Caben, You are right about the rain in California and work being able to move forward. Good to see you move forward
Lori, Your paint color is “perfect” looking great. Looks like you are moving ahead with great speed now and will make the date you have in mind.
Uponthehilltop, Love the dry sage color you posted. We had a similar color in the dining room in our old house. Sorry you are feeling emotional with the process. The build has its up’s downs for us also. I am also feeling a little stress the past few days.
Hoosier, Fireplace looks great. You did a great on designing it. Hope you are feeling better after the drywall cleanup.
OntarioMom, Your fireplace design looks good.

saftgeek, House looks great. You are almost there. My ID did warn me about the type of light impacting how everything works. Can you share what is the door hardware you used.
lzhwong, Love the shower and the coffer ceiling. Can I ask you if you covered the beams in the coffer with molding on all sides or is it just drywall.

MFatt16, Sorry about the mix up with the windows.
Autumn, Sorry to hear about your job situation and the bad day you have had. I hope you find something soon. On the house front looks like you have done a lot of the selections nailed down which is good.

Like some of you have been stressed out the last few days with changes at work and also the build stress. Have not been sleeping well and have a major headache today.
On the build front, they have not started flooring/interior doors as expected . The cleanup crew after dry wall only showed up this morning and they have to finish before we start with the rest of the stuff. We will have all our cabinets delivered next Friday to site from storage so whether he is ready or not we will have them here.

ohhhh - and we are matching our trim to our cabinets and I am *slightly* freaking out that it's a bit more creamy or shall I say NOT WHITE than I want for the whole entire house. :/ Trying to put that out of my mind for now. The door sample most closely resembles Dune White BM 968.

BM Dune White

Autumn,

I am so very sorry to hear about your job. That is such lousy timing with all the building stress to deal with as well! Hopefully a new opportunity will present itself without too much effort.

As per the door colour, I love it!! I should because it is very similar to the colour we are likely getting for our perimeter cabinets. Can't you choose a white for the trim and keep the doors the posted colour? We are not trying to match our trim with our kitchen doors. Where are you getting your kitchen doors from?

Carol

You all are terrific! Such an inspiration. I've been a lurker for many months, but am new to post here.

A light winter in central Washington state allowed us to get started on our new home in December with site preparation, pouring footings for the garage in January, then stacking and pouring the garage walls last week.

It will be a while longer before much else happens, so I'm living vicariously (and learning tons!) by seeing your projects moving along

Mary

A few more progress pics to share! I am ready for Spring! We are in south Alabama and we have sleet tonight!!

Working on the coffered ceiling...

akshars - thanks and yes it does feel so good to get selections nailed down!

Thanks Carol. I like it but I dunno. Our plan is so open that I feel like it needs to all flow. Know what I mean?

mary - very nice!

@Autumn - So sorry to hear about your job situation! What a stressful day! I hope you find something really quickly, maybe you will get a nice "severance" check!

Love all the progress pics!

Autumn: Sorry for your job. Maybe its' a blessing in disguise? I was also laid off during a restructuring (during my maternity leave with my first baby). Now I stay home raising both of my kids and I couldn't be more grateful. Good luck with all of the painting! My husband and I are not at all handy. What a nice savings for you! Do you mind me asking what carpet you selected? We are also in the process of nailing down our carpet selections.

Akshars: The grids in the coffered ceiling will be trimmed out in crown. The beams are made out of wood (hollow). I'm not sure why our builder went this route instead of doing drywall beams.

After I visited the build site today I had to share my cabinet guy's handiwork. I can't put into words how pleased I am with all the character in the wood.

As I said in my previous post, our cabinets are Beech and my wife really wanted a hidden pantry. When we walked into the dining room we could see all of the cabinet doors were installed and closed.

Since the doors are part of the cabinetry I couldn't install a pressure switch for the light inside the pantry. I didn't want to have to fiddle with a wall switch so I installed an occupancy sensor. The sensor is located about 5' inside the pantry and I wasn't sure if it would come on when the doors were opened... Well tonight I found out... it works perfectly. Once the door opened the light came on and stayed on till we shut the pantry doors.

