen will not have this layout, or be this grand, but I love the color and feel of this design, I want the house to feel new, nice and modern… to a point, but I really don’t want the new addition to feel like an after thought, I think it’s important to keep with the century feel and to not stray too far for the original design of the house. I like that the travertine floors look very old, while still being a modern and rather timeless design feature. I also like how the light, yet dirt colored, floor and counters allow the cabinets to be darker without making the room too dark.

While I like the look of granite for counters (like in the above picture) I just can’t get past the price. So we will be going with a standard laminate with no built in backsplash and a tiled blacksplash instead. So last week on a tip from a co-worker, I checked out a place in Ajax -  Countertop King, they have a great selection and I found a travertine print/color laminate that I think will look great, their prices are great too, they fab the counters on site and delivery is 2 weeks. I also checked out a tile place in Ajax to check prices and left there thinking we would go with porcelain tile that looks like travertine to save money. So when we went into Home Depot and I spied a Tuscan Travertine package in a cobblestone pattern for $3.99/sq foot we bought it! Score! The color is exactly the same as the inspiration kitchen and I think the pattern will make it suit the house that much more, and the counter top I liked matches the flooring perfectly. Now we just need to talk to ‘the kitchen guy’ about what finishes we can do on the counters that will look similar to the above picture.

Next up is choosing hardwood for the dining and living room and the master bedroom, and layout of the master bath, and fixtures… and …and, ok so there is still lots of choosing to do yet… but at least we have a start on it all.