Sunday, September 1, 2002

Do you think it's possible to spend 8 hours touring furniture and light fixture stores? I didn't, but I believe it now. We took Bill's mom and dad along for the marathon of a lifetime. Got gas, got the obligatory caramel macchiato at Starbucks, and then visited Cabot House, Home Expo, Hitchcock Furniture, Ethan Allen, not one but two Thomasville's, and the Purple Store, plus visited the house in Georgetown and tried to get to Designer Lighting in Lawrence but didn't make it before they closed. Ugh!

We were on the hunt for light fixtures (see next entry), plus a couch and a bed. Our couch now is held up by bricks on one end and has stuffing coming out of the cushions, and the bed's not much better, so we're not planning to move either one.

At Ethan Allen, Bill's mother and I were approached by a tiny, elderly saleswoman dressed in a violently pink suit and dripping with jewelry, wearing pink eyeshadow and teetering along in ridiculously high heels. She insisted we accompany her through the store, and pointed out (at great length) each individual piece of furniture we passed. Nothing we said -- including "We're not interested in an amoire" or "No, actually we hate this," had any visible effect on her monologue. Bill's mother finally veered cleverly around an end table and vanished, so I was left to plod along helplessly, until the saleswoman caught Bill at an intersection like a deer in headlights and latched onto him. At some point soon after I interrupted her and said, "I'm sorry, we'd like to browse around by ourselves now." It sounded just as rude then as it does now. The woman stopped in mid-sentence, offended into speechless-ness, and then said, "Well," and turned on her heel and stalked away, except that since she was very old and in high heels, it took about forty-five seconds to actually rotate and start moving in a different direction, during which we stood and stared fixedly at an ottoman. Then we fled.

Anyway, we never did accomplish much with light fixtures, and had no luck at all with a bed, but we were successful with the sofa -- the fourth or fifth stop, Thomasville in Saugus, had one that we fell for immediately. Big enough for a big family room, but not too big. Deep and comfy, with lots of pillows, but very stylish. We'd also spotted a wonderful coffee table earlier, at the other Thomasville. We bought the table plus the end table and a stunning console for behind the couch. It's called the "British Gentry" collection -- see it here. It's "rustic," which means scratches and nicks are meant to look like part of the furniture, which is just about perfect for clumsy people like us.

We had a LOT of trouble with the pattern for the couch. I looked -- personally and individually looked -- at each of the 900 samples about four times. We needed something with a pattern to it, both because the green chair we already have is plain, and because we want to hide dirt, but didn't want too much or too busy of a pattern. We needed it to coordinate with the green chair, but also a brown carpet (we are getting anti-dog carpet -- something that will NOT show dirt), plus have a third color like a rose or maroon for curtains and the loveseat we'll buy eventually. And it needed to be soft and comfortable. The poor saleswoman gave up and went away after a while -- nothing was quite right. In the end we gave up and decided to come back fresh today.

The tops of my thighs were killing me Saturday night and Sunday AM, and I couldn't figure out why until we arrived back at Thomasville and I squatted to start over again with the sample rack -- ouch! That's how bad it was. Bill and I went through all 900 samples AGAIN and pulled out a bunch to take downstairs and drape over the couch, AGAIN. No luck. Back to get more. Saleswoman was disgusted at this point. It wasn't that we didn't like any of the samples -- we liked a lot of them. But one was to busy, one was too brown or too green, or too rough.

Finally, by sheer process of elimination, we arrived at the final sample. It has the right colors, the right amount of "busyness," feels soft and we really like it. I can't say I spotted it and fell in love with it right away, but it's a clear winner. And it goes so well with the coffee table we chose, amazingly -- with the stone fireplace, rustic furniture and nature-theme pattern on the sofa, our family room is starting to feel like a sort of Ernest Hemingway lodge or den -- cannot wait to see how it all comes together.

If you made it through that incredibly dull explanation about the sofa, you should at least get to see what it looks like. Thomasville has a fantastic Web site that allowed me to build the actual couch with the actual patterns for the pillows and all -- here it is!

Sunday, September 8, 2002

Sigh. There is a disturbance in the force. The house is falling behind schedule. No surprise, I guess -- that's what tends to happen with new houses -- but this was so preventable. Evidently it takes six weeks to order, receive and install cabinets, and then another couple of weeks to template, order and install countertops. We discovered that a couple weeks ago but it was still theoretically possible for all the stars to align and let us close on time. Somehow an extra week got lost before the cabinets were ordered though, and now we're really behind the 8-ball.

We have to be out of our current house on October 18 -- and then we're homeless. Lots of discussion with our builder and cabinet guy about options with "temporary" countertops (Shep says it will get us in there on time and will work fine; cabinet guy basically says run like hell from that idea).

