Adventurer Project – Becoming our Home

Welcome to the latest edition of my blog.  This one was fun to write because we’ve made significant progress toward the goal of moving back upstairs.  I’ve noted in earlier posts about the project slogging but we’re  past that now and get to show some milestones completed plus a couple of fun projects too. Hooray, no more slogging.  So, here is what’s happening.

 

We’ve painted the interior,  it was pretty easy to spray since it’s empty.  Walls and ceilings are the same color but the walls are a satin sheen and ceiling is flat.  We chose to go with smooth wall finish meaning no texture.  It makes the drywall work take longer because there’s nothing to hide mistakes but it looks great now that it’s done.  That sheen on the ceiling at the end of the great room shows because the paint hadn’t completely dried when I took this picture.

Olivia was our painter.  I liked that she backrolled the paint her brother Ty sprayed just ahead of her.  This made the final finish very even and gave us the smooth wall look we wanted.  Very pleased that professionals in the trades notice the quality of the finish.

 

Everything we’ve done so far has been leading up to another milestone which is the kitchen cabinet install.  Bathroom vanities are part of it too.  I’ve always installed custom cabinets from local cabinet shops on my jobs but Renee found our cabinets on www.cabinets.com and will confirm ordering cabinets online isn’t for the faint of heart. Working with a local shop is easier but more expensive.  She learned to use the site’s design software and worked online with their designer who helped with the gazillion details that go into a kitchen design.  Here is a picture of the 1^st set of cabinets ready to be installed.

There is a tease here with the sink base cabinet sitting in front of the kitchen window.  It’s countertop will extend all the way to the window so getting the cabinet height right with the window was really important.  I’ll explain in more detail later.

 

With the walls painted and base cabinets in place we were ready to install flooring.  Our flooring of choice was Lifeproof LVP vinyl wide planks.  This is a floating flooring which means no nails or glue,  the planks click together.  I’ve never used it before,  but it came highly recommended and we used it thoughout most of the house.

You can see the sink base cabinet in place in front of the kitchen window just above Jarred the installer’s head.  There is no flooring underneath it and that was necessary to get the cabinet height needed to make the countertop match the height of the window behind the sink.  If that sounds confusing it’s because it was.  More to follow.

Some of the sub floors in the house were really rough so the flooring crew used a leveling compound that’s mostly Portland cement to smooth them out.  You can see it in the center of this picture.  It worked well,  the sub floors ended up smooth and level, but when some of it leaked thru onto the walls of the 1^st floor where we live it caused a bit of crisis.  We solved it pretty quickly but it did get heart rates up.  No harm, no foul.

 

I didn’t want to do traditional casing and jambs for the windows,  especially on the east side with the view.  We both wanted to have a very clean look without lots of trim hiding where drywall and windows meet.  Doing it the way I did makes trimming the window more complex because the carpentry has to be coordinated with the drywall install.  Fortunately,  I like finish carpentry and was able to make it happen.  I put the 1×6 casing up before the board was hung and then the taper put edge bead over the drywall edge next to the casing so we ended up with a very clean look.  There is ½” reveal of the CVG fir casing with Seafin finish.

 

Next up are a couple of random projects that show the progress we’re making.  The front door has been installed.  Once we picked it out it was an easy project to complete.  Very happy that it fits the mid century modern style we’re looking for.

And here is a view of it from the entryway.  We show a skylight on the house plans because there was concern the entry might be too dark without it.   That turned out to be a non issue because of all the glass so pleased we got a combination of function and beauty.

 

I decided to heat (and cool) going ductless using heat pumps and mini splits.  The original house had a boiler system with radiators in some rooms but it was outdated and expensive to upgrade.  Ductless is the most cost effective solution I could find.  Some people find the mini splits have a modern look but I would have preferred ducting with registers as it would have been a better fit for our look and feel.  Unfortunately,  that wasn’t in the budget and what I chose does look modern and energy efficient.

 

This is a picture of the challenge I’ve noted a couple of times already.  We want the kitchen counter top to meet directly with the window frame for a seamless look without any trim or backsplash.  That meant sizing the window correctly, and also having the framer account for the height from floor we needed.  He also wanted all the window heights to match.  That looks to have been done correctly but I found that putting the cabinet on the subfloor without flooring under it looks to exactly match the height we need.  All looks good,  but queue the drama:  It should work as planned but won’t know for sure until countertops are installed.  That’s a tease for the next post.

 

Speaking of countertops,  we were ready for them as soon as the base cabinets were in place.  There are at least 2 weeks between measuring for them and installation so we wanted to get that process started asap.

There are different ways to measure for countertops.  In the old days wood templates were glued together and used as layout to fabricate the stone.  New technology uses a laser to locate all the points the countertop needs to meet and those measurements are fed into a CNC machine that then makes the cuts.  We’re using the latter and it’s a pretty impressive process.  Here is my countertop tech taking the measurements for the bathroom vanity top,  another milestone down.

 

And finally these pictures show it all coming together.  You can see the finished LVP floor.  Most of the kitchen cabinets are installed as are the vanities.  Window casing completed on the east wall.

Flooring runs throughout the house except our master bath which will be tile.  Walls and ceiling are smooth wall finish.

With a final look at the great room.

 

So this post is a wrap.  I hope you learned a bit more about the project and progress we’ve made.  It’s starting to feel like we’re getting there (finally).  The finish line is to move back upstairs with the house as complete as we can make it before then.  That move date isn’t firm yet but looking likely in the next month.

This was a fun post to create because there was so much progress made and it’s HGTV show type of projects.  I call them the glitter and gold.  It’s very rewarding to be able to show it and I hope you’ve learned a bit about our construction journey.  Thanks for reading – Cheers.