We had to stick to a fairly strict budget while building. My wife and I pared down our list of wants and only included certain features we felt were worth the money... I am so glad I opted to do a custom laundry base instead of using the factory pedestals under the washer and dryer. This setup just looks so much nicer and the drawers are super deep. I think it will be a home run with my wife. I hope I don't scratch the top to pieces when we move the washer/dryer..

We are getting close to running out of inside work. I believe tomorrow may be the day the GC installs the custom fireplace mantle made from the same Beech used in the cabinets. My GC told me to find something I liked and he would make it. I'm anxious to see how he does.

Thanks to everyone for the very kind words. My family is looking forward to spending a lot of time together in the new house. This is a dream come true for us and I'm happy to get to share the experience with everyone on GW. So much of what we've done in our build was inspired by posts I've read on here. Keep posting, keep smiling!

Saftgeek-

Thanks all for your kind words. I too am hoping for a blessing in disguise. I am not sure but I think my last day is March 14. I was off on vacation now through Tuesday (not sure if I actually have that vacation or not now) to get to work painting so I don't have the particulars. Just didn't want to start a job hunt during a build. :( Dh is not at all concerned. He is so steady eddy. I knew I liked him. ;) It's hard finding skilled part time work. I may be in for a rude awakening once I start searching. Didn't much feel like doing that today, but I need to get to it.

The carpet - the bright spot in my day! I have never ever had such good service. I went to a place recommended by an acquaintance. Anyhow we pulled each and every board that I was remotely interested in. Then went through price to eliminate and then through colors to pare it down even more and we ended up with 4 sample boards at home. It was a small carpet shop. The one around here you never get that kind of service. It was so helpful!

lz-we are deciding between bliss artful and bliss sculptures. We had a frieze in our last home that didn't wear well (esp on stairs) so we are going with a tighter carpet this time (a level cutloop) with a slight pattern. It is pretty soft to the touch and very reasonably priced.

saftgeek-that is one cool pantry door! I love that you are using your appliance garage for electronics - another brilliant idea.

upon-sleet in Alabama - what a crazy winter this is for everyone. Your entry door........ahhhhh. I can see what you mean about your windows in the back. It's so easy to get used to those giant openings without framing. It will shape up!

Saftgeek- OMG that hidden pantry is seriously the COOLEST thing ever. nice!

Autumn- Sorry about the unexpected news about your job. Glad you have a steady eddy to make it feel not so bad. :)

We started painting last night! AH. I LOVE the revere pewter. We just got two walls in the kitchen done so they can hang cabinets. We weren't able to paint up towards the ceiling though because a couple areas of texture were still wet due to the high humidity in the house and no air flow. We did also paint the mudroom and hall bath and I love the cool blue colors I picked! We'll be back at it tonight and I need to get a new color for the master bath. Of course I forgot my camera last night but I will get pictures this weekend.

@ askshars_mom- yay for drywall done!

@caben- looks good!

@loribug- love the perfect greige, it's cool how it changes in different lights

@upon- lots of progress, you have excellent views, good luck with the paint choices

@autumn- so sorry about your job situation. ugh. good luck finding something else quickly- what field are you in? Love your paint selections- the blues are great- I am doing a reverse for the master bath/bedroom but I may go more greigey than grey. Definitely blue in the bath. love the pops of color you've got in different spaces.

@OntarioMom- fireplace design is looking really nice.

@hoosier- another beautifully designed fp, i love it!

@MFatt- wow, windows already! (sorry they weren't right-good luck resolving that)

@lzhwong- gorgeous coffered ceiling.....YES, we are going same trim as our kitchen cabs.

Things are still moving along for us. Tubs for the secondary baths were delivered, cupola is up on the roof, roof framing almost done and ready for the roofers. Felt great leaving the tile store on Wednesday but now second guessing many of the choices especially the mudroom and master bath floor. Many more decisions about this or that due, including appliance selections.

Mornin’ 

Well dh & farm help went to pick up my doors last night at Menards…forgot one. Oops. Not that I printed out the paperwork with them all on it or anything. Lol Men (sorry guys!!) So DH is going back to get it. Electrician is there now counting plate covers, switches, plugs…oh my. He & DH are going to get all the stuff, Lord Help me. They’ve already called three times to ask questions. Oy.

