Townhouse Progress Update #3

Hello, friends.  We hope you had a great long weekend.  For the past two weeks, Mike and I have been on a wonderful bicycling vacation in Europe.  If you follow us on Instagram, then you already know that.  We did two separate boat and bike trips. We started out with a week of cycling in Provence, and then we spent the second week cycling in my favorite country, The Netherlands.  Because of a strike on the French railways on Saturday, May 19, our trip from France to the Netherlands took some maneuvering and involved trains, planes, automobiles, and a bus, but we made it in plenty of time.  I was even able to watch part of the Royal Wedding on my phone while riding on a train.   I will for sure have some posts about this amazing trip.  I can’t wait to talk to you about the Dutch look and how to get it in your own home.

Despite arriving home at midnight Saturday night, Mike and I were at our new townhouse checking out the progress by 6:30 Sunday morning.  That’s one of the joys of jet lag.  I went back later and took photos.  Get a cup of coffee because there are a lot to show you.

Things are happening, and progress is being made.  The painters have been busy on the outside, and they have power-washed the entire exterior (except where the addition is going.)  Good-bye yucky wall.  It is now clean and bright.  The dormers have been painted, and they have started on the door surround.  They won’t be able to completely finish the doorway because we are adding a mail slot on the left side.  Also, the front door will be the very last thing to get painted because we added a temporary digital lock so that the contractors and subs can easily get in without having to hunt down a key.  And by the way, thank you for your input on the color of the front door.  I have made a decision, and you will have to wait.  I will tell you this much – it is going to be high gloss.  Most of the doors in the Netherlands were a very high gloss, and I really liked the look.  They almost look lacquered.

Our custom solid wood doors have been delivered, the window trim and crown moulding is going up.  I think that I mentioned earlier that we had all of the doorways on the first floor raised to be seven feet tall.  (The standard size is six feet eight inches high.)  That is all of the doors except the pocket door going into the bathroom.  The framing had already been installed when we decided to go taller.

Three solar tubes have been installed, and what a difference they have made!  I was concerned about the dark foyer because when we built my closet in front of an exterior front window, we said good-bye to  a lot of light.  The solar tubes fixed that.  They even use left over solar power and turn into night lights when it gets dark.

Here’s how it looks in the guest bath.  This space was a black hole before the solar tube.  You can get a good look at the crown moulding here.  I LOVE it.  It will be the same in the first two floors and will look even better when it is painted Pure White by Sherwin Williams.  We opted to not put crown moulding on the third floor.  Remember that we are treating it like an attic conversion because that it what it is, and an attic in the old days would not have had fancy wood.

We also put a solar tube at the bottom of the third floor steps.  I sure will be glad when that red wall takes a hike.

The new wood to repair and replace the hardwood floors has been delivered.  The French door leaning against that far wall is for my pantry.

This is my closet, and remember that this space was once part of the open foyer.  We put it to better use, though.  You can look back at this post to see what this space looked like before.  The closet designer and I have already planned out the floor plan, and everything has been ordered.

This bad boy right here is what has been holding up the construction of the addition.  It’s a steel beam that had to be fabricated specifically for our space.  They delivered it last week, and that involved shutting down the street. A crane lifted it over the wall.  Today they are removing some more of the wrought iron fence, bringing in another crane, and lifting it into place.

Right now these boards are holding up our second floor wall.  Yikes!  The spot where the beam is resting will be the exterior wall of our addition.  It will make it possible to have a family room area in the kitchen.

I took this photo standing on the beam looking back into what will be the kitchen.  Originally this was the family room.  Check out back post to see what it looked like.  We will be putting hardwood floors on top of the brick.

It doesn’t look like much now, but this window is in my pantry/office.  The pantry will also be an office like in our last house.  This window will not have glass in it.  We are framing it out and adding plantation shutters to it.  It will look out into the mudroom and through our Dutch doors into the enclosed breezeway when that all happens.  That door on the far end goes into the garage.

I have just two more photos to show you.  The carpenter crew brought their own grill and cook their lunch onsite.  I think that’s cute.

And one more.  The gas company people destroyed two big red peony bushes in the front yard when they put in the new gas line.  However, there’s a white peony bush hiding behind a pile of bricks in our courtyard.  It’s going to bloom, and I so hope it survives this turmoil so I can love on it.  Peonies were blooming in the garden where Mike and I were married on June 3.  I have tried several times to have peonies in our gardens, but something always happened to them.  I am praying that this one survives.

 

So, that’s our townhouse today.  Things are happening so quickly now that we will probably be ready for another update next week.  I really don’t think we will be in by my goal of July 4, but I think we will definitely be in by August.

 

Take care.