Tile!!

We are slowly getting to the fun part...at least for me!  This week we picked out our cabinets and stains and finishes for them.  I will post a picture when we get a sample in.  We have also chosen our tile flooring for the bathrooms, basement, and laundry room.  Todd(my husband) works for Dal-Tile so we of course will be using their products!  Along with the tile, we have chosen carpet for the two guest bedrooms in the basement.  If you remember, the concrete slab in there, which is perfectly secure and in great condition, is not level, so we will be carpeting those two rooms.  This will not only solve the uneven floor issue but give some warmth down there for our guests.  Dal-Tile is part of the larger company, Mohawk, which is where we will be getting our carpet from.  I love to buy products from such a great company that Todd works for!  The rest of the house will be the original wood floors and will be refinished in the areas that need it.

Here are some sneak peeks of our tile choices!

In the master bath we decided to go with a tumbled marble tile.  It is so beautiful and will give the space a very elegant and inviting look!  We will have a solid surface for the counter but we haven't chosen them yet.

 

  

In the basement, the mudroom, bathroom, living room, and foyer area will all have the same tile(the work out room will have a rubber flooring).  I fell in love with this tile when I saw it.  It kind of looks like wood but also has that great look of tile.  It is going to be perfect for our busy family and I can't wait to see it installed!  The color is called Espresso!  Oh, and the laundry room upstairs will also have this tile.

 

 In the upstairs hall bath we will be going a little less rustic and will have white subway tiles on the walls, from floor to about 4 ft high, and then the flooring will be a black and white octagon tile.  The sink is more of a vintage piece and I think it will all come together nicely.  Oh, and with all the white, there will be a bright color painted on the top half of the walls.  More on paint colors at a later date!

 

 Floor tile.

 

Hall bath sink.  It will have 2 faucets.  The picture below is to show you how the sink will look(although the sink in this picture is the 3rd faucet option).  The underside of the sink will be painted to match the walls, like in this picture.  **Note: this is not the wall color we will be using - although it does look really cute!

 

Outside electrical work and ceiling drywall

Usually by Friday the work week is done and odds and ends are getting finished up before the weekend.  Well, last Friday seemed to be more of a gearing up day for plenty of weekend work!  Outside we have overhead power lines to the house along with a light pole that will be in our driveway area, so we are converting it to underground electricity and removing the light pole.  Spencer Roth started the work by digging a trench to bury the pipes that will hold the wires.  Now OGE(our local electric company) can come in and do their end of the job and then they will remove all of the overhead wires and the light pole.

 These steps will be moved over next to the house because the garage will be right where they currently are. There will be a walk way along the side of the house between the garage and the house and these will be the steps to access that walk way.

 Here is some of the finished electrical work.  There are also some pipes running up the side of the house in the trench that was dug there.


Also on Friday they were getting a lot of the stones and debris from the demolition and filling the cistern with it.  If you remember from an earlier post, we searched the bottom of the cistern and now plan on filling it in with dirt, rocks, etc. and then closing it up for good.  These pictures show a huge piece of concrete, which use to be the top of the cistern cap, carried and dropped into the cistern.  It made a big splash because the hole is filled up with rain water.  I will be so glad when that project is over and that thing is gone for good!

Then, over the weekend, the sheet rock crew came in and really got some work done!  Most the of the walls in the house will be covered with drywall because of the condition of the plaster.  It is too costly, time consuming, and will not benefit us to repair the plaster.  It is damaged in just about every room.  So we are covering all of the walls with drywall.  One upstairs bedroom and then the game room and living room on the main level got a lot of attention and it was a nice surprise to see this morning!

 

These are the pictures from the upstairs bedroom. 

 

 These 2 pictures are in the living room on the mail level.  The ceiling height is still great and it's coming along so quickly!

This is in the game room on the mail level.  I know these ceiling pics probably aren't that interesting, haha, but it is great progress and one step closer to our family living under those ceilings!

Master Bath walls, tub, and faucets

The master bath has quickly taken shape with walls being framed in and the plumbing going in today.  We had to pick our tub and shower faucets so that the plumber could get everything in the right place.  I kind of went back and forth on the idea of a claw foot tub.  It was between that and another type of freestanding tub that sits on a base.  I LOVE the way claw foot tubs look, but the thought of dust bunnies collecting under it bothered me, but in the end we decided to go with one and I think it is going to look great in the house!  

 This is a view from the door into the master bath from the bedroom.  The opening on the left is the closet and it will have a pocket door.  On the other side of that is the shower.

 Here is a view of the closet from the other side of the room.  

 This is the shower.  The shower will have tile up the half wall there and then glass up the rest of the way.  That way the light will pass through the glass into the bathroom and it won't feel as closed off.  This will also allow us to install a seat in the shower on that end.  The shower head and control will be on the wall that backs up to the closet.  You can see 2 shelves will be built in for soaps and shampoo.  There will be a glass door on the shower as well.

