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progress report: week 31
Hi there, just wanted to pop in for a quick progress report. Also, if you’re clicking over from Door Sixteen, welcome! We’re thrilled to be on Anna’s “Featured Blogs” list for November. After a rough morning of rain and traffic, I had just settled into my desk when I noticed the shout out. With my morning latte in hand, I thought ok, maybe it’s going to be a good day after all. And then a few minutes later I saw an office wide e-mail pop up – “the milk was bad, threw it out”.
Mmm. Love Mondays.
1. New barstools! After our previous barstool drama, we decided to go with IKEA’s Sebastian stools until we could find something else. Now that they’re assembled and in the space, we actually really like them. However, we are considering having the chrome frames powder coated. Too fussy? Maybe, but it’s worth looking into.
2. We’ve been working on finalizing the design for the open shelving and cabinet panels in the kitchen so we can order the fir plywood. Kyle’s also been working on the design for the living room media console and we’ll share more of what we’re thinking for that space later this week.
3. We’ve also been doing little odds and ends, like spray painting our registers to better match the cork. We highly recommend Rust-Oleum’s camouflage spray paint. That’s right, camo at chezerbey. I raised my eyebrow too, but it was the closest match we could find and the matte brown is actually pretty modern.
Before:
After!
4. And even though our to-do list is still ridiculously long, we’ve been playing catch-up on some long overdue tasks, like weeding the yard and deep cleaning the bathroom and bedroom (construction dust had found its way into every nook and cranny). We’ve also brought some furniture up from the basement and finally moved the TV out of the bedroom! For now, the guest/flex room is serving as a TV room, with our big frumpy couch and a TV stand from circa 1997 (not shown for the sake of our pride). I know, it’s a bit anticlimactic to show old furniture and zero decor in our new space, but all in due time, all in due time.
So that’s what we’re up to. We’re now focusing on finishing the kitchen, but with shorter days, crappier weather and back episodes of Dexter to watch, it’s hard to find the motivation in the evenings to work on the house.
the dining chair dilemma
Apparently, the barstool dilemma was just a prelude to the dining chair dilemma. We thought we had this one figured out long ago, but no such luck.
Yes, just like 90% of you reading this, we wanted Eames side chairs. Even though I love the new colors that Herman Miller introduced this year, I just don’t like the plastic shell as much as the fiberglass. And the bases…well, I personally like the dowels but Kyle couldn’t get on board with the maple and black. (I’m sure the nice people at DWR found some entertainment in our discussion about the pros and cons of the different bases.) I wasn’t a big fan of the Eiffel base and overall, it would still be a big investment for something we weren’t 100% in love with. I’m completely envious of all those stories I’ve heard of people happening upon originals and you can be sure if that ever happens to us, we’d jump on it. But until the Eames karma rolls into Seattle, we need to find an alternative.
Last spring, we noticed this punchy (and affordable) yellow chair from West Elm. We haven’t ruled it out completely, but we are hesitant to buy something without trying it out. (C’mon West Elm, time to open in Seattle. You too CB2.) We’re also wary of getting something that can’t be pushed fully against the table. Small living = every inch counts. (Note: we’re keeping our solid beech table from IKEA for now. It just got a fresh sand and finish and looks great!)
I’ve also been eyeing these simple wood chairs from West Elm, but have the same worries about not being able to try them out first. Also, we have so much fir in the house now that we’re worried another wood species wouldn’t look right (though the chair does come in white too).
And then there’s Blu Dot’s version of the iconic bent plywood chair. We ordered a sample of the “ivory” and it really is too off-white for the bright white that is everywhere else. I do love the chair cozy accessory. Although I can totally hear my mom saying, “but you could make that!”. I know Mom, I know. Maybe this is the year I dust off the sewing machine and uh, learn how to use it.
There’s also an upholstered version that comes in brown or black faux leather. I just got the brown sample in the mail today and even though it seems like a good option, we’re just not 100% sure. Blu Dot is having a 20% sale through November 8th, but the chairs would still be around $150 each after shipping. I also don’t think this version really works with the cozy colors. Maybe the wheat…maybe not.
So here’s where we come full circle, back to the chairs we already own. We bought these standard IKEA upholstered chairs 6 1/2 years ago and made the mistake of buying beige slip covers. Seriously, what were we thinking? Even though I want a hard surface chair (light weight, easy to clean, visually minimal), we’re thinking about just buying new slip covers until we find something else. What do you think about this gray cover?
Are there any other chairs out there that we’ve totally overlooked?
As much as we want to make our house the vision that we have in our heads, I think we also have to realize that the best houses are those that evolve over time. And even though it’s been four years, it also feels like we just moved in.
installing cork flooring
[warning: long post alert]
New flooring, finally! First though, to truly appreciate the “after”, let’s reflect on the chezerbey flooring of yore.
