Getting closer!

So much is happening very quickly each day! Lighting, stone work on the fireplace, carpeting…

Here are some pictures from this morning.

This is day four for the stonemasons. Are those beams gorgeous?!  Mike and Bob did an amazing job on them and we absolutely love them.

The kitchen still needs its final touch-ups which happen tomorrow. It also needs to be cleaned.

Lighting was installed this morning in the bathrooms!

Yes, the laundry room is rather bright, even at night.  Just wait until the curtain and furniture are in!

Nathan’s room is painted and the bedding he picket out looks awesome!

I will be adding some decorative horizontal stripes like in the picture below. That will probably happen over the next few weeks.  I used a program on the Shewin-Williams website and worked with Nathan to create the mock-up below. I uploaded a picture then drew in what I wanted! Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Also this weekend the carpeting was installed! We were super excited about that. The boys all love it.

Here is Jeff’s office.

Well, Wednesday is the big Moving Day! I better get back to packing things up!

Painting and Mantel Installation

The painting has begun! We love the Balanced Beige color from Sherwin Williams and it turned out just perfect!

The ceiling and walls will be painted the same color. In a couple of days the decorative faux beams will be installed on the ceiling.  The beams will be stained the same color as the floors.

This afternoon I stopped by and got my first look at the mantel! It is perfect! Awesome! Great in proportion to the room and the fireplace. It just feels “right.”

You can even see the special grooves that John put in it for us to give it that old world scraped look.

The stone will be installed beginning on Monday. What an amazing sight that will be! Remember the stone? It looks like this:

We are still working on the hearth stone.

16 days until we move: Mantel delivered and modified

The fireplace mantel and corbels were delivered and John did a wonderful job! He did some tweaking on site too so that the electrical box can be inserted in the middle of the top of the mantel.

John uses chemicals to stain the wood. He showed me an example of the crazy color that was used on our mantel. It oxides the wood and starts out as a reddish pomegranate color then turns brown in 5 minutes.

Here we are looking at the placement on the fireplace. We decided the corbels were too long, so John took them back to his shop so he could use his band saw to remove the bottom portion.

We also found out that the stone is not a 4 inch depth. This impacts the design in a couple of ways. The electrical boxes on the side stick out too far, the overall size of the fireplace will now be 4 inches narrower than planned, and the mantel is more wide than anticipated. I think we can fix the electrical outlet boxes and live with the width of the mantel.

We worked with Brian at Old American Lumber.  He worked so hard to find exactly what I wanted and really was easy to work with. He responded quickly to my questions and emails.  You can call Brian at:

Old American Lumber

864-427-3193

864-541-8111

1218 S Duncan Bypass

Union, SC 29379

They have gorgeous reclaimed wood from old barns and NC mills that can be used for ceilings and floors. Be sure to look at the gallery on his website for some wonderful inspiration pictures!

Miscellaneous stuff going on while the contractor is out of town

Yes, Mike had a family vacation scheduled before taking this job, so he’s off in the islands somewhere having a great time! At least, I HOPE he’s having a great time.

25 days until we move!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch….  (10 points to the first person to tell me where that line is from!)

I got busy and painted the bathroom cabinets in the hall bathroom a lovely chocolate brown. Remember how much I hated that bathroom?  well, now I think of chocolate when I look in there and that is not all bad, is it? In fact, I think I may end up actually liking this bathroom by the time we are done!

Pictures will be soon, I promise!

Bob, our second in command, is also busy with repairing the outside wood siding we ripped through to move the kitchen door.  There was white vinyl siding up all across the back.

We moved the door closer to the bay windows, and we saw that it had the original boards underneath.

 Brick red paint!

So, we decided to have them make it look like it did originally. It will also match the workshop are a bit better.

Here is what it looks like now…

I am really at a loss about how to hide that giant gray electrical box we had to put outside to the right of the carport door.

Right now our plans are to replace the door with one that has more glass and is without dividers. We’ll also be adding a third pane of glass from to the slider from floor to ceiling to let more light in that room. The siding will be painted for sure, probably in a neutral gray, taupe, beige-type tone? We’ll paint the trim white to continue what is going on elsewhere on the house. The workshop should be painted to match too. The brick area is a 5 foot wide strip from the side yard to where the sliding door opens. I think the grill will end up living there.

Other things happening…

Motion sensing flood lights went in!

The electrical work for running power to our gate started.

The fireplace was starting to be covered in durock in prepration for the stone!

Starting to feel more like an entry now.

I know you really want to see pictures of the chocolate cabinets, and I promise….I will get some pictures for tomorrow’s post.

Mantel for the Stone Fireplace

What an amazing project! I am so happy that John was able to work with us on this critical piece of our renovation. He really knows his wood.

Here is the raw red oak beam we purchased from a reclaimed wood dealer in SC. Oak beams are NOT common in the area since pine was most abundant. John went down to check it out.

Close up of the end.