 On this side of the closed off fireplace will be the vanity.  The door from the bedroom won't be that large so 2 sinks and cabinets will fit in there nicely.  

 On the other side of the fireplace will be the tub.  It will be centered in the space and will have 2 wall sconces over it, equally spaced on the wall. 

 

This is the tub we chose.  It is a cast iron tub and the claw feet will be finished in an oil rubbed bronze color.

This is the tub faucet, which I fell in love with!  It is so fitting for the house I think!  It will be mounted on the top rim of the tub with exposed plumbing.  It will also be in the oil rubbed bronze color to match the tub and the other faucets in the bathroom.

Drywall going up!

 I first want to say a big thanks to all of the workers over at the house!  I am amazed daily at not only how quickly they are working on things, but how nice and helpful they are when I am over there.  Spencer Roth and his crew have been great to work with, along with the guys from Wofford Electric, in Muskogee, lead by Jack Wofford, and also all of the other people in and out that play an important part in making this whole project come together.  So far this whole process has been really easy and enjoyable and I credit it to all of the people working on our house!  Thanks!!

Ok, back to business! Haha!  

Yesterday we drew out(literally drew on the floor with sidewalk chalk!) the master bath and decided where everything was going to go.  I am a very visual person so this helped me see how it would all work together and I am so excited to see the finished product!  It is kind of an awkward space with a closed off fireplace, 18" stone walls(which can make plumbing and electrical tricky), windows, and a sloped roof, but I think we will fit it all in and it will look great!  The door from the master bedroom to the master bath has also been cut out.  The drywall on the ceilings has gone up on the other side of the house and it's so nice to see the 2 rooms looking more like bedrooms and less like an attic.  This process will continue for several days to get the entire upstairs level completed.


Here are a few different shots  of the new opening from the master bath to the master bedroom.  

 We will be using the existing closet but expanding it because the majority of the closet has been taken up by HVAC.  We will take off the door to the current closet and use a pocket door on the expanded closet to help save space.


 In the master bedroom there isn't much wall space for furniture and because of the old fireplace, one of the 2 main walls isn't really usable for furniture placement, so we have decided to close off the wall to make it a straight even wall.  Unfortunately we are losing a little space due to the new wall, but we feel it is the best solution to accommodate our furniture(or any furniture really unless we wanted twin beds!).

Todd said it could be our "safe room" for bad weather, but we are pretty sure our entire house is a safe room given how long it has been standing and that the walls are 18" thick stone!  And a side note...it's only about 2ft deep so it would be more like a safe "crawl space" rather than a room!


Here are a couple of views of the 2 upstairs bedrooms that have drywall up.

Master Bath and Laundry Room taking shape!

 The work has been nonstop but a lot of it lately is behind the walls stuff.  Electrical, plumbing, gas, etc.  If you remember from earlier posts, we are only restoring 3 of the fireplaces in the house(there were originally a fireplace in every room!) - the living room, dining room, and basement living room.  We will have gas in all of those but only the basement living room fireplace will have the gas logs.  The other 2 will be wood burning but will be able to be converted if we ever want to do that.  Also we will have gas appliances and heating and ac so there are a lot of pipes going in to accommodate all of it.

Upstairs in the 2 bedrooms the closets are getting framed in and wired for lights.  Because there were no closets upstairs we had to add them and decided to do a corner closet with an angled front so it doesn't stick out too much in the room.  I think it will look great when it's done!  The other bedroom has the exact same closet on the other side of the wall.

The room that we are turning into the laundry room and master bathroom has started to look like 2 rooms instead of 1.  You will see in the pictures that the wood floors are covered with a new plywood of sorts and that is because of 3 reasons...first the floors were in pretty bad shape and needed a lot of work to not only be repaired but also leveled, second they were covered with lead paint, and third they are going to be covered in tile.  We hated to cover up the original wood floors there but given all of the issues and decisions going into it we feel that this is what was needed to be done.

 In this picture you are standing at the door from the hallway looking into the laundry room.  It will not have any windows but I don't plan on spending much time in there. ;-)

 This view is looking into the master bath with your back to the front of the house(where the windows are).  That pink door leads to the closet, but since the HVAC is taking up most of the closet we will have to reconfigure it so that will most likely be moved.  

 In this view I am standing in the same spot but turned to the right.  This area in front of the window will be the toilet room - don't worry we will be installing window treatments!  There will be a door on that room but it hasn't been framed in yet.

Here is a nice picture to end the post with.  These are on the neighbors property(which is for SALE if anyone wants to be our neighbors!!) and they are purple and gold(LSU colors!) so I will take that as a good sign!

The Front Page!

The article turned out great! Our story is on the front page of the Fort Gibson Times.  Here is the link if you would like to read it and can't get a copy of the paper http://muskogeephoenix.com/archive/x6219781/Transplanted-couple-to-remodel-Coppinger-home