Autumn ~ so sorry about the job thing  I just gave up my part time job, somewhat reluctantly, but I just don’t have time. I’m sorry yours was not voluntary. Crappy timing! :/

Marykh ~ welcome!! I have to say I’m a bit jealous about your “light” winter….definitely not what we’re getting here in Indiana!

Hilltop ~ your house is beautiful. I love the beams over the front door!

Saftgeek ~ you cabinets are amazing. I’m in love. If I wasn’t going red, I think I might take my cabinet maker your pictures and say match this. Lots of character! Hidden pantry is to die for. I tried to manage that in mine, but nixed it for other areas…

Kelli ~ it is absolutely not allowed to forget the camera!  can’t wait to see your colors…

Illini ~ I must see that copula on the roof!

@uponthehilltop, I’m in love with your house! The windows, the arches, the door, front porch, the view!

@lzhwong, Love your farmhouse sink. Oh, and that coffered ceiling. Very pretty!

@caben, I hope your wife will be happy with your remodel. Happy Wife, Happy Life! ☺

@MFatt, Sorry about the window mixup. So, what have you decided to do? Keep them?

@Loribug, We were practically neighbors before we moved to SW Indiana. We lived in Brownsburg before we moved down here. Now, you are scaring me that you are ready for electrical finish. I guess I need to buy all my light bulbs right away. I purchased all our light fixtures online and made a list of all the bulbs we need but never bought those yet. If we are starting painting, when will electrical come back in? And, I understood your post about bulbs. I was surprised when I made my list and saw how many different kind I had to purchase. And all the light fixtures for the interior were from the same manufacturer and same collection: Feiss, Amercian Foursquare.

@Carsonheim, I’m horrible at layout designs, just horrible. I can’t think out of the box. If my daughter and son-in-law hadn’t helped with our house, I’d be sunk. However, the one thing I noticed is that I would prefer the island in Option 3 and 4 being in front of the cooktop instead of to the side of it as in Option 2. My daughter’s in-laws is set up like Option 2 and it is awkward working around the island while she’s cooking. And, I think Option 4 has a better triangle workspace with the stovetop, double ovens and refrigerator than the other options. That’s all I got!

@Autumn, I’m so sorry about your job! Nothing like another huge life stressor! And, look at you, you continue to chug along with all your decisions you have to make. You are a survivor. I hope something comes along for you.

@akshars, I hope they get that drywall cleanup done for you so you can move on to the next stage.

@marykh, Welcome!!! I have a friend who lives in Washington and you guys build your foundations a little differently than we do in Indiana. Fascinating! Glad someone in the US had a mild winter. We are sick of our winter this year! Everyone we talk to says, “What a horrible winter for you to be building!”

@saftgeek, I love your cabinets (well, your whole house!), but those cabinets are beautiful! What a unique hidden pantry. I’ve never seen anything like that.

@kellithee, Yay on the start of painting and you love your color! Don’t forget your camera next time. I would love to see photos of it.

@illinigirl, I love that you have a cupola on your house. Not sure if I was posting when we built our pole barn. I only asked for two things on the barn (since it was DH’s area and not mine). #1 I picked the color since I wanted it to blend in with the house exterior. #2 That we had a cupola on the top. That thing ended up costing us more than I thought it would cost, but I love it!

The painter was supposed to start today, but hadn’t shown up yet. We are going with green as our color for the interior. It goes well with all our furniture and cabinets. Just using different shades of green. Really they are gray with green undertones. Here’s one coat of Dry Sage, which will be in the family room only. The piece of wood on the bottom is what our window seats will be made of. The other piece is our trim stain color.

The Gray Mirage definitely changes with the light and room angle. We are using it in the entry, kitchen (which has very little wall space), dining, and the halls. This is only one coat and propped up next to the front door.

Here is the same board propped up next to the dining area.

There is just a slight variation of the next two colors but I’m going with them.

Moon Shadow for the master bedroom and bath. The vanities are the same finish as the window seats and so is our stained trim throughout the house. We decided to go with the Golden Sand granite for both bathrooms.

The rest of the rooms will be in Natural Elements. In one light it has a slight yellow tone, but most of the time it looks green (which is what I want). Again, this is only one coat.

