38 days until we move

I have been interviewing moving companies. What a wide range of pricing! Hopefully, this move will be less painful than the last. Of course, we all hope that don’t we?

I saw a neat article that talks about the housing trends of the future – 2015 to be exact!  The interesting thing is that we are incorporating many of the ideas that are in the article:

• A combined great room that includes kitchen, family room, and eating area
• No formal dining room
• Green concepts
• Larger laundry room

You can read the article here:  A Look Ahead

Wood Mantels

Today I got the great news that we may have found someone to make our mantel! Remember we are using stone as the veneer…

We want a big substantial wood beam for a mantel. The size is 8 feet for our fireplace. We want the mantel to be slightly narrower – say 80″ with a smooth surface that looks hand scraped.

Here is some wood flooring that has the look…

We love the color of the darker stain, the grain showing, and no knots or cracks. The ridges are soooooo cool.

I found a few pictures that are sort of what we like, but they are not exactly the look for one reason or another.

Here are a few…

The one below is too narrow to put anything on top of it. Plus, I love putting Christmas garland with LIGHTS on my mantel which means I need electricity.  So, the best thing would be a thicker mantel that allows me to plug my lights in on the top!

According to the article where I found this, this mantel is a 10×10, but looks really dried out and is too close to the ends.

This one looks pretty close, but seems to stick out too far from the fireplace and looks like it has pretty deep indentions.

Of course the stone veneer will be about 4 inches thick (real stone) and so you install the mantel then stone around it. The mantel will be embedded 4 inches in the stone on one side, right?  So if you use a 10x 10 beam, it will be only 6 inches sticking out. Do I need a thicker beam? Maybe a 14×10? Do they make such a thing?

This one is a little to rough for us…

Here are a few more…
 

More like this texture…

Not like these:

Well, we shall see! Hope to meet with John, of www.johnpingpong.com this weekend and figure out the details!

We are also being GREEN by using an existing beam from somewhere!

Framing it up

The work continues rapidly!

Yesterday they started work on the laundry closet.

Now they have moved to the basement and are working on the movie theater area. There was a hot water heater in a rather inconvenient spot, so they moved it and build a little room around it. We didn’t really want to see it. We are using a door from upstairs. Mike, the builder, is GREEN again!

Then I saw where he has been busy working on the wall where the screen will be installed.

You can also see the area on the right where he’s been busy framing. There have been water problems down there and they must have had drywall damage or been trying to figure out the problem. I foresee a big dig going on outside before this is over!

Today was also granite research day….so many gorgeous ones to choose from! I went looking for one we saw at Ikea called Titanium. It was a beautiful predominantly black granite with white splashes and swirls with carmel colors in it too. Very dramatic.

Here is the one from Ikea…

The titanium that they had in stock was very boring. No carmel, very little white steaking and very expensive. I visited 3 different granite shops. Good news, I found some others I do really like and they are less expensive! The one below is the picture that Jeff liked best.

The Well

Anyone else have a well? What was your experience with it? We have one. I believe it was used before they got “city” water. Most recently it was used for irrigation and filling their pool. We are hoping to do the same.

Unfortunately, it was quite large and obvious in our view from our main living area. See the corrugated roof on top? Those three windows behind it are looking out on it from the kitchen/family room area.

They got busy today and removed it in 20 minutes flat!

Now, we want to make it smaller and less obvious. Maybe they can build it to look like a doghouse for my corgi, Lucy! It needs to have an access in case we have to work on it, but I don’t know how large an opening is needed.

Then I went inside where the brick from the masonry fireplace is being hammered apart after getting cut by a very cool tool.

Bob seems to really enjoy his job! He’s also helping us be GREEN by using the gray bricks as a floor for his wood storage area!

Also, here is another environmentally friendly thing, we are saving the face brick to use on our next project – the new front entry porch!

Are we being GREEN?

Yes! Mike is saving all the things he can during the de-construction phase. We will re-use many of the doors, wood moldings, and even the insulation that was removed from the ceiling while making the vaulted area.

 

I love it that Mike is interested in helping us save money by re-using these things. I am sure we’ll find more ways to be GREEN.