E-Haus: Kitchen Cabinets

Hello.

I love you.

You are everything.

I have an iPhone note from 2013 where Nate and I outlined all of our big dreams for a future home. Besides tall ceilings (check!) and an open floor plan (double check), I wrote out three details that we knew wouldn't be able to happen for years and years: a tuxedo kitchen, wall ovens, and a big gas cooktop. Nate and I love to cook and we love to entertain, but we were never able to do it easily in our 1950s ranch. 

Though there will be more updates to come in future months and years, I am in love with our starting point at E-Haus. So much so that I literally squealed when we walked in and besides drywall everywhere (which in and of itself feels like a massive upgrade!), we have a good start on our kitchen. 

The judgy part of my brain is all kinds of frustrated with our not-ceiling height cabinets, but the upcharge wasn't feasible at this point and one of the reasons that we chose painted white uppers was for the ease of customizing them. So some cabinet customization is for sure in our DIY future.

On the opposite side of the kitchen is our window and no upper cabinets at all because we're also building some white oak or walnut floating shelves to warm up our otherwise stark color palette in here (I love it, but light gray walls + black and white cabinets + white quartz + stainless hood and appliances = stark) and to also tie in the dark hardwood floors that will be all over our main level. 

In the meantime, I will be drooling all over this kitchen exactly as it is. 

See you later. 

I love you.

You are everything.

Tile Selections: Master Bathroom

The drywall went up so quickly that before we knew it, our kitchen cabinets were also (partially) installed, along with the interior doors and bathroom tile. It is incredible to me how professionals can complete tasks that literally took months for us to DIY at our old home in a matter of a few days. The longest-running task so far has actually been one of the physically smallest jobs, go figure.

Along with the whirlwind of these tasks came the first of a series of jobs for us: master bathroom tile. While we chose to go with builder options for the kids' bathroom and laundry room, we wanted to completely customize our own space and to do so, we needed the freedom to pick our own tile. One of the factors that sold us on our builder at the start was his openness toward letting us interfere with his work, and it's been so nice to make choices that we will actually want to live with for awhile instead of going with entirely builder-grade selections even though we don't have the budget for a fully custom home.

As always, I started with Pinterest, and these aspirational bathrooms:

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Luckily, there's a bit of a theme in my tastes. While I love all four images (and drooled over many, many more rooms as well), the first two feel more "precious" than the rest of our house plans. We have black and white all over our house, not least in our tuxedo kitchen, so it felt really natural to just go for it here. 

We bit the bullet, made a 3 hour trip to a tile shop that stocked the options we preferred so that we could avoid a building delay, and three days later our master bathroom went from drywalled with the start of a cabinet installation:

To this!

Although we debated back and forth for days about grout color, we settled on a light gray that provides higher contrast between the hex tiles (clearly there's a good haze/ bad light in this photo) but a more uniform look in the subway tile, and so far I am thrilled with the progress.

Next up: paint, lighting, black granite countertops, and mirror selection(s).

A Suit of Siding

So all of a sudden we went from Tyvek to Hardie Board in "Night Gray," and our house is looking sharp! I'm getting the feeling that E-Haus is more guy than girl, so we'll call it a suit. What's really interesting is the way this color (and our house itself) looks so different in different lights and from different angles. We apparently have two houses!

Our driveway will eventually branch off into a concrete pad and turn-around by the garage as well as an additional loop that goes more in front of the house for guests. But because we wanted to take best advantage of our scenery and tweaked our house location to that, this angled view is going to be the first impression our guests get. I'm guessing that a yard and some landscaping will go a long way to help!

When we're out in the yard or otherwise coming to the front door, this is the straight-ahead front view, and in this light, our siding almost looks navy blue. I can't wait to see how the stone we chose finishes it off! I can't wait to paint the front door, for that matter! I told Nate that I want to go bold, so we'll see if I hold my ground when the time comes to make that decision for real.