My DH would probably kill me for posting this because this isn’t a good pix, but here is DH gluing and clamping up the kitchen cabinet doors. It got down to 4 degrees this morning and the pole barn/workshop was freezing. He has an electric heater in there for now but the temp inside was only 18 degrees. So, he is working in the house in the laundry room where the temp is about 60.

@uponthehilltop, Love the porch and front entry door.Your house is going to beautiful with all the windows and views.
@saftgeek, Beautiful cabinets!! Love the hidden pantry door and the drawers for under the washer and dryer. I wish I had thought about the drawers. Can’t wait to see you post more pictures.
@lzhwong, Thanks for the details on how the coffered ceiling was done. Our contractor did the drywall route I wish we had discussed this more in detail before he started.
@Autumn, It is great that you had such great service at the carpet store. Service makes a huge difference in how you feel about the process. Hope you can still have the vacation to finish up the painting as planned. Glad your husband is being supportive of all this.
@ kellithee, Can’t wait to see pictures of your walls with paint on them.
@illinigirl, You are moving right along. It is natural to second guess your choices but if you liked them stick to it (says someone who overthinks almost everything )
@Lori, My DH is just like yours. He will call me 10 times when he goes to get something. Wow finsh electrical already.
@Hoosierbred, I am also going with a lot of green greys and blue/greys for our colors. You choices looks great. Kudo’s to your DH for working in the cold temperatures. Can’t wait to see your cabinets installed.
They have installed the front door Yay! I took pictures but for some reason had the black and white option turned on in the iphone and the pictures are B/w. They are doing the priming as we speak.
I have not yet selected paint colors for the main rooms and the contractor wants them now so kind of freaking out a little. Need to finish that ASAP and also order the lighting and appliances and final plumbing fixtures tomorrow. Wow typing all that is making me nervous.

I'm not sure the electrical finish is exactly in "order" right now, but our electrician just finished another job yesterday, and said he'd better just get on it. We need lights in the house for other things to get done past dark, so that's what we're doing.
Technically, it can be done as soon as paint is done either way... assuming the ceilings are also done. Just be sure your low hung light fixtures can be pulled up, so your workers don't walk into them :) Mine actually can't be b/c they hang from such a long way up, but my mason jars hang down from them, so I'm going to pull them up, or just wait on them, haven't decided yet. I can't wait to see them up, so idk if I'll be able to wait or not!

Outta here for the weekend kids, off to get my cabinet door sample, and work on some paint!!

small world Hoosier :)

Everyone's houses are looking great! We have everything closed up now except we are waiting on the garage door. The weather cooperated and it didn't start snowing again until after the roof was sheeted, so it's nice and dry inside. Rough-in plumbing and HVAC are going in next.

Love everyone's pics and color/product choices. They really help with all of the decisions to make. I hope mine look half as well as all of yours.

I couldn't resist sending this one. This looks dangerous to me--surely there's a better way! This is the outbuilding being built at the same time but not by our house builder.

loessismore - Yup... that is pretty dangerous. I am actually a safety geek by trade and work for a utility. The truck they are using is designed to lift people, not heavy loads. The truck is more than likely rated to lift 600 - 700 lbs, or two men and their tools. In our line of work doing something like that could get you an OSHA citation and more than likely an unpaid vacation. I know the likelihood of anyone with that company seeing your picture is slim, but if they have a guy like me on staff, he would make hay with this picture. It's a shame folks do stuff like that. Most of the time they've gotten away with it in the past. Every manufacturer will forbid such a practice. They do make trucks similar to that one which can lift moderately heavy loads. It would have a built in winch on the end of the boom... but as you can see in your picture the person in the bucket has a rope thrown around the part of the boom where the bucket attaches. Ironically, this is exactly where the bucket would separate if it were overloaded, causing the bucket and everything in it to tumble to the ground.

Sorry about doing that. After as many years in this trade as I have it becomes second nature to pick apart photos of work sites. It's not hard to find this sort of stuff everywhere. I intentionally kept away from my build site while the framing and roof work were going on. I know my contractor was responsible, but with my background and certifications I didn't want to be anywhere near when they were in the air... That would have been a dream come true for a lawyer had anyone been seriously injured and the proper safeguards not been in place. I considered my builders risk and liability insurance a bargain at $775.

