Drywall Taping & Mudding
This week, Matt had subs out there taping and mudding the drywall. The house feels like a total disaster zone – there’s drywall mud EVERYWHERE. So happy there’s all that paper down – can’t wait for that to get balled up and thrown away! My mom and I were out there on Wednesday morning to drop some stuff off with Matt and after both of us putting our hands in wet drywall mud we were ready to head out of there.
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- The drywall mudding and taping has begun which is really noticeable on the curved wall at the top of the staircase.
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- To the right of the fireplace, we’ll have a railing to keep the space open and still get the light in from the staircase.
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- The office is looking great with the walls getting completed. The doorway to the left is the powder bath, and the one on the right is a closet for the office. Straight ahead will be french doors leading into the office.
Tile Selections
While the guys at the house were taping & mudding the drywall, my mom and I were busy running around Seattle picking out tile…for the 4th time! We’ve really been struggling with the tile for the house. Matt has us working with a design firm which has a rep who meets us to write things down when we make selections at the stores, and then sends us a quote. This rep woman has been 100% atrocious to work with though. In person she’s fine – she doesn’t really give us much advice and really just watches me flip through racks of tile sample boards and waits for me to pick things out. Every once in a while she finds something that’s a contender…a bit helpful. Tile is one of the things in the house that I really don’t care to spend extra money on. We got an initial bid from the rep to create our budget and I want to stick to that as much as possible. The major problem now is that every time I meet with this woman in the stores she says that things are “definitely within my budget” then when she gets back to her computer and sends me an updated quote based on our selections it’s over-budget….EVERY TIME! It’s been beyond frustrating. So instead of taking one day to pick things out, we’ve met with her 4 different times. And it’s super annoying because I have to take time off work and drive all the way up to Everett to the large CFM store to meet with her. Luckily I have my mom as a partner in crime because I honestly don’t know how I would have done it without her. My mom started calling her the “tile queen” and after last week when things were still over-budget, we said, “off with her head”! 😉
On Wednesday this week I took another day off work to re-select tile with my mom and the tile rep. But before we met up with the tile queen, my mom and I headed to Georgetown on our own to find a tile design to be the inset backsplash detail behind the range in the kitchen. We had a lot of fun shopping around at Ambiante and seeing all of the beautiful tile. It was such a relaxing break to look for tile on our own and just work with the awesome sales associate at the store.
Our favorite at the store is this Divinity Tile in their Artemis pattern. The darker tile is Carrera Velato Honed Marble and the lighter whiter tile is White Thassos Polished Marble. All of the little white tiles are cut and placed by hand, the larger ones are cut precisely using a water jet and at $135 per square foot, we’ll be buying just a little bit for a feature behind the range. They had two sample boards at Ambiante which is why there’s a line going through the middle of the two boards. If we end up going with this one, it’ll be continuous without any break.
After leaving Ambiante, we met up with the tile queen in Redmond to make some more changes to the other tile in the house (our 4th time trying to pick out tile within our budget with her). After this meeting, this was the first time that when she said “this tile is more cost efficient” that she was right, and we were able to reduce some tiling costs. I really hope this is the last time that I have to work with her! Below are a few of the selections that we made.
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- Guest Bathroom: The guest bathroom downstairs is going to be really pretty…I mean, masculine too (Joel)! The flooring is a faux carrera from Florida Tile called Gallant. It has soft gray veining and in the small space is really going to make it feel bright. The countertop is a Pental Quartz called Grey Savoie. The shower will have a white and gray striped subway tile pattern…super fun!
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- Boys’ Bath: I love the boys bathroom tile selections. Really this is just the flooring which is Florida Tile’s Cliffside Tile in the color “Grotto”. The counter top really coordinated with it and is a quartz from Wilsonart called “Amalfi Coast”. The shower tile isn’t shown here, but it’s a white subway tile and a blue glass tile. I think this room is going to look amazing!
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- Laundry Room: the laundry room cabinetry will be the same white as the rest of the house, and we are still using the glass flecked slab that my mom and I found at MSI a few months ago. To coordinate with that slab, the tile queen actually picked out an awesome backsplash tile – it’s an Oceanside glass tile. It’s going to look fantastic! Not so fantastic is the octagon file for the floor…I’m really not a huge fan of it. It’s just a busy pattern for my liking, but it’s within our budget and I realize that it’s only a laundry room. I really would have just liked a hex tile for in there – but surprisingly the hex tile is more expensive. Of course!
Paint Colors & Sheen
On Sunday, my mom, dad, aunt, uncle, and little cousin came out to look at the house. It was fun to get to show them around and give them a “during construction” tour. My mom’s sees the house quite frequently because she’s always running errands with me, but my dad hadn’t seen it since we had bare studs – inside and out! It’s been months!! And I’m not sure if my aunt and uncle had ever seen it.
The main reason that we were there was to look at paint sheens and colors. We settled on a satin finish that really looks more flat/satin than glossy/satin at all, which I like. The paint color was a lot harder to settle on though…and I still don’t think we’ve 100% chosen a color! For the ceiling, I used the cabinetry color which is Benjamin Moore’s Decorator’s White, so that choice was pretty easy. But choosing an all-over color for the house seemed a lot harder to do. I started the day thinking that I really would like Farrow & Ball’s Cornforth White (but at 50% because the color at 100% saturation was too dark for me). But after putting one of the master tile floor pieces next to the tile I wasn’t so sure about my color choice. To make matters worse, we don’t have a sample of what our main countertop choice looks like (Absolute White Quartzite), so we were only looking at pictures on my phone to jog our memory. And after looking at the pictures we’re thinking that it looks pretty good with the Cornforth White (yay!), but that means maybe we need to re-select the master bath flooring tile. Ugh!! My mom and I are going to need to take a trip to the visit our slabs up in Woodinville with our paint and master bath tile to really figure this one out.
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- To get ready for Sunday’s trip to the house with my mom, I went Saturday night to paint some drywall. But it was pitch black in the garage so I needed to paint via lantern light!
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- We ended up painting 3 more pieces of drywall on Sunday after a quick trip to Sherwin Williams. Still haven’t decided on colors and not quite sure what to do about that! I guess I’ll be out there next weekend painting and figuring colors out more.
Other Updates
Besides all of the tile drama, and the drywall mudding, blown-in insulation was added in in the attic and the front door for the mudroom was installed! The dutch door looks fantastic!! And it’ll look even better once the siding is completed around it.
The mudroom door turned out fantastic – I love the X detail on the door and how it’s mirrored in the garage doors. And the dutch door will be really fun when the boys are outside playing. Too bad all that paper is covering up the glass on the door.
Coastal Hues 