While we sweat that out, we decided to break last week's marathon shopping record and spend ANOTHER eight hours driving around to furniture and light fixture stores with Bill's parents. I thought we'd already hit every store in the North Shore last week but we must have missed a few. It was a long, tedious day, but in the end it was also a most successful day -- we found the perfect bed at the Cabot House in Haverhill (which is a HUGE store with better deals than the others -- why didn't we go there first?!), and then on trip #2 to Light and Leisure we finally settled on a chandelier for the foyer and one for the dining room.

We had really struggled with the chandeliers for the last couple weeks, not crazy about the ones on display in any of the stores we visited. We decided to look through the Light and Leisure catalogs and see if we could find one in there. It had been a long day and we didn't really feel like chandelier shopping, but we were determined 1) not to spend one more day on light fixtures and 2) not to take just any old thing. We really fell in love with a beautiful, striking silver chandelier we liked for the foyer but it turned out to be real silver -- so $6,000 -- whoops. That's the trouble with catalogs -- no price tags. Back to the drawing board on that one, and finally found something we really liked, in affordable brass, on the same planet as our budget. Same with the dining room, then scooped up some sconces, a really cool island light, and we were done.

Yesterday wasn't just furniture and light fixtures -- we also spent two grueling hours at Walls 'n' All in Newburyport, choosing every floor surface in the house. Bill and I had started the process back on Wednesday but I had some kind of meltdown in the carpet place -- just could NOT choose a single carpet, for anything. I picked one for the family room and then while the carpet guy was explaining something about a master bedroom carpet, I kept drifting back to the family room sample, staring at it and feeling dissatisfied. Finally I said, "I'm sorry, I have to change my mind. Can we start again with the family room?" So we did, and I ended up choosing the same sample over again. Within 10 minutes, though, I was drifting back to it AGAIN and at that point we realized we weren't making any progress. We left without making a single decision on anything.

We did much better the second time around. It helped to have Bill's mom there. We mostly stayed in the Berber family -- anything with flecks was a bonus. If you have dogs you know why, -- basically any substance that can come from a dog will match one of the fleck colors in the carpet. Awful but true. We did go lighter and simpler in the upstairs bedrooms -- it was really the family room that had to have the anti-dog rug.

We chose a nice greenish tile for the master bath, a bluish tile for the other upstairs bath, and then had quite a tussle over a granite sample we wanted for the downstairs bath. It looks like marble -- you know, kind of multi-colored and swirly. Bill and I wanted to dress that room up a little, since it's the guest bath everyone will use, but Bill's mom felt we were probably making a mistake putting that kind of overdone floor into such a tiny bath. It's rare for us to ignore her advice -- she's been right too many times for that! -- but we really liked the idea of that bath standing out, and it was so small it was the only place we could have afforded that kind of floor anyway. We went for it.

Kitchen tile was easier -- we all agreed on a swirly sort of red-brown-green-cream tile. For hardwood we chose natural oak pre-finished from Mohawk's Pembroke line in 3 1/4" width, which is a fairly formal width with a nice modern-feeling color, very blond.

We still weren't done, though -- we had to troop next door to B&G Cabinet again, with our tile samples in hand, so we could pick countertops. We'll have to go to Universal Stone in Ipswich to choose the granite kitchen counters (yes, I gave in to Bill on this one!) but we were able to pick our Corian for the other rooms pretty easily. The master bath has nice dark cherry mahoghany cabinetry with the greenish tile, and Tarragon was an easy pick for that. The bluish tile was tougher -- there aren't many blue Corian colors -- but Oyster is a sort of nice grey with flecks of the same shade of blue in it. Then we chose Mojave for the guest bath downstairs. I don't have a way at the moment to post a picture of the floor, cabinet and countertop colors all together but if I can think of one I will.

Sunday, September 15, 2002

We're still on pins and needles about our close date. The cabinets may be in on time but the countertops won't be, so no matter what we're facing the "temporary plywood countertop" idea Shep came up with to get us into the house. Depending on how you look at it, it either sounds workable or like it would be a complete nightmare. Meanwhile, the rest of the house looks close to slipping behind schedule as well. Shep swears it can be finished on time, but you can still walk through all the interior walls -- less than five weeks to go and no sheetrock yet!

After our site visit we went to Universal Stone in Ipswich to look at granite for our kitchen counters. That turned out to be a LOT of fun. You walk around looking at the edges of these huge slabs of granite, and if you like one, they get a little tractor to pull the slab out for you.

