Color Scheme

Feel compelled to post to the blog but really too tired to write. I've been wanting to post about our paint scheme and have written a partially epic post about how we got to the colors we settled upon.  Maybe I'll post that sometime but not tonight. So how about I just give you color swatches?


The primary color scheme in the house (all paints are Benjamin Moore):

Caliente AF-290	Citrine AF-370	Pashmina AF-100	Cinder AF-705	Amsterdam AF-550

80% of the house is Pashmina with the other colors being used as accent colors as illustrated below.  The master bedroom mixes this up - three of the walls there are Cinder with one accent wall in the Amsterdam blue.

First Floor Accents

Second Floor Accents

The girls' rooms completely deviate from the rest of the house:

heather plum
1396
Daughter 1's Room

carolina plum
1384
Girls' Bath

blue hydrangea
2062-60
Daughter 2's Room

House Number

We're ordering our house numbers from a great ETSY shop - MODPLEX.  Let me know if I over do it with the red accents on the house.

Bathtub Bravo

Almost everyone who has seen the tub asks if they can take a bath when the house is done. I suspect those of you who haven’t asked are just shy.  When the house is done, I may start renting the tub out.  We have to pay for the build somehow.  There’s precedence for this…a nickel for a hot bath in the old west.  So, $20 for a bath in the western suburbs? I suspect the village would have something to say about that and I'd be violationg about 100 health codes.  So, I'll keep the tub to myself.

The other question everyone asks is "where did you find that tub?"  If you search  Amazon for "slipper tub" you might think we spent $5,995 on the Barclay 66" Slipper tub.  And you'd be wrong.  $5,995 for a tub was not in the budget.  


Maybe you wouldn't do a search for a bathtub on Amazon.  Before this build I certainly would not have done it. But now it would be my first stop...we ended up buy over 80% of all the plumbing fixture from Amazon...just not the tub.


If you were to do a search on Houzz (a site I've been addicted to throughout this entire build) for "freestanding slipper tub" you might think we spent over $4,000 for the Victoria and Albert Amalfi tub. And you'd be wrong.  $4,000 for a tub was not in the budget.  


If you do have $4,000 in the budget for the Victoria and Albert tub can you build a new bath and let me take a bath at your house?  I love my new tub but the finish on the Victoria & Albert is a little bit nicer.  Maybe you'll have the drop-dead gorgeous tiles use in this bathroom.  Click on the picture to see other images on Houzz from this house.  The shower is amazing.

Another wonderful
Victoria & Albert tub!

 My dream tub is an Ofuro style soaker.   I asked Dr. Google about these tubs (multiple times.) Every search I did led to Signature Hardware's selection.  Sadly, none of these tubs would fit in our new bathroom.  But plenty of the  other tubs would fit...but the pricing (compared to the other tubs I looked at) seemed way too good to be true.  Last spring break we decided to let the girls get their horse fix and took a drive to Lexington.  We took a little detour and visited Signature Hardware's show room.  The first time I climbed into the 66" Susanna Freestanding Resin Slipper Tub I knew this was the tub.


The price I paid for the tub was less than what's currently listed on the web site.  I'm not going to pretend like it's not a lot of money for a bath tub.  My original budjet was a max of $1,200.  So I blew that but the whole experience gave me the confidence to source all the plumbing fixtures myself and still came under budget (barely.)

My awesome tub!

Descion Fatigue

Email from contractor the other day included this list:

Selections that are needed listed in order of priority;

1. Final selections on exterior material.
2. Ordered all light fixtures.
3. Finalize stair material and selections.
4. Finalize millwork material and selections. (Interior doors, door hardware and trim)
5. Finalize hardwood floor species and Stain color.
6. Finalize tile layout and selections. (tile and grout)
7. Finalize interior paint and stain locations and color selections.
8. Finalize kitchen and master bath counter tops materials and color selection.
9. Finalize carpet selection.
This entire list should be completed by October 17.

