Progress photos - hardwood floors

Our hardwood floors are in!  We couldn't me more thrilled with how they look.  The color and feel are a combination of everything we were looking for: dark but warm, rich but casual. 

We ended up using Kentwood Originals Engineered Maple Del Rio hardwoods.  The floors are hand scraped, distressed, covered with a high performance polyurethane and come with a 25 year residential wear warranty. 

We stopped by late on Halloween to find the hardwood guy installing the floors.  Here are a few pics:

Hardwoods in the kitchen

 

Vapor barrier

 

The finished product, in the office. 

 

We used remnant pieces to create a small hearth in front of the master bedroom fireplace

 

 

Here's a tip when designing the installation of your hardwood floors: remember to consider the orientation of your floor boards.  We decided to install the boards parallel to the front door, running across the house from side to side.  This prevents having the "bowling alley" effect, which we had in our last house (and to be quite honest, it never really bothered me), where the boards of the floor create a bowling alley lane leading from the front door to the back of the house.

 

Progress photos - interior paint

Our first coat of interior paint is up, and it looks great!  Unfortunately, we've had some exceptionally gray weather over the past week, and since we only have one floodlight in the inside, you'll have to take the actual color in the pictures with a grain of salt.  Obviously the lighting is suboptimal.

Our painter will be coming back once the hardwoods, millwork and cabinets are installed to put a final coat on each of the walls. 

The main paint color throughout our house: Benjamin Moore HC-172 Revere Pewter

Master bath: Benjamin Moore 1551 La Paloma Gray

Child's room: Benjamin Moore HC-172 Revere Pewter

Guest bathroom: Benjamin Moore HC-172 Stratton Blue

Another shot of the guest bath: Benjamin Moore HC-172 Stratton Blue

Progress photos - solid wood front door

Our beautiful front door arrived this week and we were thrilled to see how it looked after installation. 

One of the things that we were most concerned about was the potential for moisture absorption and warping.  Since we're well into the rainy season here in Seattle, we wanted to make sure that the door got a coat of Benite as soon as possible. 

From Daly's Paint:



A Little History of Benite...

BENITE. Now there's a name for you! Benite was a magic elixir that Walter J. Daly (our founding father) knew about in Texas and brought it with him to the great Northwest. Eventually he got the right to distribute BENITE here on the coast. Daly's eventually discovered that the founders for BENJAMIN CHEMICAL Company had a falling out and that we were their sole customer! By the late 1960's the survivor of the partnership in Michigan, Mr. St. Johns, decided he was too old to fool around with this stuff and wanted out. We were now over a barrel. A BENITE Barrel. In order to continue with it we'd have to start making it ourselves and buy the rights to it for CASH - A LOT OF IT!

By this time we'd taken Benite a bit further and developed BenMatte, known at that time as a "Modern Danish Oil Finish" (No reference to Tung Oil yet.) Plus our Benite stain line and everything else Herb, in our own factory, could think of tossing BENITE into.

Anyway, Mr. St. Johns told us he'd send us the formula, the vats, and himself too, to help us set up the process of making Benite at Daly's. Trouble is, his vats were rusted and he was too...he never showed up.

Daly's -- or better yet Herb was on his own for that first batch.

Here's what happened:

By 8:00p.m. that July day in 1969 when Herb made the first batch, the odor had crept up the alley to the street. The stuff had been in the cooker since 2:00 p.m. or so and it was the worst smell ever. Jim Daly went home for diner at 6:30 and on his way back he could smell this unusual odor for about a mile. As he got to the corner of 36th and Stone (where the store and factory are located), he noticed smoke coming out of the old building thinking for sure that "THAT WAS IT!" Turns out the problem was in the gas jets not being large enough, preventing the 100 gallons or so from heating fast enough to reach a certain critical temp. Poor Herb, but by the next couple of batches he could get to the critical temp in a couple of hours or so, and not produce quite so much smoke in the process.

In later batches, the odor was bad enough so that people couldn't work in the office. You see, at that time the office was in an old building right above the Benite Cooker. We moved the office in 1970. Did our Benite batches have anything to do with the move???

Needless to say, Herb had perfected the Benite recipe, and we no longer alarm anyone on our street. At least, not that we are aware of!

With the Benite now protecting our front door, we can rest easy until we pick a color of stain for the front door, side panels and tongue and groove ceiling on the front porch. 

Here are a few pics of our door, from Simpson Door. 

Solid wood 8 foot fir door, from Simpson Door Company

Close up of our Simpson fir door

Beautiful wood grain

View of the door and side lights from the interior

Door specs

Curious as to why we chose a Simpson front door?  Not only is Simpson a local Pacific Northwest company, but here's some interesting historical information for you, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The Simpson Company is also notable for the construction and operations of its own logging railroad known as the Simpson Railroad. It is one of the last logging railroad operations in the continental United States and dates back some 120 years. The railroad was once extensive and branched out into several hundred miles of forestland in the Olympic Peninsula but is now limited to less than fifteen miles of operational track. The rail line was used not only to transport lumber but also as a transportation network to remote logging camps and towns. Construction of the railroad line was an engineering feat as demonstrated by the large and complex bridges built to span gorges as well as the mountainous terrain the railroad traveled through. Perhaps the most notable landmarks of the now mostly abandoned line are the Vance Creek Bridge and the High Steel Bridge. Both bridges were built in 1929 and in use until the 1950s when the line was abandoned. The bridges still stand with the High Steel Bridge still in use as a forest road. The High Steel Bridge also has the distinction of being one of the tallest rail bridges in the United States and has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

A picture taken in the 1940s of the Vance Creek Bridge with a Simpson train


Progress photos - exterior trim

My favorite Russian siding guy is almost finished with the exterior trim.  It's hard for me to believe that he's done the entire house by himself and I'm so thankful for his hard work and attention to detail. 