E-Haus Decor Plans: The Main Bathroom

With our upcoming move, we will be moving from a single bathroom to 2.5 bathrooms. Having spent my entire adult life carting toiletries to and fro from bathrooms that are shared in some way, I almost didn't know where to start in terms of making plans for each space. Furthermore, my kids have their own bathroom in this house (well, except for when we have guests until we finish our basement), so I get to figure out a designated kid space for the first time. 

We planned this bathroom to be a blank slate (read: generic) that can be decorated and redecorated easily as our kids grow up from small to tall: rectangular gray tiles laid in a brickwork pattern, a white cabinet with double sinks, slate gray granite countertops and a low-impact brushed nickel light fixture. Then, after multiple false starts, I recalled our now-homeless art from the gender neutral nursery we left behind, and used it to make a plan for adding in some personality. Apparently, even for kids, I love texture more than color.  At least I'm consistent.

1, 8, 16: Hooded towels are adorable and also practical for small people. 

          2: The above-mentioned towels will hang on three of these elephant hooks that I plan to hang across from the vanity.

         3: The light fixture we chose.

         4: Historically we have had major problems with bath mats that get kicked around and folded and lost among our laundry. A bamboo mat will add some warmth to an otherwise cool space and hopefully some durability as well. 

        5: Slate gray granite. I kind of love the lighter matte pieces in it that may camouflage the less than pristine spots that are inevitable in a kids' space.

        6: We found a similar low stool with warm wooden legs and an entirely white and gray elephant top. This will make an ideal extra surface for both a parent who bathes kids and a kid who needs a boost at the vanity. It doesn't hurt that the stool repeats the color AND animal pattern we've got going on. 

   7, 10: Two of the three pieces of our nursery art. 

   9, 14: The bamboo finish will repeat in the wastebasket and shower curtain hooks.

        11: Tile, gray floors with white cabinet.  

        12: We opted to provide all of our own lighting and mirrors throughout our home. In this space we decided to use two round mirrors with modern wooden frames in lieu of a standard frameless rectangle.

       13: A non-slip mat inside the tub is a must with small people. At least in this iteration the color would help tie in aqua balloon art.

       15: We have forever used a ruffled aqua ombre shower curtain, but now it feels like overkill. We already have a solid white curtain in a waffle texture, so it's an easy choice.

And the Framing Details Continue.

One of the coolest impromptu experiences of the build happened on the Saturday that we randomly drove over and discovered a whole crew at work installing windows and exterior doors! Not pictured: we didn't get our normal snow this winter, but we definitely have gotten a bunch of rain, so it's basically a mud slick out that door. One of the guys bringing the door in totally slipped in it and fell flat on his back in the muck. He wasn't hurt at all except for perhaps his ego, so we all had a laugh. 

This door was originally designed as a sliding door-- and yes, that would have been practical-- but the romantics in us went for french doors anyway. I just keep imagining them propped open in the sunshine, especially after we get our deck built out there. The space that leads to the doors is going to serve as a dining nook for a few years at least. 

We wanted open living in our house, so we added a nook so that we could have a little separation instead of placing our table directly between the kitchen (that dark hole to the left) and the great room. The planned dining room is going to be a TV/ play room instead, and we added an angled peninsula to our kitchen that utilizes some of the gap space in here.

I had never before and will likely never again be so amazed by the installation of pipes and electrical boxes into a space!

We have an upstairs! This was taken from inside the master bedroom and through the framing you can see the top of our stairs, the laundry room (right next to our bedroom on the left in this picture), our daughter's room (to the right of our stairs), and if you squint hard enough I can see my cute soon-to-be middle child who is standing in our planned open loft space and another bedroom right behind him.

And the view from our upstairs balcony into the great room! My absolute favorite thing about this space besides the two-story windows themselves is the way that we angled our house altogether so that they all look directly into the woods. I can't think of a better view to watch the seasons change throughout the year!