Then John got to work on the beam. It is about 12 feet long. Our mantel will be 7 feet wide  7.5″ high and 12″ deep.  John will also make some corbels for us.  Hi John!

Look at the wood curls!

 

Here is where the mantel will be installed! It is framed and ready for the inspections. Next, it will get a stone veneer. Seems like years ago that we picked out the stone that is being used on it.

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!

Fireplace is totally gone!

Yesterday I thought it was exciting that the hearth and chimney were out.

Then I stopped by this morning and saw that the fireplaces were all gone.

We are exploring the option of using a steel beam to go across the span. That way we won’t have to have a support column in the middle of the room. Wouldn’t that be nice? It would make placing furniture so much easier and give us more options.

My mom recently added a screened porch to her home and they used an innovative approach to the problem that didn’t require the column  and she’s sending me the plans to share with my builder and engineer to see if they’ll work. I can’t wait to hear if this will work on our situation.

Here is another cool picture of the rear yard view

Also stopped by the Mecklenburg County Extension office and met with two master gardners! It was my lucky day! Two were there and we discussed the side garden in depth. I was so worried about what to do with the nice naked dirt and they confirmed I should be putting some black plastic on top of it to keep weeds from growing…..immediately!  So, off I ran to buy black plastic garbage bags (which my sister recommended a week ago!) and paint for the brick.

I also found that I can send my dirt samples in and have them analyzed for FREE! I fill out a form telling the lab what I want to grow and they will tell me what my PH level is and all those important gardenly details like how to make it be in the right range for what I want to grow.  It was a super easy form to complete. You can do it for your lawn also, so I will find out what it needs. Wonder how long it takes to find out?

They had a LOVELY garden in front of  the office. Drat, why didn’ t I snap a picture? I will be going back soon and will be sure to remember. They also have a hotline that you can call and leave a message with any kind of gardening question. The volunteers research and will get back with you. Hooray, I am so happy about having professional gardener access!

Did I tell you I don’t like the white brick on the house? Well, that is a story for tomorrow I guess. I have to tell you that I am not afraid of paint! Just wait until you see what I am doing next!

Great news today…the wall is gone!

87 days to go.

I dropped by to see how things were progressing and work on the yard renovation project, and was amazed at the progress!

They have removed the wall down the center and the entire ceiling for the vaulted area. You can see the temporary supports that have been added in the middle of the picture below. Also, the top of the brick fireplace shows where the ceiling formerly was.

Ben in front of the wall as it is being opened up.  You can see how high the new fireplace will go! See the light in the attic?  That post in  front goes from the floor to the top of the fireplace.

Here you can see what the fireplace looked like above the ceiling line with the two systems running up the chimney.

Before I left, Mike had gotten started on the fireplace removal using a way cool tool that looked like a mini-jack hammer. It was amazing how quickly he was able to remove the bricks. Another person was cleaning them off, then stacking them outside to use in a later project.  Another GREEN thing.

There will be more pictures tomorrow that will be simply shocking! I didn’t take any right before I left, but I did get a sneak preview of how it is going to look.

We have picked our stone!

Hooray! Jeff saw it today and loved it also. The bonus was that we also found a large single hearthstone made from sandstone that is gorgeous too!  Depending on what we end up with as a design, we can use the large single stone or multiples that are from the same material for a beautiful look.

Found it at Blue Max while meeting with George Crump The Stone Man.

Monday they begin opening the ceiling and working on the vault.  Then on Wed. We have a meeting with Michelle, our interior designer, to discuss final dimensions, plans and layout of the fireplace. Can’t wait!!!

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Fireplaces, stone, stone and more stone

Fireplace design is tough! We entered the project thinking that we were going for a stone fireplace on all four sides. Now, I am investigating other options including cast stone, carved antique mantles, and true stone installed by a Scottish stone mason.

Did a search of architectural antique stores in our area to see if we can find a carved wood mantle that reminds us of things we have seen in England, France, or Italy. Not much luck, though Crossland Studios seemed the closest to what we were looking for. When we lived in Atlanta, Red Baron Antiques was amazing! There were also several other businesses that specialized in European antique furniture, room paneling, fireplace surrounds, etc.

Jeff loves the cast stone option but we are not sure if it is the right look for our house. It reminds me of all the gorgeous ornate carved churches we saw on our travels.

 =

I found Todd over at Classic Stone Creations and this beauty this past week. I love it, but it may be a little overpowering. Of course, it is completely custom and we can have a raised heart added.  They make all their products in house. Maybe we should add a ventilation hood in the kitchen to match?  Todd was super helpful in explaining the process to me and it is definitely an option.

The Stone Man is someone that we met at a home show this past Spring. He had the most amazing display that included an outdoor fireplace with a tree that was integrated into it. He specializes in outdoor hardscape and will do an indoor fireplace. We are meeting him at the Blue Max stone yard today to see if we can find a stone we like. We like this picture of the arched firebox.

I previewed Blue Max and saw these samples I really liked.   Click here to see the final choice!

Visited Boral Brick and saw their cultured stone. Lovely samples: