3.31.2010

Bath Thingys!


Somehow, I thought these things just materialized fully functional. They don't. Someone (s) actually has to select each valve (pressure balancing, thermostatic, diverting) and control, and tub faucet.

We'll be hitting a showroom or two this weekend to learn more and make some decisions on how we want our bath/shower to operate.


picture courtesy of moen

Kitchen Appliances

We're getting ready to put in our appliance orders. We've chosen the following:

Oven/Microwave: Ikea Nutid in white. It's not the best oven out there, but it was inexpensive and it will fit in perfectly with our white Ikea cabinets. Maybe someday we can swap in a nice convection oven and steam oven.
Refrigerator: Liebherr HC1050. We found this on closeout after a condo builder returned it due to a dent in the door. Since it's a built-in style, we'll have panels over the door and that won't matter. For some reason built-in refrigerators are exorbitantly expensive (seriously, why?), so we were really lucky to find this. It's definitely tiny, only 21" wide and counter-depth. We live down the street from Whole Foods though and never really buy any more groceries than we need to cook one or two meals. That and some good organization should get us through.

Dishwasher: Asko D5233. Another built-in, this will have a panel that will conceal it behind the cabinets. It came down to Bosch, Miele or Asko and the salesperson made a good case for the Asko. The price was slightly better than for a Miele, but this is still more than we had expected to spend. Since we both abhor washing anything, we figured it was worthwhile to get something nice here. Since we have an open floorplan, we really wanted something quiet, which this is. Plus, it's Swedish so it will match my car.

Cooktop: The big splurge is on a Miele 30" induction cooktop. The engineer in both of us left us with no other choice. It looks amazing, is well-made, energy efficient and will have all the benefits of induction. It will be nice to have something that doesn't put out too much heat in the summer and will be easy to clean-up.


Hood: Futuro Futuro Concorde. We just like how this one looked. There are no-doubt other hoods that would be much more effective, but most of the hoods with large capture-areas wouldn't really work aesthetically. What this lacks in efficiency, it will hopefully make up for in raw power with 940cfm.

3.29.2010

First Floor Layout

3.27.2010

Our Architect


Our architect is Ben Waechter from Atelier Waechter. We originally met Ben when viewing the Z-haus down the street. If we had a bit more money, we'd likely be living there right now. It's beautiful in every way. Ben has been extremely fun to work with and he's come up with some really great ideas. He's worked hard to stay within our budget and come up with really creative ways to do more with less. He's also great at taking our half-baked ideas and turning them into really professional-looking concepts. Also highly recommended.

Our Builder

We've been extremely fortunate to have incredible partners in this process. Our builder is Prutting & Co, who just started a West-coast operation in Portland. Go to their website and drool over the houses, most of which could fit our entire place in their kitchens. Our GC Andrew has been extremely knowledgeable and completely unfazed by any of the issues that have come up. So far, so good. Highly recommended.

Framing Phase

Demo is done. Structural reinforcements in the foundation are done. Now we get to watch the framing guys do their thing. We're finally going in the right direction here. Still not too pretty though. More of this for ~2 more wks, then siding goes up and windows & doors go in.


3.24.2010

3.21.2010

More Demo



We're about half-way through now. We have some concrete work going on in the basement at the same time that will shore-up the retaining wall down there and add a couple of support columns and footings.

Last week we did some more kitchen research and went to Basco to look at fume hoods, cooktops and dishwashers. I think we're close to having a final decision on most of the big items. Definitely plenty of appliances out there to lust after. I think we'll end up with a pretty good mix.

3.14.2010

Demo has begun!

3.10.2010

Plans

I'll try to post the plans progression if I get the time. This is the current ground floor plan. I think just about every interior wall is going down.


More pictures







Pictures

We closed last week. Demo begins this week. These are some pictures of the interior. I forgot to get shots of the basement.