And this article explains one of the reasons I have been eating too many Oreos: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all

One more look at ceiling fan catalogs tonight and I'll be resorting to this (image courtesy of Jasongraphix):

Entropy

Our real home is empty.  I was last there on Wednesday morning with a FEMA inspector and it felt abandoned.

We've been so busy with the rental house and back to school that we've lost steam on getting the real house fixed. We need to get our hiring done. We need a plan.

Real Estate & the Economy: Death of the 'McMansion': Era of Huge Homes Is Over - CNBC

Hurray! The McMansion is dead. Let's hope it stays that way. HATE the crap that was built in our neighborhood. If you want a mansion by your self some acreage and hire some one to design one for you. Don't put up a monster that's really just an ugly shell over an expanse of rooms with "premium" finishes.

Real Estate & the Economy: Death of the 'McMansion': Era of Huge Homes Is Over - CNBC

Smaller Footprint

We moved into the rental house this weekend. A solid brick bungalow that appears to have never been touched by a modern rehabber's hammer (outside of the landlord's addition of a bathroom and "bedroom" in the basement. )  We have 1,140 SQ feet of living space sandwiched between a large but stinky basement and an attic.

So lots of storage space coupled with a smaller amount of living space.  Our REAL house had 1,800 SQ feet of livable space before the flood.  But no basement and a hard to access attic.  So why do we have more stuff than could possibly fit into the rental?

Ambitious, logical Anne says we just need to methodically go through the rooms, garage, and attic in our REAL house and mercilessly edit our collection of stuff.  Ridding ourselves of the baggage of things we don't use.  Green Anne says we need to take anything we don't need and either offer it up on Craig's List or drop it off at Salvation Army.  (I'm sure there's a frat house somewhere that wants our flood touched couch.)

Real Anne knows what will happen will be different from what should happen.  Boxes of stuff will be wedged into the attic and basement at the rental and a storage locker.  Because we don't have the time and energy to go through all this crap it will follow us to the remodled REAL house.  Much of it will sit there for years -for the kids to deal with someday.

Real Anne also knows that bags and bags of things will make its way to a landfill someplace.  Because, when faced with a crabby, hungry seven year old at 8:00 PM on a Sunday night, we'll end up tossing plies of stuff into garbage bags (and proably stop for pizza on the way back to the rental.)

So, even with all our green ambtions, moving is not doing anything for our desire to reduce our footprint.  Let's hope we do better with the remodel,

Making Bacon

If  you know me (and I assume you do,)  I probably don't need to explain why we're here.  On July 24, 2010 Chicagoland had a storm described as an 100 year rain. Our little piece of Chicagoland had well over 7 inches of rain in six hours. The storm drains and sewers were overwhelmed.  We had knee deep water over the storm drains on our street.  Manhole covers were lifted by the waters.  Many of our neighbors had water in their basements or crawlspaces. We didn't.  We don't have a basement. We don't have a crawlspace. Instead, we had four to six inches of water throughout our entire first floor.

I will spare you the list of everything that was destroyed or damaged.  Short list- walls, kitchen cabinets, carpeting, and kitchen floor. Probably the furnace too. At least $20,000 of damage.  Insurance?  Not much help.

For a long time, too long of a time, we'd been saying we'd remodel the house "in two or three years." The house, built in 1949, was starting to wear on us.  Again, I will spare you the long list of this house's faults but how did people in the 40's live with such small closets?  

The house does have one thing going for it.  We love it.  We love our yard.  We love our neighbors.  We love our school.  (And I love the commute.) We can't think of a single reason to move.

But we are going to move. Temporarily.  Because the question we asked after the sodden carpet was hauled away was "do we put lipstick on the pig or do we make bacon?"

Why put money into replacing the flood damaged items only to rip everything out when we remodel in a "few years?"  And how do we keep this from happening again?

So, we're moving out this weekend.  Away from the growing smell of mildew.  Away to a house with a working kitchen. We won't be sleeping here for close to a year and when we're back, it will be a completely different house.

If I'm not too lazy and too overwhelmed, this blog will document the next year.