The Carmichael guys have all the cabinetry, doors, drawers, shelves, and other miscellaneous stained items (from all around the house) sealed and sanded ready for finish varnishing in the basement of the “L” Shaped House. It makes for quite a collection of stuff and means that the basement will be filled with paint fumes at least one more time!
Rick and the Carmichael Decorating crew have pretty much finished up painting the kitchen cabinets. They spent most of yesterday re-attaching cabinet doors and preparing the first floor for wall paint. The photos below show some of the kitchen cabinetry with the new white enamel. First a wide shot of the corner cabinets and the end of the island.
Next a couple of close shots of the cabinets that capture the really WHITE feeling in the kitchen. Rick has done an amazing job getting a beautiful smooth finish on the cabinetry. The white enamel is of course just the beginning of the final “distressed” white finish the Carmichael crew will be applying to the cabinetry in the mudroom, first floor laundry, and kitchen. The next steps include a brushed coat of glaze (bronze?) and a polyurethane clear coat on top. Rick has prepared a pair of sample door panels where we will fine tune the glazing and clear coating process before moving on the the “real” cabinets.
The two photos below show examples of the sort of “distressed” finish we hope to achieve. The painters who produced these results did a nice job of applying the glaze in a “subtle” manner. If anything we hope to produce results that will be even more subtle. The cabinetry in this example is built using “full-overlay” drawers and doors and hidden Euro-style hinges. We are using “full-inset” drawers and doors and exposed butt hinges (seen above) which I think combine to make a much better a farm style look.
Rick and his crew are working today re-assembling the cabinets on the first floor and preparing the basement for more spraying. The first photo shows some of the upper cabinets in the first floor laundry room after Rick got the doors installed. The cabinets in the mudroom, laundry, and bathroom all have hidden face frame hinges that make re-attaching the doors reasonably easy.
The next photo shows the desk area in the kitchen after Rick re-attached all of the cabinet doors. The kitchen cabinets have exposed butt hinges on all of the inset cabinet doors. The inset doors and exposed hinges look really nice…but have made Rick’s job a lot harder. The last photo shows Jordan sanding the basement kitchen cabinets after the sealer was applied yesterday afternoon. They have almost all of the cabinets, shelves, doors, and drawers ready for the finish coat of varnish.
As a part of the preparations for the final landscaping and grading we are trimming some trees, clearing some brush, and grinding some old tree stumps. The first photo shows the area in front of the garage after thinning the buckthorn along the property line. There is an old tree stump (at the yellow arrow) from a giant Elm the Danielson’s must have cut down a very long time ago that will have to go.
Our tree guy has also taken two limbs from a big Bass Wood (on the left) behind the power pole in the back yard. One limb was dead…the other split to the ground and leaning precariously toward the power pole. We are also having him remove a big pile of “tree waste” (four to five trees worth) from a spot just beyond the outlet of our look-out drains from the basement walk-out patio. The last photo shows the view back towards the house from the the drains with most of the tree waste removed.
I stopped in at the “L” Shaped House at about 6:30 pm to have a quick look at the varnishing operations in the basement. It turned into the “quickest” visit I’ve ever done…the basement was positively toxic with fumes from the spraying. I took five photos and got the heck out of there!
Rick and the Carmichael crew sprayed what will probably be the last coat of white enamel sprayed on the first floor of the “L” Shaped House this morning. The two photos below show all of the doors and drawers for the kitchen cabinets just a few minutes after spraying the final coat of enamel on the fronts. Rick tells me that from here forward on he is going to do all of the spraying in the basement…
Which nicely leads into the next photo showing a wide variety of stained woodwork set out in the basement family room ready for the first coat of polyurethane sealer. Rick was moving his sprayer down the stairs as I was leaving around 1:00 pm. He plans to have all the cabinets, doors, drawers, and shelves in the family room, guest bedroom, and basement bath sprayed by the time they leave this afternoon!
At long last the final grading and driveway construction is getting underway. The first order of business is clearing the site in preparation for the grading equipment. The final landscaping plan calls for removing two additional trees…a California Norway maple at the street and a small crabapple adjacent the breezeway entrance.
One persistent question has been…“is there really enough room to get a car into the garage”. The next two photos showing the area in front of the garage after clearing away some of the buckthorn and spreading the dirt piles left behind by the excavation give a much better view of the area where the drive will be installed.
The tree guys plan to be back tomorrow to grind the stumps and remove some downed tree waste in the forest beyond the back yard. Andy and the JLM landscape guys will then set the final grade and install the base.
The Carmichael guys started setting up their staining and painting operations in the basement of the “L” Shaped House today. The photo shows the basement kitchen cabinets after staining. They have also collected all of the loose shelving from cabinets throughout the rest of the house as they plan for a last staining and varnish marathon.
By noon today Rick and his crew had taken the wraps off most of the enameled cabinetry and trim in the mudroom, breezeway, and kitchen at the “L” Shaped House. The panoramic photo below shows the back wall of the kitchen with freshly painted white cabinets for the first time. Rick has done an amazing job of getting a beautiful smooth finish. It is Really white in there!
The next two photos show close-ups of the refrigerator cabinet along the back wall and the kitchen desk area. both photos do a nice job showing the paint finish.
The last two photos show the drawers and doors in both the living and dining rooms set out to dry. Rick and the guys will turn the doors and spray the front sides one more time just before they leave tonight…then it is on to the big job of putting everything back together!
