What color???

Here's the couch we bought for my new office. I can't decide what color to paint the office. I had originally wanted a dark color, like brick or maroon. But the room is only 9 X 14, so I'm worried that I won't want to spend 8 hours a day in such a dark room.

The hallway color (Cracker Bitz by Olympic) looks great with this couch, but do I want the same color in the office as I have in the hallway? Isn't that an awful lot of cracker bitz?

I do NOT want white. Or anything remotely suggesting white. I want color - but I can't decide how dark I want to go.

so, what would you do?

Week 20 (yes, you've been reading this blog for 20 weeks!)

Handrail is coming along... looks much better with the ballusters in place. There is one more balluster that Louie has to order, that is longer than the others, for the landing. Other than that though, it's a feat of engineering brilliance.

Louie says he never wants to install another handrail as long as he lives... !

More handrail drama

Today, Scott and Louie stopped by to work on the lower section of the handrail. It took them 5.5 hours to get this far. The starter step is 2" more shallow than the standard size, and because of this, the stock pieces from LJSmith took some major reworking to fit.

ok but... that's the last straw

This has nothing to do with our addition, but I thought I'd share this movie trailer. Apparently the original director's cut of Office Space was too scary for general release.

Office Space, Recut

Not for the color-averse

Here is Hannah's room. I'm going to get her an ivory shag rug to sort of lessen the intensity of the purple a bit. But I think it's pretty.

Louie was here today and saw the cat door that Dave installed last night in the cat closet door. He was visibly shaken, seeing the beautiful door he installed butchered that way.. The closet was built specifically to house the cat box, but I know it 's traumatic to see a big ol' hole in the door. Beats having the cat box in the bathroom, though.

Week 17 - The Handrail-Challenged

Today Louie stopped over and we talked about how to build the Handrail From Hell. I ended up calling the company that makes the components, LJSmith, and talked to a very nice lady for an hour about my stairs. In the course of the conversation I realized I didn't have anywhere near the room I thought I had for the fancy doohicky thing I wanted. We'll have to pick a slightly different set of components. Good thing I called her.

The handrail will take a while longer, while we sort it all out. Meanwhile, we've been painting Hannah's room a bright purple (wow, it sure is purple!), and Dave built Sara a set of "cubes" for her to use as a dresser.. the idea being that if she doesn't have to go through the extra step of opening a drawer to put away her clothes, they might actually get put away more regularly.

Pics of the cubes and the purple room coming soon..

Moving day

We got 3/4 of the spawn moved upstairs today. Beds and all. We got Hannah's room cleaned out and ready to paint, but I will have to wait till tomorrow to paint. The new dryer was delivered today and Dave moved our old washer upstairs, but it has a small leak (which we have suspected for a while now) so we're going to get a new one of those too. Anyway we have a fully functional laundry room now upstairs.

Here's the finished handrail they built yesterday. I have to finish the oak railing (another project, oh goody..), but I think it looks great.

Week 16 - Handrail

Today Louie and Scott are putting in the handrail. Not an easy job - lots of angles and cuts. The manufacturer makes various bits and pieces which, combined together in the right magical way, make the railing look like it flows around corners and floats up the stairs. Not a job for the spacially-challenged.

The bottom doohicky piece that was ordered, the big curvey one at the very bottom of the stairs, is not the right one for our stair configuration. So they won't be able to get the bottom part of the railing in today. But this top railing is the one that is most important for safety, and once it's in the kids can move into their rooms.

pretty stickers!

Here's what our door looks like with all the pretty stickers. The red ones are failed inspections. There are a few more white ones (passed inspections, which are not as colorful) that were stuck to the electrical box or the architectural plans instead of the door, so it's not a full collection.

There were building, electrical, plumbing, and fire inspections. There was also that infamous insulation inspection. Incidentally, the building department claims they still haven't received the architect's letter changing the specifications of the insulation (even though it was faxed to them on September 28 AND I personally handed them a copy on October 2.... how convenient that I have a blog to document everything!), so technically we dont have an insulation approval yet.

Altogether, the building permit cost $1521, which was broken down as follows:

Building inspections - $698
Electical inspections - $130
Plumbing inspections - $305
Fire inspections - $100
DCA Training Fee (what??) - $165
Certificate of Occupancy (better be printed on some REALLY nice paper) - $123

Now you know where the money went.

Week 16 - stuck here a while longer

We just had our fire, electrical and plumbing inspections this morning. We failed plumbing for a bunch of little things. Hopefully we'll have them taken care of by the end of the week.

We still can't move upstairs, because we need our railing installed, and we need the final building inspection. Earliest possible moving date at this point looks like next week some time.

But at least I've started moving some of the kids' things upstairs, including most of their furniture. I'm making a dent in the mess in my living room and foyer. It's a little uplifting, just to be able to see my foyer floor again and not have to step over things.

Here are Daniel and Ethan's rooms, which are just waiting for the boys to move into them.