The living and dining room were graced with green carpet. Fortunately, there were decent oak floors underneath.
The kitchen had linoleum from an unidentifiable era. It may look retro cool, but any natural oils it once had were now long gone and that thing acted like a sponge, collecting dirt and crumbs and refusing to relinquish them without a lot of scrubbing.
And let’s not forget the astroturf in the back porch (which is now part of our kitchen). HORRID!
In the last six months, we have removed all traces of bad flooring and installed a new subfloor over the original fir floors (which were under all the other gunk). Even though the oak could have been refinished, we would have had a funky elevation change and in the interest of not having a giant threshold across our new cohesive “great room” space, we opted to cover it. The added layer also made the floor more stable, reducing any creaky spots.
Our first step was to prep the new subfloor. Even though we installed it to be perfectly level, cork is susceptible to imperfections telegraphing through, so this meant we needed to fill all of the plywood joints, indentions from screw heads, etc. That’s right, it was time for some self leveling compound.
First though, we needed to paint on a coat of latex primer for better adhesion to the subfloor. We used this product from Sakrete.
Since aesthetics weren’t important, we used a couple cheapo rollers for the job.
Poor Bailey, trapped in the bedroom by the two things he fears the most.
The primer dried quickly and left a shiny, slightly tacky surface.
I wish we had more pictures to share of the self leveling compound process, but honestly, it was a bit chaotic. The directions advised not to mix more than could be worked in 15 minutes(!). So we messed around with trying to mix a half bag which meant estimating the mix and then converting the appropriate amount of water from liters to gallons. (We also added some of the latex primer to the mix to give it some elasticity.) Let’s just say we didn’t get it perfect the first time around and the process generally went something like this:
“More water!”
“We need to mix this more!”
“Rags! Quick!”
“It’s already curing!”
“AHHHHHHH!”
Fortunately, Kyle soon got the hang of it and it turned out fine. He ended up troweling it on to make sure the mixture spread into every nook and cranny.
As soon as we were done, we found ourselves stuck outside and it had just started to rain. After rinsing off our tools, we made our way up through the basement and jumped from the top of the stairs to bedroom where we hung out until the floors were dry (or almost dry, as evidenced by all of our footprints, most of which lead to the fridge).
I really think Bailey could care less about the condition of the floors. This marked the end of Day 1 (last Saturday).
On to Day 2 (last Sunday) – there were still some areas that needed leveling out – nothing a little spackle couldn’t handle though.
After the spackle dried, Kyle sanded the areas smooth.
With a fresh coat of spackle dust all over the floors, we ran the vacuum through before laying any tiles. Mr. Dyson, we may be pushing the limits on what your products were designed to do.
Before we glued any tiles down, we needed to figure out where to start. This step may have been a bit over the top, but it ended up saving us a lot of headache. First we took a print-out of the plywood layout plan we had done earlier and then took as-built measurements of the space. We then adjusted our floor plan in AutoCad and superimposed a 12″x12″ grid over that. We then moved the grid around until we had found a layout that didn’t have seams in weird places or that would result in tiny strips of cork at the edges. We also wanted to, as much as possible, minimize cork joints that happened directly over plywood joints. Once we found the best compromise between the different factors, we chose a central spot in the living room and (using a 90 degree laser level) snapped a chalk line in both directions, with our starting place being the intersection of the two lines.
We bought 12″x12″ Capri cork tiles from Ecohaus. Typically they come unfinished or pre-finished with polyurethane. Since we wanted the ability to spot repair, we opted for a wax pre-finish. Unfortunately, after the tiles were delivered (months ago) we discovered that there was little to no finish on the tiles. More on that later.
The tiles are adhered with a special adhesive that most closely resembles Elmer’s glue. The process is similar to working with contact cement. You apply a thin coat of glue to the backside of each tile and to the floor and wait for both to dry before installing. We used a couple thin, low nap roller brushes and disposable plastic trays for the job.
We turned our kitchen island into a glue rolling station. Even though our particular tile color was fairly homogenous, we always worked from a minimum of 4 different boxes, mixing the tiles to ensure there would be enough variety.
We also found that rolling the glue on the diagonal kept the roller from accidentally slipping off the edge and getting glue on the sides of the tiles.
First tile!
After the tile is set, a good smack from a soft headed rubber mallet helps ensure that both surfaces are in contact with each other.
For the subsequent tiles, we found laying them at a slight angle and adjacent to a previously installed tile produced a good, tight fit.
This isn’t so bad! Only 500 more to go!
One of the challenges was finding space for the tiles to dry once they’d been coated with glue. With the tiles and glue we used, we could have applied the glue to the tiles up to 24 hours before installing. If we ever do this again, we may take that route since Kyle could lay them down faster than I could roll them.