Here are a few pics of how the house is coming together from the outside:

Front porch.  No, you cannot have our Workaholics lawn chairs.

Framing the front columns

Columns are framed!

 

View of the front exterior.  Love the louvered panel above the bay window. 

Back porch columns with pine tongue and groove ceiling. 

 

"Houston, we have a problem." - drywall texture

This week, the drywall team finished their work by texturing the walls.  Initially on our estimate from the drywall company, we had specified that we'd like a "light dash."

Wondering what the heck "light dash" wall texturing is?  Here's a picture...



If you're a huge nerd (ie: me), you can go to the Technical Services and Information Bureau to read all about wall texturing. 

While the "light dash" wall may look a bit like a Brillo Pad in the close up pic, we had light textured walls in our old house and loved the way that the paint sat on said walls.  One thing I'd strongly encourage you to remember is that a smooth wall will pick up stains, dings and holes.  A benefit of going with a textured wall is that it will show less wear and tear in the long run. 

Now that you've seen what a "light dash" should look like, here's what we ended up getting:

Can you see why I was freaking out?  Every single wall in our beautiful home was filled with these inconsistencies.

Drywall texture or snot?

Really, really bad.

Obviously whatever happened during the application of texture was water under the bridge at this point, because the texture had been applied and was completely dry.  I decided to go down to another home where the same drywall company was applying texture, and it looked nothing like our snotty mess.  I started to wonder if the mixture was off, or if perhaps the air compressor had malfunctioned during application...?

The long story short is this: the owner of the drywall company came out to verify that the texture that had been applied was not good.  He had his crew come out the following day, they re-sanded every single wall and reapplied the texture.  I have to give major kudos to the owner of the drywall company, because he said "As much as I would've liked to tell you that you were wrong about the texturing, you're absolutely right.  Something happened during the application and I will make sure that we fix it."  While this could've had disaster written all over it, I was so impressed with how the owner handled our botched walls and really thankful for his honesty and integrity.  As he humbly told us, he's done some of the homes for Seattle's Street of Dreams - and in the end, he wants his customers to be happy and love their home.

What I love more than our new, perfectly textured walls is a man who stands by his word. 

Progress photos - garage door installation

Our garage door was installed this past week, and it looks great!  As you may recall, I wrote an entire post about selecting a garage door. 

I do have to say: since I'm not the engineer of the family, I had no idea how cool a side mount, belt driven garage door open could be.  Not only is the thing almost silent, but it automatically locks upon coming down.  Sound quality and safety in all in one!

Here are a few pics of the garage door - The Therma Classic R006S 2-car steel door.

Therma Classic R006S 2-car steel door from the inside

Therma Classic R006S 2-car steel door after installation

Going up!

Going down!

Garage door after installation with belt drive motor in the upper right hand corner, adjacent to the rail

Design inspiration - Sherwin Williams vs. Benjamin Moore exterior colors

You may remember our 50 shades of gray dilemma, and the attempt to narrow down our exterior color selections. 

Working with gray has been much harder than I anticipated.  It seems as though most of the Benjamin Moore colors that we splashed on the house pulled blue or green. 

While we really did like Benjamin Moore's Rocky Coast, when we started getting paint bids, there was a constant response from all of the painters: Benjamin Moore's paint is roughly twice as expensive as Sherwin Williams, even with a contractor's discount.  We also got the feeling that the quality of Benjamin Moore's paint wasn't necessarily that much better than Sherwin Williams (and you all know that I love Benjamin Moore!).

With that being said, we figured that it was worth the time to look into Sherwin Williams exterior paint.  We ended up painting both Sherwin Williams Cityscape and Grizzle Gray on the house, and both were true gray.  No undertones of blue or green, just gray. 

Since experimenting with Sherwin Williams grays, we've now decided to use:

 Sherwin Williams SW7067 Cityscape

Here are a few pics to compare Sherwin Williams' Cityscape and Benjamin Moore's Rocky Coast:

Sherwin Williams SW7067 Cityscape on top, Sherwin Williams SW7068 Grizzle Gray on bottom.  Shown in evening light, as the sun was setting.

Benjamin Moore 1595 "Rocky Coast"

Both Sherwin Williams Cityscape and Grizzle Gray are beautiful colors, but at this point, we're more attracted to Cityscape (the lighter shade).  Let's take another look at this beautiful, neutral gray:

Sherwin Williams Cityscape gray, photo from: Healthy Tipping Point

Sherwin Williams Chip It tool, using Cityscape gray