Saftgeek-

We decided to keep the windows. Our GC offered to split the "return cost" but a few windows were custom and its not worth it. The windows ended up being the premium line from Atrium so we are going to take advantage of the supply house mistake as they are probably a step up from the Milgards. I was just more comfortable with the reputation of Milgard vs. Atrium. I am officially over it :) Onto the next task, making sure all specs are correct.

@kellithee - Did you go with Benjamin Moore or Sherwin Williams in the "Revere Pewter?"
On that note, has anyone here compared the two? I just realized that each company has their own "Revere Pewter" and it seems the Benjamin Moore one has more brown undertones?

Thanks for the compliments everyone! So excited to see everyone's progress and have you gals for support and encouragement!!

Saftgeek - the hidden pantry is just genius! I also love your laundry room drawers.

The trim carpenter has been working for about a month now and he says he still has a few more weeks to go before they finish. They finished all the crown upstairs and the batten board in the master bathroom and the powder bath. He has to add a trim piece to the baseboard trim and finish up some other things before he can start doing our stairs. I was considering having him add some chair rail in a few rooms but we can probably just do that later.

The tiler finished the shower floor. He needs to come back next week to grout the entire shower and then he's done. The shower is doorless and curbless. After having glass doors in our current home, I knew I did not want to clean another glass door.

Is anyone using different carpet in different rooms? I was thinking of using a higher end pattern carpet in the master bedroom. Any thoughts on this?

Here are our carpet selections. The first one is what I would like to use for the master bedroom. It's pricey and we can't afford to use it for the entire upstairs. The second one is a bit more affordable. It has a small pin dot pattern. I might do the bonus room in the third pattern. My husband likes it because it's a bit darker and he thinks it looks more masculine. I don't want the house to look disjointed with all these different carpets. Thoughts? Anyone else using 2 different carpets? Thanks!

Autumn: I think the "Bliss Artful" that you selected looks very similar to the second carpet. All of the carpets I selected are SHAW.

This post was edited by lzhwong on Fri, Feb 7, 14 at 21:14

@saftgeek: Beautiful cabinetry! Beech is one of our options we've been considering, yours is lovely. What stain color did you go with?

The tile you show in your previous post, do you recall the name? It looks a little like an Emser tile called Eurasia, thought I'd ask and see if it was

@uponthehilltop: Lucky find with that chandelier. I recognize the collection. I drooooled over it when first looking into lighting fixtures. Then I came down out of the clouds when I saw the price!

Everyone is coming along so well, not much to really post picturewise here, but insulation is finally in the works, stone on exterior is coming along nicely. If I can just get past the damn sheetrock phase maybe some fun photos will follow

All day yesterday at the house prepping for priming - so SORE! Hope to start priming today - have to tape plastic on a few more windows before we can get started.

lz-I think you could easily for the master but how is your layout? I think a switch for the bonus room would be easily done also. Do you have an ID? What do they suggest?

In our case the carpet from the stairs flows up into the kids nook and bedrooms so we thought we should keep it the same and then for the master there is a small hall that is seen from the foyer so we felt we needed to keep that consistent too. So standing in the living room you can see the stairs and that small hall so that is why we decided to have it all match.

We also took a Mohawk smartstrand sample home but it's not as soft and costs more. But - it has the best color match - go figure. The artful is pretty close with the "Glazed" color.

Still no activity here. If there is no rain this weekend, they will get back to work on the roof Monday but the forecast says it's supposed to rain Mon and Tues, go figure. We meet with the cabinet guy Monday evening and I have to pick out bathtubs like yesterday. So, I guess I'm going out to look at tubs today. This one doesn't excite me, I must not care what my bathtubs look like.

Autumn, sorry about being sore. That house prepping is a killer.

The drywalling crews are all finally out of here! They finished sanding the garage yesterday. DH spent all afternoon cleaning all that dust out of there.

The painter showed up yesterday late morning and worked until dark. I'll have to see how much he got done sometime today. He said he might come back today. He's working alone.

Here he is rolling on the ceiling paint throughout the house as our primer coat.

It is a lot lighter in the hall picture.

