I recently bought LED bulbs with built in daylight sensors. $11 each at my local hardware store. They had ones with motion detectors too with a little switch so you could choose to have them go on only if it was dark out. So simple and easy! No need for a new fixture. But one of the ones with a daylight sensor will not go on at dusk if my kitchen light is on since it is near the window, lol.
I am so excited to see how this turns out for the CC member. We are building a new house and I spent a long time last night looking at all the CB flicker pictures to find inspiration for our master bath. I just love, love, love CB’s taste. Thanks for sharing with us! (I have no input on the lights, but am glad to read about all the things we need to think about here before we talk to the electrician.)
That is exactly what we are looking at right now. Dfin’s hubby found these online and I think it is going to be our solution. I sent the link to our electrician to make sure he can wire these in. We are too late to wire them in without having to open up some drywall (I think). The ones we are looking at are like this
But the ones you linked to seem to probably be better because they can extend out. Issue is that some of the lights are under big patio covers and I hope it doesn’t think it’s ‘dark’ during the middle of the day 
Although one light in the run of exteriors is outside the covered area and maybe it can go on that one light and get wired into it since they are all on the same switch, therefore they should be on the same light circuit
Oh you don’t need to open the drywall. Mr. B wired them at one of the light fixtures outside so they sense the outside light. You only need one if all the lights are “daisy chain” connected to the same switch. Find the one that is connected to the switch and wire it there.
Our lights did turn on in the middle of the morning last summer… during the solar eclipse. 
Thank you so much for your lovely compliment. Luckily, on this project, Dfin and I have similar tastes (although she likes the expensive stuff!! and I have to control myself on my personal flip projects). We are just starting to have a lot of fun getting to the good stuff.
Kitchen cabinets are selected. The main run of cabinets are going to be Moonshine and big island is a charcoal grey. These are our starter colors we are working with. Right now we are struggling with paint color and flooring because we have to paint the walls soon (before kitchen cabinets come) and the flooring needs to get ordered.
Dfin made a fun decision on the powder room. We are going to custom build a wood floating vanity and a full wall of tile. Fun!
As usual, a significant portion of the budget was spent on infrastructure and stuff noone is ever going to see. If it was my flip project I would be in the usual dilemna. Ooops… spent 90% of budget already and I have nothing to show for it!! Now I don’t have any money left for the fun stuff that people are actually going to see. But Dfin is going to persevere and get exactly what she wants, within reason. I spend half my time trying to advise them on the least expensive solution, but they are making the final decisions.
Here are some links to the powder room inspirations
This is the vanity we are going to build, although we are not going to install shiplap and our sconces cannot be mounted on the side because we have a pocket door going into the wall on the right side of the wall. Reason we cannot do shiplap is that the ceiling is low (built under a staircase) and it might make the room appear too small.
The vanity is causing issues because Dfin cannot find a full single piece of wood that is at least 18" wide for the counter top. So, we are going to have to buy fancy wood at 12" or 14" wide and carefully join two pieces to make the countertop. This is going to keep my carpenter busy for awhile!! And, obviously not something I would be able to afford for a flip project. However, it could turn out cheaper in the long run than buying an expensive fancy vanity. I’ll try to keep track of the exact cost of building this vanity from scratch for everyone.
https://www.houzz.com/photo/86608333-sunrise-point-farmhouse-powder-room
This is our other inspiration photo that shows a large scale tile on the full wall behind the vanity. Building a custom marble floating vanity was one of our options but I knew that trying to get a good structure built to hold this up was going to be difficult, so we opted for the wood vanity. I loaded some of the sample tiles in flickr last week. But we are still looking at more tile samples.
https://www.houzz.com/photo/81506967-broadway-homewood-al-transitional-powder-room-birmingham
PROGRESS
We are racing along right now. Since we have passed all inspections except final there are teams of people swarming. I apologized last week because there was so many workers all over the place and Dfin’s H responded… Even better if we have 200 people here if it gets done in 1 day!
Stucco is getting applied. We are going to have to put on a final coat that has the same ‘peachy’ color as the existing stucco so that when the new exterior painting happens, it will blend in with same base around the house.
Roof got installed this weekend. There were 5 guys on the roof applying torch roof to the attached patio cover, installing flashing and we had to have a ton of roof vents installed because of the 2x8 ceiling rafter / ventilation issue. We had to go through every 2 x 8 rafter and blocks and drill 1" holes all over the place to provide ventilation from the eaves up to the roof. Since we do not have manufactured trusses, there is no ‘attic’ space above the cathedral ceilings. This means we have to provide ventilation up each cavity individually with a roof vent at the top of each cavity. Lots of detail work required and a lot of vent materials.
Advice to anyone designing a new build… don’t do cathedral ceilings with no ventilation area!!! it’s a lot of extra cost
Drywall is getting mud and texture. Starting all the trim around the retrofit windows and we are going to start painting the ceilings in all the rooms that are not involved in the drywall mess.