The glue goes on opaque and turns clear, but still tacky, when dry enough to install.
We had to custom cut all of the edge tiles, but the process went smoothly with the use of a 12″ speed square, utility knife and small cutting board.
As the night wore on, our energy was dropping and our bodies ached but we had.to.finish.
Every hour or so we stopped to roll the areas that had already been set. We bought a small hand roller for the edges and hard to reach areas.
For the main areas, we rented a 100 lb. roller from Home Depot ($20/24 hrs – the sight of seeing me heave it into the back of the car – priceless). Anyhow, it worked like a champ and was well worth any public embarrassment.
The finished product looked more like suede and was pretty scuffed up from our footprints. We learned later that lower quality tiles can vary in size from tile to tile (!*@?) and we were so grateful that ours were all exactly the same size.
Phew, end of Day 2. Per our original plan, we would have been done at this point. But since there was a glitch with our order, the distributer and manufacturer worked it out so a third-party finisher would come out and do 3 coats of wax finish (using Osmo Wax), with no charge to us. We decided to schedule the 2-day finish job for when we would be out-of-town, since we wouldn’t be able to walk on the floors for those 2-3 days. So while we were at an out-of-state wedding this weekend, our floors were finished (hence the mad dash to get the install done last weekend)! And here is the finished product:
The floors have a matte, more organic looking finish, which we like a lot better than what you might get from a poly-based finish.
The appearance of the cork varies depending on the lighting and what angle you’re looking at. Looking across the room, it reads as a more homogenous, single color flooring, but if you look straight down, you really see the texture and variation of the cork granules.
And the finish is very smooth. For regular cleaning, we’ll just vacuum and use a microfiber cloth mop. The finish can handle a small amount of standing water, but there’s no need to wet mop this floor.
Finally, here’s a peak of the kitchen island against the flooring. The blue-gray high gloss cabinet finish is a chameleon itself, ranging from a light gray to a deep blue-gray depending on the lighting and how you look at it.
So there you have our exhaustive cork experience. Definitely leave a comment or shoot us an e-mail if you have any questions or have gone through the process yourself and have some additional tips to add. (You can also read more about our cork selection process here, here, here and here.) So far, we’re really pleased with how it turned out. In fact, we have (as of today) officially initiated our “no shoes” policy, which is a big milestone because before, it was more of a “no really, don’t take off your shoes” policy.
counters and hardware
We first talked about counters way back in January. By April, we had narrowed it down to quartz. In May, we put together this materials palette to see how everything would work together. We then gathered all of our whitish quartz samples and landed somewhere in between white-white and speckly white.
We thought we had found a winner in Eco quartz, but word to the wise, always look at a full size application of the material if you can. We happened to see a demonstration kitchen at IKEA a few months ago that used the Eco in our favorite color, “polar cap”, and were surprised to find that we didn’t like it. Part of the recycled content that goes into the material are tiny pieces of mirror which made the whole thing very glittery. Fortunately, there is a very similar Silestone product (Silestone and Eco are both owned by the same parent company) that doesn’t have the glitz (and it’s cheaper!). And even though it may not have as much recycled content as the Eco, they’re both coming from overseas and the Silestone will last just as long as the Eco, so it wasn’t a hard decision to make.
One decision down, on more to go. For the island, we were all set on offsetting the more expensive quartz with crazy cheap IKEA butcher block. Unlike other counter options that come in standard 25″ widths, the IKEA product comes in pieces up to 39″x72″. This didn’t leave us much overhang for barstools, but at $200, we could make it work. So a few weeks ago I went down to make the purchase…and when I went to look at the samples one more time (we were pretty sure about beech but I wanted to double check the other options), it just didn’t look as good. We have an IKEA butcher block as a work surface in the shop and as a large cutting board in our make-shift kitchen, and both of the those pieces seem to have narrower strips of wood than what I saw at the store. Maybe IKEA changed their design? Or maybe I’m just seeing things? Anyhow, I figured it was worth one more round of searching and mulling.
After much lunch-time research, these are the conclusions we made: butcher block of various species and sizes is not hard to come by, but it is expensive. I called up Ecohaus and the best they could offer me was side grain fir (at about $35/sf), but it was still more than we wanted to spend and since fir is a softwood, I was worried that it would get beat up pretty quickly. I even contacted Urban Hardwoods and Meyer Wells, two local companies that deal with reclaimed lumber. Meyer Wells said they were doing some butcher blocks out of reclaimed glulams, but for about $80/SF. Boo. We had found some nice lyptus butcher block at Crosscuts (same place we got our teak and teak plywood for the bathroom) a while back, but the largest width was 36″ which wouldn’t work. (We found out that we could order larger sizes but the special order and freight shipping proved to be cost prohibitive.) And then the “ah-ha” moment…buy two 25″ slabs of lyptus and biscuit them together. The lyptus (pictured above) is a gorgeous red-brown color that is extremely durable and about $20/SF. Plus, Kyle gets to use his new biscuit joiner again. Score!
