Family Room Framing!

I think we may have been in the darkest point of our remodel last week. It is so true, it has to get worse before it gets better, but it still felt pretty sad to walk into our house and see half the rooms stripped down to the studs, and the other half with gaping holes down to the dirt crawl space. It's also felt a bit stressful to realize some of the "errors" that we've made in design and we've had to make several change requests and reorders as well.

Still, it was awesome to check in on progress this week and see this.


The family room is taking shape! I think I'm going to love this room!

Theoretically, framing this room, and the rest of the house, will continue all next week - and even though it's not good in a global sense, this lack of winter rain has been working pretty well in our favor:).

We made a final decision about flooring - a distressed tropical hardwood by BR111, Espresso Pecan.

modern wood flooring design by BR111

We really like the rich dark yet warm color and can't wait to see it in our new house!

Next up: appliance and tile decisions!

Family Room Coming Along!

The family room has gone through a rapid transformation over the last two weeks...








The blue hue to the last photo is the tarp that's supposed to protect the room from the storm coming in this weekend.

Other additions this week: our new master bedroom window framed - shortened so we can fit the bed underneath it, in theory...



And new back door framed...


And our bathtub arrived!


The flooring dilemma continues - Itay has been poring over websites and visiting every flooring showroom in the county to leave no exotic hardwood unturned in his quest for the PERFECT FLOORING CHOICE! He even ordered 75 pounds of samples direct from a manufacturer.




I love that all the above samples look almost exactly the same in this picture... and in reality:).

We are still gathering input from every person with an opinion in the greater Bay Area:). Hopefully the choice will be made by next week... then on to tile choices!

Week 3 - Concrete Pour and Hardwood Floor Decisions

Since Monday was a holiday, this week was a little slower on progress. The foundation forms passed inspection on Wednesday, so concrete was poured on Thursday, and set to cure over the weekend.



The doorways we plan to widen were also stripped down to the existing studs in preparation for framing next week. It is really hard to imagine what these will look like, but for comparison's sake, I still took pics.

From living room into kitchen/dining room


From kitchen into (currently non-existent) family room.


Straight shot view you'll have walking in the front door... lots of imagination necessary here...


In other news, we spent much of week and weekend 3 agonizing over our hardwood floor choices. We have decided to do wood floors in the living room, kitchen, dining room, family room and main hallway. We think a darker floor will look really nice with our white cabinets. We have picked up and basically dismissed at least 2 dozen samples so far. Itay is being VERY thorough in his quest to choose the PERFECT floors, although this is hilariously impossible to achieve with the information we have. The flooring people keep saying things like "hold the sample up to your walls and cabinets." (we have neither). Or, "make sure you look at this sample in your house in different kinds of light" (we have no electricity, making this somewhat difficult). Or, "pick a shade that complements your furniture." (I haven't seen my furniture since May - do we even have furniture?).

Nevertheless, we're hoping to make a flooring decision in the next week!

Week 2 Progress

Wow, our demolition crew doesn't mess around! In spite of Monday being the Christmas holiday observed and not a work day, a lot was accomplished this week.

The living room first lost a weirdly paneled wall (which we actually didn't realize was weird paneling until the contractor pointed it out).


And then later lost all the worn out, water damaged, buckling wooden flooring.


Towards the end of the week, a tractor arrived on the site to help excavate the crawl space under the family room.


By Friday, this hole in the ground had replaced the concrete subflooring. The forms for the new foundation are all set, waiting for inspection early next week, thanks to a crew of 5 working all day Saturday (New Year's Eve) to have it ready when the city reopens its doors on January 3.


Also, all existing kitchen cabinets were removed to make way for our own design.


Which meant we were on high pressure mode to finalize our kitchen design and ideally get it all ordered before the New Year (both for timing and to qualify for end of year deals!) Here Itay and Aiden close on the order at 5:30pm on New Year's Eve - Home Depot closed at 5:00:).



We went with the Thomasville Cottage style cabinets in a painted white finish, which was the same style but a different finish than our condo. We are excited for the light, fresh look of the white cabinets. And after many hours spent pondering different configurations of the cabinets, we tossed out plans for an island or peninsula and a microwave under the countertop, and landed on what we think is the most logical and lovely use of our kitchen space!


I especially love how the generic "staging" in the design program gave us a knife block, two cookie jars and a martini glass - we Tassas know how to party!;)

Can't wait to see how the actual product turns out!