Can't wait until he starts painting the actual room colors to see if I can tolerate my choices! :-)

Stone guy says he can fix our columns to match our second design to correct our first design flub-up. Have to purchase new larger stone caps. He has enough stone leftover to use though.

niteshadepromises - I'm honestly not sure. We looked at the door samples our cabinet maker had, found the color we liked and just told him "that one". I never asked what the color was called. We did opt for glazing, which gave the doors added depth and chose a low sheen. Our current cabinets are glossy and we don't care for that look.

I have to be the worst ever on GW for letting folks know what we used. I am always impressed when folks can rattle off paint colors and codes, model numbers, and multiple different suppliers for certain products.

Saftgeek-

lzhwong- LOVE your shower floor! It looks like a really similar if not identical shower wall tile that we chose. Ours is 4 1/4" by 12 3/4" I believe.

and as far as carpets....we only have one carpeted room on the main floor- that's the master bedroom (and closet)

Almost the entire basement will be carpeted (except bar area, bathroom and playroom) and then the entire bonus floor (over the garage) will be carpeted (except bathroom of course)

I may upgrade the master BR carpet and use a different carpet on the other two levels.

I am not sold on Smart Strand. I had decided that I wanted to go that route but its not soft and nice feeling in person. Hard to get over that considering its not cheap.

I didn't like the smart strand either. It has a strange plastic-y feel to me, plus it will show vacuum tracks because of it's higher sheen.

@JDEZ - Are they putting your roof shingles on? If so, we have managed to be at the exact same stage at the same time!!

Just thought I would drop in and give a quick update...we closed on our house about 1.5 weeks ago and are almost completely moved in. Things are not organized yet and we have a lot of boxes in the garage still. It's too cold to function as we go on our 22nd consecutive day of below zero temps! Oh, and with propane in MN we are paying about $250 a week to heat this place. Kind of a downer.

On the plus side, we are loving the house and everything about it.

Here are a few pics from the day we closed...

Everyone else seems to be coming along nicely and there are so many newcomers. So exciting!!

Hilltop, our roof is only halfway done but our builder asked me to get tubs bought or ordered two weeks ago. I went to big box stores an hour away today. Was looking for the one piece tub/shower combo for our son's bath and couldn't find one in the size we need. They don't have hardly any. For our bathroom, I'm supposed to get a soaking tub. They have them all on the wall. How can I check out the feel of a soaking tub if it's on the dang wall? Came home with nuttin'. Nuttin' but a ceiling fan that wasn't even on sale. I'm back to internet shopping. If I can't sit in it anyway, I might as well find something with a good price.

rbatt- Congratulations on being in your home! I LOVE the crisp white cabinets in your kitchen, your wood floors, and your paint selection!

Jdez - I know the feeling! We went looking for tile yesterday and fixtures. They have all the plumbing fixtures on the wall, up to about 12 feet. Beyond the bottom row, I am not tall enough to reach or feel the fixtures! I am a HUGE fan of shopping the internet in my jammies! I honestly cannot imagine building a home without the resources of the internet!
Have they begun HVAC and electrical on your house? You are scaring me because our builder says we will be done in April, and I know you are planning for summer! We have to be out of our rental house by May 1st....the only other place to go would be my in-laws, but then I would need a visit to the special hospital for people with mental breakdowns!!

rb-yay! That is so awesome! Yikes on the propane bill though, yowsa. Congrats - can't wait to see more pics...hint hint! ;)

We had to pick our tubs out early too - had to get them in before doorways were framed and roof was on or they wouldn't fit! We chose something relatively standard and in stock at the plumbing place. Everything else (fixtures) we purchased online to save cost.

I am glad I am not the only one that thought the smart strand wasn't nearly as soft. Weird. For that cost you'd think it would be! On a similar note - they had a new carpet that is made with SILK (sorry no other info than that since I wasn't considering it seriously). It has no wear value (hmm, wonder why) but my oh my it was so silky soft. Ahhhh, I wanted to hug it. I couldn't keep my hands off of it, so soft.

Back to the house today after church to finish priming. I feel like the little engine that could or like Dori...just keep priming, just keep priming, priming, priming. ;)

rb24, Congratulations on closing and moving in. Love the combination of your flooring, cabinets and other finishes. You must be happy Please do post more pictures of other rooms as you get settled in.