Hardware! Where to start? How to decide? Since we’re doing mostly drawers for our base cabinets, it made sense to do a drawer pull rather than a knob or bar. We used an aluminum pull by Epco for our bathroom vanity (IKEA has some that are similar). They are affordable and look good, but we were worried that the kitchen hardware would see more abuse over time and the aluminum pull might not be up for the challenge. So we went into hardware research mode again, scouring the interwebs and our local hardware store to see what the world had to offer. But deep in our hearts, we knew we had already found the perfect drawer pull. And this is where the champagne taste, beer budget dilemma comes into play.
This pull is from Reveal Designs, a collaboration of architects and designers producing high quality, swoon-worthy hardware and furniture. Our favorite, aptly named the “Washington Pull” was designed by Cutler Anderson Architects, a well-known starchitect of the Pacific Northwest. Ok, it’s a bent piece of stainless steel…but unlike most other pulls, the ergonomics are right and the design is graceful. A few challenges – because of the thicker gauge of the steel (vs. aluminum options) this pull can’t be fastened to the top of the drawer/door face, which means we need to router out a small notch for it to recess into it. I was a bit skeptical of how we could router into the high-gloss finish, but fortunately I am married to Mr. Kyle Zerbey who simply designed and fashioned a custom jig to the do the job. The other challenge – price tag. These puppies run about $18 each (for the 3 1/2″) and $15 (for the 2 1/2″). And that’s after the architect discount. So we did some more research, but in the end we came back to the Washington pulls. Our logic – they’re durable, will withstand the daily abuse of a high-traffic area and they make us happy. I know, a drawer pull makes us happy.
The drawer pull solves about 80% of our hardware needs, but we still needed to pick out something for the three upper cabinets and the tall pantry. We opted for the (more affordable) bar pull from Epco. They’re simple and match the pull on our dishwasher. We especially like the smaller “T” pulls. Last but not least, we also picked up a new doorstop for the front door. It’s a sexy floor-mounted stop from Reveal Designs. A thick rubber disc around a stainless steel bar. Simple and effective.
The quartz counters go in next Thursday(!) and we’ll pick up the lyptus on Monday. My sisters are coming to town next weekend for my b-day and we are racing to get as much done as possible! So please, if anyone talks to the painting fairy, please send her to our house!
progress report: week 21
Last week, the drywallers were busy mudding and taping. They are doing an awesome job and it was so rewarding to come home each night and see something new. Bailey, on the other hand, stayed home to supervise. Uh oh…who’s got drywall paws?
After a failed craigslist and consignment effort, the ol’ piano finally got rolled out to the carport, where it will await an unknown fate. Apparently, no one wants pianos. We bought the piano off craigslist (from a frat house no less) about 5 years ago. Kyle spent some time fixing her up, but since we bought our house she’s been pretty neglected. We also don’t have a good spot for it anymore and those tiny wheels would do some serious harm to the cork flooring. So Kyle fabricated a plywood pathway (on top of the existing plywood ramp – this thing is heavy!) Fortunately, there were no runaway piano incidents or piano maulings.
And here’s a glimpse of the mud and tape job, before sanding.
With cooler temperatures over the weekend, we rewired the thermostat to get the heat going and help the mud dry.
Kyle also re-plumbed for the sink and dishwasher (we had to unhook the previous connections so the sheetrock could go up). There was a bit of math involved, but like a good architect, Kyle just sketched it out on the wall. (Normally, we would have waited until the cabinets and sink were in, but it had already been two weeks without a dishwasher and I couldn’t store anymore dirty dishes in the microwave!)
Last night, I got the itch to start building base cabinets. I figured that if I build one a night, I’ll reduce the risk of incurring a particleboard cut or suffer from screwdriver fatigue. The frames are easy enough to assemble (I started with the corner cabinet), but I really hate installing the back panel. All those little nails! Seriously, who really uses a hammer and individual nails anymore? Kyle (who would, if given the opportunity, use only power tools to assemble IKEA products) recommended that I just use the brad nailer. It worked like a charm! One down, four to go!
Oh Bailey, I was just kidding when I told you I was building a dog house.
Well, maybe we won’t put the carousel in just yet.
We also started to gather up our painting supplies! Honestly, we are both still burned out from all the exterior priming and painting we did last summer, but as soon as the 2nd coat of paint is dry we can start putting everything back together and that is our motivation. Even though we will have a good chunk of masking to do, it should go pretty quickly since we’re doing everything in the same color (BM’s “super white”) and there isn’t much trim to work around.
So this week is all about prepping for the big 3-day weekend. Time to whip this house into shape!