This is the flat-on back view of our house. Now imagine it with a desk in the space the right that wraps around the right side of the house, and a low patio across the rest of the back. Also some grass and landscaping. 

The garage side and the top of one of the egress windows in our basement. It's funny how much Tyvek, windows and shingles make a structure start to look like a real house! Maybe we don't need siding after all...

E-Haus: Framing, Continued.

The downside of construction is the massive amount of mud. Thanks to a good amount of rain (though thankfully very little snow) throughout the build process up until this point, it's been a messy mess to go visit "New House." Tyvek really helped make it seem real. Here's our framed-in garage. Thankfully, the walls have made it evident that though the garage will be full of cars, it is also big enough to accommodate the fair amount of clutter that it will inevitably collect in it.

Here's the view from the doorway between the garage and mud room. To the right will be a big closet, we plan to build in cubbies right against the shared great room wall that's been framed in ahead, and to the left is our future kitchen.

I actually really loved how the stairs in our house come down at an angle and don't face directly toward the front. I also like the landing halfway up that just adds some interest and a safety buffer in case that kids (or me) take a tumble. That's also partially the reason that we've opted to have them carpeted to start. It will be a fun project to re-finish them someday, but it wasn't worth the 4k upcharge at this point in our lives to get hardwood treads.

The little cave is our future kitchen! The doorway in the back will lead to a "butler's pantry" and then the empty space to the right behind the kitchen is our pantry! It's not huge but it's many times larger than any food storage space we've had in the past, so this feature feels like an absolute luxury to us.

Another great room view! We haven't made any fireplace decisions other than gas (I insisted-- I want to be able to use my fireplace at the flick of a switch, and we just aren't clean enough people to effectively deal with the byproducts of a wood fire haha), but those will come. Maybe not until after we've moved in, but that's okay. We're just not willing to make a four-figure mistake on what will eventually be a main focal point of our home. Plus, DIY runs thick in our blood even as we're handing over many other house projects to sub-contractors.

Our future powder room, where we'll no longer have to frantically hide our toiletries every. single. time we have guests over (the single bathroom in our final house had an extra-narrow single sink cabinet and a 2 inch nook behind the mirror- toiletries basically lived in our rooms or behind the shower curtain).

This room is called the "library" on the plans, and I've taken that suggestion seriously. We opted against a side window on the right so that we can DIY some built-ins. I was an English major and have dreamed of a giant bookshelf that could house my entire collection, so a library fits! It will otherwise function as a playroom for the kids.

The library will be open to what is labeled a "dining room" on the plans, but is going to be a TV/ den space instead.

Another view of the stairs!

The upstairs requires a little more imagination at this point.

N in her future room!

E in his future room!

E

The start of a front door view... I'm imagining it'll look pretty different once the second story is framed, but even so, I like where this is headed! Especially as far as that bay window is concerned.

E-Haus: On to Framing

It's so strange how house building can take forever to get from even thinking about a floorplan to getting the final loan approved, and then even longer to get permits together, but once ground is broken the project can move forward at lightning speed. Our builder was adamant that our home would take approximately 5 months to build from foundation to completion, and though we heeded the advice that is EVERYWHERE online and mentally added several months in our heads, he's on track so far. In fact, there are crews of men on site 6-7 days per week. So we'll have to see what winter brings. Snow has a tendency to slow life down...

It sounds strange to say, but though our house looked enormous to me when the foundation walls went up, once the floorboards went on I started to wonder why we had chosen such a tiny home. Then the rest of the house got framed and once again, it looked big. Square footage, as with life, completely depends on the place from which you are viewing it.

This shot actually terrified me. I have no personal fear of heights but when my kids get within 10 feet of any kind of drop, I become convinced that their lives are in peril.

That tall wall on the right is the start to our (great!) great room!

And that bank of windows makes me smile so hard. I love the woods view, and I can't wait to watch the seasons change from a cozy seat within!