I was stunned by all the different kinds of stone, and nervous about matching the counter to the kitchen tile, but the woman helping us said not to even worry about it -- just fall in love with a stone. Eventually she pointed out a greenish one with some reddish crystal embedded in it, which did match the kitchen tile ... and we loved the stone. Out came the tractor and we got to look at the whole slab.

"View it like a piece of art," she told us. "What do you like the best in this picture?"

She helped us figure out which whorls and swirls and crystals and fissures we liked the best, and then frame the 8' x 3' island to enclose the parts we liked. It was really neat -- we felt like rock stars. We even took a picture of the slab -- I'll post it soon.

Friday, September 27, 2002

Lots of activity -- the house is like a beehive whenever we go now. Shep's pulling out all the stops but we're still going to miss the original close date by quite a bit, it looks like.

The exterior is painted and looks beautiful! It's a really nice blue -- a bit stronger than the traditional Nantucket grey-blue, but very pretty. Will get photos up this weekend.

Insulation is IN -- that went fast -- and drywall is going up now. Couple last-minute electrical changes on Wednesday (good thing we walked through again)! Jimmy had wired a spot for the center home theater speaker on the fireplace mantle, in the middle of the family room. I guess if you're male, that would be a logical spot for a speaker. When I noticed it, Jimmy explained how that's the best placement for sound quality. Bill and Shep and Jimmy all looked at me, kind of pleadingly, and I said, very slowly and politely, "There is absolutely no possibility of a speaker being on the mantlepiece. It is not happening." Putting the rear speakers in the middle of the wall instead of the upper corners was also not happening, so Jimmy made those tweaks and we're all set now. Bill was disappointed but as he told Jimmy, he knew my one condition for having a home theater system was that it not dominate the room. It's supposed to have some super-duper technology anyway that checks the speaker placement and adjusts for location, so there you go. A speaker on the mantle!!

Slight confusion this morning over smoke detectors and who was going to wire them in, Jimmy or the security system company. We had been planning to have a security system put in but didn't realize we'd have to do it right now if we wanted the detectors included in their monitoring. Shep figured it out the oversight this AM when the crew started drywalling the ceilings and there was no detector wiring -- so I think he's bringing Jimmy back out to quickly wire those in, and then we can worry about the alarm later. So a slight holdup there.

Talked to Mike at Walls 'n' All today and discovered we need to choose a different kitchen tile -- the one we picked was supposed to be available in two sizes, so we could make a nice pattern on the floor, but it turns out it's only available in 12 x 12. I think that will look blocky so we'll go up tomorrow and choose another. I liked the tile we picked, but wasn't completely crazy about it, so I don't mind choosing another.

Had a meeting with the millwork guy on Wednesday to choose baseboards, molding, stair stuff, etc. Wish I'd thought more about those things in advance -- I knew I wanted nice crown molding, chair rails and bottom-half molding in the dining room, but of course that doesn't begin to approach the specificity they need. There are a million kinds and styles (and prices), just like with everything else. Plus a million kinds of door casings and stair balusters. Ack.

Realized on the spot we might want to put French doors in the opening between the study and living room -- waiting for a price on that. I took the stair catalog and spent a few hours (yes, literally, and it was as painful as it sounds) over the last couple days trying to figure out what balusters, newels and railings to pick. We have a two-story foyer with a LOT of stair and hallway railing so I felt it was important choose carefully, even though we know nothing about stairs and had no idea what to choose. There's a good online catalog at the Van Millwork site, but who ever thought about balusters? I didn't even know what a newel was until Wednesday. (For the uninitiated, it's the big fat piece at the end of a piece of railing, and balusters are the skinny middle pieces. A volute is the curvy handrail thing at the bottom of a staircase, on top of the newel.) We finally picked some stair parts I think will look nice ... we'll see!

Saturday, October 12, 2002

The drywall's in, most of the plastering is done, and best of all our cabinets arrived! They're stashed in the basement of Lot 18 up the street until they're needed. Kind of ironic that after all the fuss about the cabinets being behind schedule, they're going to sit around waiting for the rest of the house to catch up.

Today I noticed that we mysteriously lost a closet! We have a lot of closets in this house, but not so many that one can go missing without me noticing. Bill and I were looking at the plastering upstairs, and when I looked in the laundry room I said, "Hey, hold on a sec. Where's the closet?"

Bill said, "Out here in the hall," and I said, "No, not THAT closet. The one that used to be in the laundry room." Bill looked at me as though I were nuts, but I had the plans and we consulted those, and sure enough, a teeny-tiny little closet inside the laundry room (for detergent, etc.) had gone missing. The drywallers must have covered right over it. That closet is going to be making a re-appearance, let me tell you.