The whole house is going to be a total mess of sanding and drywall mud for the week.
I really like the custom wood vanity but I am a bit concerned that the top would get water damage (not just water, soap dripping from a dispenser is the biggest culprit that can eat through a lot of things including marine varnish). I have seen a similar vanity in a custom upscale house we poked through but it had some sort of a glass or epoxy coating fused to the wood so that it would be water resistant. It was not shiny, it looked like it was varnished.
Yep, need to figure out how to make the countertop bullet proof but without the shiny marine varnish look
Thanks for the heads up about the sconces on the wall! I looked at our plans, and our pocket doors would interfere with sconces, so back to the drawing board. We have a vaulted ceiling, but we might be getting manufactured trusses. Another reason I read these threads - details, details, details.
Manufactured trusses should provide some spacing above insulation for air flow. Ask them to explain what is being used for ceiling insulation and the design for attic/roof ventilation. You want to make sure you are not required to do something extremely expensivr for insulation and your roof venting isnt totally ugly or expensive
CB, some googling around says that wood for vanity should be first sealed with a clear penetrating epoxy sealant and this is the PU finish that would give a nice satin coat after that;
http://www.rockler.com/general-finishes-arm-r-seal-urethane-topcoat-satin
Thanks, I’ll check it out. I’m hoping for a matte finish or an oil finish, like the Euro Oak floors. But we m have to go with the satin urethane epoxy. Got to get the thing built first:)
We picked the hardwood floors - Pebble Beach from Garrison: http://www.thegarrisoncollection.com/projects/. CB can get a great price, and I am loving them. We are leaning toward quartz counters, either Noble Grey or Helix. So fun to narrow things down!
Our big sliding doors are being installed today, so this will be the first time since the end of October that our house will be closed up. I’m so grateful to be in San Diego during this project, especially with the severity of winter in most of the rest of the country. Our two little space heaters wouldn’t have cut it anywhere else
LOVE the floors! Both Noble Grey and Helix are beautiful.
The flooring is beautiful. Wide plank European Oak with a beautiful UV oil finish that is very matte. We got a screaming deal
I need to take some new photos because we are finishing up. Roof installed, drywall done. Stucco done. Ready to start painting!!
We are finally getting to the fun stuff!!!
I loaded a bunch of photos.
The stucco finish is done on the exterior of the addition. We had to match the existing stucco texture or it was going to be another $4,000 to re stucco the rest of the house. My stucco guy is a 3rd generation stucco expert. He told the owners ‘I look like a bum but I know my stucco’. But the funniest thing is evidently the stucco guys have a name for this texture “70s Hit and Run” texture. I thought that was hilarious. The reason we matched the coloring of hte new stucco to the old house color is because it will help when we go to paint the exterior of the house. Then all the exterior will have the same base color behind the new paint color. We are still deciding on exterior color, but it looks like the infamous Elephant Skin color might win
All of the drywall and texturing is done and dry. My painter spent some time over the weekend priming up the new drywall and painting the ceilings with the sprayer. So now we have a brand new blank slate ready for us to select the paint colors. Do you think we have selected paint colors yet? No, of course not. We went through a 2nd round of putting up samples everywhere and they are all just looking really dark. The colors look great on the little paper swtaches and they look great on all the fancy homes we looked at on Houzz, but not great in this house. A lot of the colors are taking a pinkish hue which is curious because I cannot figure out where the pinkish hue is coming from. Sometimes paint takes a pinkish hue if you have the red protection paper on the floors, but we just have the concrete slab floors
Roof is done and it took 5 guys two days to get all the details done. There are a lot of new vents in the roof for the roof ventilation through the vaulted ceiling cavities. Had to put a wide vent at the top across 2 cavities at a time.
Patio cover is done and it has the flat roofing on it. We are finishing up some ledger boards on the end of the house to tie in the existing large patio and attack it to the house. Patio cover still needs to be painted.
All the ceilings have been painted with standard Ceiling White
Photos loaded
Also, I loaded a photo of the crazy cedar plank with the live edge that we are going to try to woodwork into a powder room vanity. We will see if we can get it NOT to look like a mountain cabin
After a zillion paint chips and dozens of samples on the wall we have narrowed down paints to potentially
Benjamin Moore
Winter White in rooms that are darker
Moonshine for accent walls maybe
And my favorite…Anchor Gray somewhere fun for a bold statement
Ultra Pure White on wood trim
Kitchen getting installed
We are working hard to get the kitchen installed this week. Cabinets and appliances have been delivered and a lot of the painting of the house is done.
Flooring gets delivered today and it is going to acclimate in the house for a week or so.
Photos loaded
Two enthusiastic thumbs up! Nice work blending the soffit into the cabinetry. That orange scaffold in the living room… looks very familiar. If you are ever to do a remodel in my neck of the woods, you know where you can borrow one for free… 