Uponthehill, Your house is looking great and moving at a very fast pace. I think the rate at which your builder is building you may be able to meet the April date.

Jdez, We live in an area where we have many stores and even then it is pretty hard to fins all the models of the tubs in display. The reason being the space required to display them all and cost involved. I think the internet or catalogs (the stores usually have them) will help you choose. Some of the choices if I can't see I am afraid to order so I have been trying to order stuff I can see in person and that means limited selection.

Autumn, We are matching or cabinets and the trim in our house. The KD initially said the cabinets where pure white but I called the cabinet company and they told me to go to sherwin williams and they can help. So we went to sherwin williams and the told us the color was "extra white" and not I am worried it will be too white :(. So having the opposite problem as you.

Ordered 95% of our plumbing fixtures yesterday and 50% of our lighting. I know I am behind in these decisions compared to others so I am always trying to scramble. Today and tomorrow we finalize the paint colors.

so i have good news and bad news. hoping someone can talk me off the ledge with the bad news.

we went up to see how far they've gotten with the paint, not expecting much and were pleasantly surprised. every single wood surface is finished and about 80% of it is covered and taped off to prep for the wall color. the other good news is that they did a sample of my wall color and i LOVE it! that was a nice surprise.

the bad news is every single wood surface is painted in this insanely high gloss enamel unlike anything i've ever seen in a home before. hubby loves it. my mom loves it. my dad loves it. i don't think i like it! it could just be that it caught me by surprise, but i feel like the high gloss shows EVERY imperfection in the wood, and almost makes our wood look like vinyl. it's not at all what i was expecting, especially for our kitchen cabinets. i feel like i shouldn't be able to check my teeth in the reflection of our white painted cabinetry.

the other thing is, they painted all our cabinets on site, and they painted right over the hinges. anyone have experience with that? are they going to replace all the hinges? or are they left painted white? most of the doors don't even shut properly now. this crew has done a meticulous job of priming, then sanding and filling all the woodwork. they've been working for 2 full weeks now, so i'm sure they know what they're doing, but seeing it in this state i'm sure didn't help my opinion of the uber glossy trim. also they painted a few surfaces that were supposed to be stained.

anyone have any encouraging news? or is this going to be another battle?

Maggie,

I am so sorry to hear you are disappointed with the sheen of the cabinets and trim. Did you ever get a chance to see a sample cabinet with the same sheen? If so, did they do it to the same sheen level or is it a mistake. Is there any chance when you have the correct light bulbs in your light fixtures the colour/sheen might be more pleasing to you.

As per the hinges being painted, that is really strange and seems like a mistake to me.

Perhaps you might want to post a photo of the cabinets on the kitchen forum for any suggestions they might have.

Carol

thanks carol. we didn't see a sample of the sheen - the cabinets and trim are all painted the same color on site. we simply chose the color. our specifications call for Semi-Gloss which is what we've always had and what we expected. while everyone else likes it, the fact that they're raving about how shiny it is and how cool that is, reinforces that this is not a typical semi-gloss.

either they made a mistake and used high-gloss, or the product they did use shouldn't be called semi-gloss. i'm kicking myself for not looking more closely at the cans they had laying around. they used SpeedHide by PPG, but I didn't realize that was the paint so I didn't look close enough to see if it's really semi-gloss.

i didn't bring my camera or even my phone in today because we weren't expecting much more to be complete as my dad was at the house yesterday and didn't have a huge progress report.

as for the function of the cabinets, i'm sure they will make it right, but it seems the process is very counterproductive. any time they spend undoing the sloppiness of the previous trades is time that pushes out our move-in date.

@Maggie - I feel for you! I hope you get it all sorted out and get what your want! There is nothing worse than that sinking feeling when things are looking as you expected, and honestly, you deserve to have it the way you want it!

Please keep us posted, sending calming thoughts your way!

This entire building process should come with anxiety meds for the duration of the build, lol!

Maggie, paint does dull down with time. Oil will stay glossier than latex, latex will dull down a pretty significant amount. Don't panic! Semi gloss, freshly done, tends to look very shiny. Maybe the painters have something painted 6 months ago you could look at?

I have no idea on the hinges, sorry.