On our way out we stopped at Lot 18 to peek at the kitchen cabinets. They're all wrapped up but we pulled the covering off of one just enough to get a glimpse. They look beautiful!

Sunday, October 20, 2002

Things are happening fast now! The kitchen cabinets are in and they look beautiful! Considering we had no idea what we were doing when we had to pick out door styles, the amount of bevel, the wood, the stain, the amount of gloss ... it's amazing how good they look. :-) I took pictures but probably won't get a chance to post them until next week.

The white family room cabinets for the built-ins came in too, and they also look great. We are going to have a LOT of storage space in the family room -- can't wait! When people come over we can take our stacks of catalogs and magazines and board games and mail and crossword puzzles and books, and fling it all into the cabinets and slam the doors. Voila!

We also found a few glitches on this house visit. Things have been remarkably smooth so far but there are so many little details that come into play at the end -- we have to pay close attention. The first thing we saw when we drove up was that the shutters were on ... but they were the wrong kind. They're louvered, which most shutters are, but we had chosen the other kind -- I don't know what you would call it -- raised panel? At this point if I could have lived with the wrong shutters I would have, but the louvered ones really didn't look right. Shep's going to get the right ones put on.

We also had a spot in the kitchen where our bank of three light switches didn't fit, in between the fridge and the sliding door. It was either run three switches in a row vertically, which would look odd, or put the 3-switch horizontal plate into the side of the fridge cabinet, which I thought would look even stranger. We decided to put one switch on the wall and then another below it, with those two switches flipping left to right instead of up and down (if you can picture this). Will be a little odd but there wasn't much choice at that point. It's too late to move wiring around and they didn't fit any other way.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Shep explained that one of the bathroom cabinets turned out to be about 10 inches narrower than what we ordered. This is a problem apparently because the plumbing doesn't line up behind it. Not sure what we'll do here -- moving the plumbing would be a huge hassle at this point, but getting a new cabinet would take six weeks or more. Shep said perhaps he could put a piece of birch or other extender next to the wall, so the cabinet would sit in the right spot, but it sounds risky. I'd rather wait six weeks for a new cabinet than live permanently with something that looks like a quick-fix. But if it looked deliberate, not like an obvious mistake, then we could do that.

Finally, Shep and Bill and I spent some time looking at the master bath tile and trying to decide on a grout color. I was astonished how blue the tile seemed -- it had looked green in the tile place, and in fact the entire bathroom is using shades of green, so I feared the blue tint to the tile would really look odd. We carried it outside into the sun and it still seemed more bluish than greenish. Very strange. It wasn't until the next morning, thinking about it, that I realized our GUEST bath was supposed to have blue tile ... could we have our tiles mixed up? Ack!

We immediately called Shep and he double-checked the tile names on the boxes against our order sheet, and what do you know? The name doesn't match EITHER of the bathroom tiles we supposedly ordered ... so it's a mystery if that tile is even one that belongs in our house. We'll straighten it out with the tile place tomorrow, and hope that we can get the right tiles, whichever ones those are, in their correct places quickly. Whew!

We are now at the point where we need to choose mirrors for the three bathrooms and also the towel bars, toilet paper holders and that kind of thing. We expected the request for fixtures but were caught off guard by the mirrors. I think I just assumed we'd get those square, flat mirrors that go above bathroom vanities. You would think I'd know better by NOW -- if we have to pick stair balusters, the amount of bevel on the edge of our kitchen cabinets and the color of the grout in our tile, we'd for sure have to choose what kind of mirrors we want, but once again, I'm caught off guard. We'll go to Lowe's, Home Expo and Home Goods this weekend and see what we like (with the usual square mirrors as a default if nothing else jumps out at us).

Monday, October 28, 2002

We're so close ... and yet so far. The house looks dramatically different every time we see it now, nearly done ... but not nearly done enough. The close date is a moving target. The last estimate we had was Nov. 6, but that's next week, and they're not even templating the countertops until tomorrow. After the templating, depending on whose estimate you go with, it's either two weeks or three weeks to get the countertops in. And the hardwood, which hasn't even been delivered to the site yet, needs a week to cure once it's been put in. So next week isn't looking too promising!

Aside from REALLY being ready to move in, we're so delighted with the house. The white built-in cabinets in the family room look fabulous, and the kitchen tile is beautiful, and the granite tile we picked for the downstairs bath (the one Bill's mom feared would be too dramatic) IS dramatic, but in a good way. That floor just looks really nice, and we bought a gold, oval mirror at Home Expo yesterday that will look perfect over the sink in that bathroom. It's all coming together!

I know I'm way overdue to post pictures -- coming soon!