Renovation Plans in the Works

It's been an exciting and exhausting couple of weeks. We haven't started demo on the house...yet. But, soon! I've met with the contractor and designer several times, and we have a door/window guy in place making plans, too. I couldn't make the meeting with the cabinet designer on Thursday, but the contractor and designer were there, and we'll get those plans back very soon. She will put together a couple of different plans for the kitchen, as well as plans for banquet seating and a mudroom/pantry. FYI, we're working with Princeton Construction as our GC. They are really, really good at this.

Greg with The Arizona Door Store will be installing new interior door hardware and a couple of new interior and exterior doors. But his biggest project will be the entryway. This is a superimposed image of the door we picked (or one like it). The new door will be eight feet tall, which is a couple of feet taller than the original door. The windows flanking the door will be deleted and stuccoed over. We figure we'll be getting enough natural light through the door. The archway will be about twice as thick and covered in brick veneer, and the door will be flanked by two sconces. We're also replacing the hanging chandelier. The entire exterior will be painted some shade of exterior-appropriate white, so try to picture that. The current colors are pretty bad, and I don't like how the arches and other elements are different colors than the main color of the house. This entryway, along with the kitchen, should be the most dramatic overhaul of the renovation.

Here is the entryway as it stands now, with the original door.

On Friday, Mitch (the project manager with Princeton), Lori (the interior designer of Lori Clarke Design), Summer (Lori's assistant), Greg and I met at the house to do the entryway plans and make some other decisions on doors and windows. I also went to Arizona Tile with Lori and Summer. My idea for the kitchen counters was a matte charcoal gray or black with white or gray veining. I LOVE soapstone in this color...but soapstone is expensive and requires a lot of maintenance...so, it's not very practical. What we found in the slab yard, however, was a beautiful granite called "Black Mist Honed." It's more of a matte finish (apparently, that's what "honed" means) instead of the glossy granite that you think of from 2007. It has some subtle white veining, which will be awesome to tie in with the white cabinets. It requires no maintenance and will be much more affordable. Apparently, they have plenty in stock and more on the way. We didn't order them yet...but I think I found my countertops! We were talking about putting butcher block on the kitchen island, but now we're thinking of doing a peninsula instead of an island, so we'll probably keep the countertops consistent to so that it looks tied together.

It's hard to really tell what it looks like with the reflection of the lights.

We also found a great porcelain tile that resembles whitewashed brick for a kitchen backsplash. Brick veneer was always our plan, but this will be way more affordable, and it looks good, too. We also picked out black and white tile for the laundry room and mudroom. It's not a stark white or stark black, it's a little more off-white and charcoal-gray...which will be better for hiding the dirt. They'll be 12x12 tiles in a checkered pattern, which is bold but looks awesome. I think it's okay to go a little bold in the laundry room and mudroom, right? And lastly, we found a lookalike cement tile in porcelain...you know the really decorative ones? (Check out The Cement Tile Shop in Scottsdale- I love everything there.) My original idea for the cement (or cement lookalike) tile was possible flooring in the powder room, but now we're just going to do a decorative backsplash for the wet bar. The powder room will have the engineered hardwood floors, like the rest of the house. Stay tuned for fun plans with that little room. We all left Arizona Tile just so excited about what we discovered in the porcelain tile options.

Cement-lookalike porcelain tile for wet bar backsplash.

Whitewash brick lookalike tile for kitchen backsplash.

Here is the current wet bar situation. It's almost impossible to do, but imagine the entire aquarium theme being deleted from this scenario. The rounded corners will be squared off, the countertop and cabinets will coordinate (or match) the kitchen, the sink will be copper, and we'll get rid of that entire mirror/wine glass thing. The backsplash will be the fun cement-like tile, with floating wood shelves for bar glasses.

We also hit Lamps Plus to see if we could find affordable lighting...and it was a success! It's amazing how many sconces, vanity lights, pendants and chandeliers we need. The idea was to hit Lamps Plus first, since we won't find anything more affordable. We knew they wouldn't have everything we needed...but we did find a few winners! We got a huge outdoor chandelier, the outdoor sconces, and two little vanity lights for the powder room and mudroom desk. And now that we've saved a couple bucks in this department, we can start looking at Rejuvenation and the like for the rest of the fixtures.

New entryway (outdoor) chandelier!

Our last stop was Porter Barnwood, where we got some good ideas for floating shelves in the kitchen and wet bar and also an idea for a mantle. I would really love to buy from this local shop. Their finished pieces of wood have a 10-12 week lead time. I'm not sure if we can work around that...but for a hunk of raw oak beam (as a mantle), we can just pick that up any time.

I picked out my floors on recommendation from a friend. (Thanks for that, Jen, and for so many other great tips!) I knew that I wanted a wide-plank French white oak engineered hardwood, and Jen recommended the California Classics Mediterranean collection. I looked at a sample in person, and the guys at Arizona Hardwood did not have enough great things to say about this line of flooring. Mitch, our GC, thinks it'll be a great floor. I really, really do not like carpet (PTSD from a dog who still cannot manage to always do his business outside)...so we'll do hardwoods throughout the house, except for the boys' bathroom, laundry and mudroom, which will be tile. Our bid for the floors will probably come back much higher than Mitch had originally estimated, but we are going to try to work with it. In the words of Dylan, "I hate cheap-looking floors." I agree with him. We are trying to do this renovation as affordably as possible, like everyone. But there are some areas where we just want to do it right...and it might cost a little more than we had planned.

This was a lot of information...but Friday was a big day! None of this has been set in stone yet...except for the few light fixtures that we've already purchased. So, stay tuned to see how it comes together. I've got lots of before pictures, and I'm sure the resulting renovation will blow my mind, and potentially yours, too. It's a huge project, and aside from things like having babies and getting married, I've never been so excited about anything in my entire life. I'm lucky that Dylan, for the most part, handed me the reins for most of the choices. (Which is probably because he has enough projects on his own that keep him busy.) So far, he's really pleased with what we've come up with, and I think we'll all be very happy in our new home.