I just figured cabinet doors were painted or stained BEFORE the hinges were put on. That would probably take a lot longer though. I still wouldn't expect them to paint over the hinges. That just seems lazy I sure hope you get it all worked out maggiepie.

We got a blow to our time line last week. We were waiting to get the final bid from our builder before getting everything ready to go to the bank this week. Well his numbers are way too high for our budget. He was mortified to give us these numbers as he thought our build would be between $260k-$280k leaving us $ to build our workshop. The bids came back with a total of $332k but he said he got it down to $294 which we are not happy with. He said he didn't understand why either, until the lumber yard told him our house wasn't 3159sqft but it was 4454sqft. We were all surprised by that number as well. Our architect gave us the 3159 total and we took him at his word along with our builder. That is way too big of a house for us empty nesters and way too much $ to spend without DHs workshop.

So now my husband is trying to figure out how to shrink our house down without taking away the design he worked on for 4 years. We initially told our architect to keep our house under 3000sqft so I don't know why he would go so far over.

I posted our plans in the January build thread if you all have any ideas of how to shrink the house down I'd appreciate it. Keep in mind we have to keep my DHs wood burning stove in the area it is so he doesn't have a coronary. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Raining again....Hmmm. What should we do with our time while we wait to get back to work on our house? Hey, maybe we should try to sell our current house. Now, that might be a good idea.

robynstamps, I love your kitchen layout with that pantry! Did you post your entire layout somewhere? i'd love to see how the rest of your house works.

rbattaglia24, what paint colors did you use in your home? I see green. I love yours! Your home looks so beautiful.

Renee, I'm so sorry to hear your bid $ news. What a huge disappointment. I thought you were going to say that the lumber prices had gone up a lot and that is why the figure was up there. I hope you can downsize the house to fit your budget. We are retired and went with a 2150 sq ft one story home. Ours is going to end up costing us around your high bid numbers. We ended up paying cash for the pole barn/workshop for DH. We would have never dreamed it would all have cost this much when we first planned this over five years ago! Good luck.

It snowed again overnight and going to have another two nights of single digit temps. Nothing going on down at the house today except DH gluing up more cabinet doors. The painter said he probably wouldn't be back until Wednesday this week. I think DH and I are going to go to the lighting store to order under-cabinet lighting. We also want to see if they can order the under-cabinet power strips for us, too. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to get busy and order those online.

Oh boy… I second Autumn on the sore part. We painted this weekend. Master bed, bath & closets. ½ bath, laundry room, 2 Up beds, closets & full bath. Started spraying trim & doors. Got some lights going, more electric finish today. There are 100 plugs. Lol Idk how many switches, a bazillion. 40 some cans, and 40 lights. I swept and as soon as I was done, I’d have to sweep again. Cutting out all the drywall goop left in the boxes pain in the butt…
I can’t wait to hear my electrician (who’s a friend of ours) complain about my main light fixtures. Oh boy… lol

Hoosier ~ so glad they’re finally out of there! Whoop whoop!  Good deal on the columns!

Saftgeek ~ I’m the same way about knowing what we’re using. I know most of it, b/c I’ve picked it out, but I knew it when I picked it out, and now that info is out of my brain… lol I’ve been trying to write things down, but I can’t remember to do that either!!

RB ~ so glad you are loving your new home! I can’t wait to be posting that also! Bummer on the propane/weather ;( it stinks here too!

Hilltop ~ I’m an internet shopper for sure too!! I bought tons of stuff off build.com. Loved it. 

Maggie ~ sorry about the crazy glossy paint. I can’t stand anything glossy. Went flat with everything. I’ve got tons of people telling me I should have went semi gloss, but I just can’t stand shine…. Good luck :/ the hinges being painted seems crazy. I would definitely make them put new ones on!!

I am with y’all on the anxiety thing. I just ate a whole roll of Thin Mints and yesterday just started crying for no reason. I am NOT a crier….Luckily I was already outside, so I just jumped in my truck and left for a bit. Just said I had to go get something. I just don’t usually lose it like that!

Thank goodness we have each other to keep it together!! 

Does anyone know how to find the "it's February 2013" thread. I think It would be interesting to see what they were doing a year ago! :)

random...sorry....