Rick and his crew (Jordan) are hard at work today spraying enamel on the first floor of the “L” Shaped House. I caught Rick just before noon as he was installing a new nozzle in his sprayer. They had already made their way through the entire first floor sanding the trim and cabinets as they prepared for another afternoon of spraying. They plan to have the second coat of white enamel done late today.
I chose to stick around just long enough to catch the beginning of the spraying. The video below shows Rick as he works his way across the back end of the music room on his way toward the open spaces of the living room, foyer, and stairwell. I got out as soon as I started to “taste” paint in my mouth!
We started looking for lights to hang above the garage doors way back in December of last year. Along the way we considered many different lighting fixtures from a wide variety of manufacturers. The folks at Barnlight Electric make a line of “rustic” light fixtures that just seem to fit in perfectly along the garage wall of the “L” Shaped House. Mike Kloti and I exchanged a couple of messages about the Barnlight Electric fixtures and finally decided to purchase four 16” diameter “Original” gooseneck lights in a galvanized finish. Mike produced the drawing below as we considered sizing possibilities.
The Barnlight Electric website has this nice image that shows the “Original” gooseneck fixture in the middle and an example of the galvanized finish on the right.
And here it is!…one of the Barnlight Electric gooseneck barn lights set up on our dining room table this morning as Deb and I struggled through yet another marathon lighting fixture selection session. They arrived via FedEx a few days ago…to be installed after we paint the outside of the house.
After an… Emergency!!!…Extra Special!!
whoa whoa whoa…stop with the over-punctuating.
I was reading the begining to an angering post…
Read it; it’s under Painting… Helen’s Room. Notice how it said HE saved the day…
but…au contraire…my friend. My MOM saved the day, by taking me to Bed Bath and Beyond. If you really want to be technical, Humphrey Bogart and whoever the co-star on the boat with him was…saved zee day.
xoxo
P.S.
I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Sorry Camille.
Today’s blog entry is a continuation of the painting posting of yesterday. The first photo below shows the East end of the kitchen and the entrance to the laundry room after Rick and his crew finished the spraying the first coat of enamel. They made it all the way around the first floor spraying the cabinets, window trim and baseboard from the garage door in the mudroom to the far end of the music room as well as the staircase to the second floor. Last night the paint fumes drove me out in about 5 minutes…this morning it was barely tolerable!
The next photo shows the outside wall of the first floor laundry room. Here you can see the white enamel on the door casing, upper cabinets, window trim, baseboards, and base cabinets. After literally days of masking and taping the actual spraying goes amazingly fast.
The last two photos show the stair risers, trim boards, and balusters in the front staircase with the first coat of white enamel applied. With all the white paint on the wood its kind of hard to remember that there is beautifully stained dark oak underneath all the masking materials.
The “L” Shaped House is being built by JLM Design Build. There is another side to the JLM empire called JLM Landscape. The landscape side of the JLM already built the beautiful paver patio outside the basement walkout and is about to complete the finish grading of the site and install the driveway. We engaged them to produce a “master plan” for the landscaping before we started the finish grading and hard surface work. Matt Wolfe produced the plan shown in drawing below after carefully considering both our desires and what is possible on the site. Matt previously produced the plan that resulted in the 28 new trees planted in the back yard and…of course…this new plan represents a logical follow-up to those efforts.
This Master Plan is purposely broken into a driveway plan and four landscape Phases (timing TBD).
The sketch below shows the plan with the plantings colored in. It shows off a few of our overall goals for the landscaping plan very nicely.
By noon today Rick and his crew had sprayed the first coat of enamel on the trim and cabinets in the mudroom, first floor laundry, and most of the kitchen. They plan to continue working their way through the living room, foyer, and music room hoping to make it all the way up the stairwell by the time they quit for the day. The first photo shows the cabinets along the oven wall of the kitchen just minutes after they were sprayed.
They look beautiful!
The next photo is a close up of the upper corner cabinet in the kitchen sporting a brand new white enamel finish. Rick and the guys plan to be back Monday morning to start all over with the second coat.
Rick and his crew continued the process of priming the kitchen cabinetry today. They spent the morning spraying primer on the second side of all the cabinet doors. The first photo shows the cabinet doors and drawers laid out in the living room as the primer dries.
The next photo shows the cabinet doors in the dining room drying after being primed on the back sides. The last photo shows more of the Carmichael Decorating crew’s work from yesterday. The cabinets and countertop base on the end wall of the mudroom were primed along with the cabinets in the kitchen
Matt Sletten set the last few tiles in the first floor bathroom last night and it is now ready for grout. The first photo shows a close up view of the inside edge of the curb and doorway details in front of the mosaic floor tiles in the bathroom. The variations in size and shape give this area a nice look.
The next photo shows a wider shot of the tile details at the doorway from inside the shower. The last photo shows the bull-nose edge tiles where the end wall of the shower doorway begins.
The Central Marble Products guys also installed two cultured marble ledges in the “L” Shaped House yesterday. The ledges are installed in a couple of the places where we could take advantage of the space created at the top of our foundation wall inside the exterior walls. The first one is installed under the window in the landing of the basement staircase.
The second in the guest bedroom in the basement. Both marble ledges are the are Warm Pebble Granite color and will provide a wide a water-proof sill under the windows.
The next two photos show more of the cultured marble installation in the bathrooms. First the basement bath with the marble countertop in place on the cherry cabinetry. The last photo is a (somewhat) better photo of the Warm Pebble Granite counter on top of the cherry cabinet in the first floor bathroom. It’s been difficult to get a photo of the marble sinks in the bathrooms that accurately reproduces the colors of the marble, wood cabinets, and walls…these two are the best I have (so far).
