Update on the master bath: the heated floor system is going in today. The drywall has a base coat of paint. Floor tile will be next. Finally we can see the finish line.
Next up, the kitchen.
Two big decisions remain there. We thought we were going with alder in the island but I didn’t like the sample that came. It had no character. Two more samples should be here Friday. If those don’t work, we may choose the “new” version of oak.
The first picture on this page gives a good example of the oak, but the colors are in reverse. We will have white perimeter cabinets with a glaze over the white and an alder or oak island (with venatino marble on all).
Moved into our reno zone earlier this week. The kitchen was fully demoed before move in and everything is sealed off but there is still dust everywhere. Anyone have any cleaning suggestions? The one room directly above the kitchen is the worst.
If you don’t have one already, get a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter, and vacuum everything. If the dust made it into your bedrooms, check inside dresser drawers and in closets, that dang dust gets everywhere.
The interior transformation is gorgeous!!! I love the big skylight bringing light into your entryway.
My favorite part is still the new windows bringing in your water view.
Since your staircase moved into the entry you are going to have to spend some money making a nice railing since it’s the first thing seen entering the house
But the most exciting thing is you have added the Wow factor as you enter the house. Visitors (and future buyers) are immediately drawn to the water views through the house
Including handrails and treads, probably around $1000 for the stairs. Getting pre-finished wood adds about $600 or so, which may not be a bad deal.
We eventually need to replace the current railing along the balcony, which is about a 40’ run, because the current railing is too low and not up to code.
Gorgeous stuff!!! I like the railings on p. 19. Aalto. Very clean, simple, yet sophisticated.
Speaking of stairs… We recently spent a weekend at the Mauna Kea hotel on the island of Hawaii. I am absolutely in love with that place - it has many MCM inspirations for Coralbrook. The stairs absolutely wowed me (first photo shows the lobby with its internal stairs):
Someone has painted the beautiful wood railings dark brown. Ugh. We saw a worker meticulously sanding that paint off revealing the beauty of the wood below. There were already several parts that were stained… they looked fantastic. Long story short… please don’t paint gorgeous wood railings. Get the best wood you can afford and stain it.
I am enjoying reading this thread.
Our house is 21 years old and we had a bird fly into a window about 6 weeks ago. The bird survived but broke the outer pane of a paned window. Luckily it’s at the back of the house in a room we rarely use. It’s been a process in trying to replace the glass. We had two glass companies come out and no one will replace the glass in a Pella window. We had to go through Pella and they only come to our area once a month and the window needed to be ordered. The options were all expensive and we ended up replacing the window. We will need to have the inside wood painted. To our amazement the aluminum cladding on the exterior of the new window is an exact match to the other window. The broken window was part of a pair of casement windows. The aluminum clad has held up and kept its color for 20 years.
So while I don’t know if I would do Pella again as it isn’t easy to replace the glass the windows have lasted and still work and look great 20 years later.
Since you are spending a lot of money to get that cheesy Spanish style stuff out of your house, go for simple square black rods. However, I learned my lesson on the CC flip…square rods do not easily go into a round hole. There really isn’t a good way to chisel out a square hole in the wood rail.
You can see the photo of the iron rod, wood rail and wood stairs in the CC remodel Flickr page. The materials may have cost about $1,000 but the labor was expensive.
Of course I love the floating stairs at the Mauna Kea
I’m not sure what interior style you are going for in your remodel. From the exterior it looks like coastal? If you are going for a coastal style, you could build a gorgeous white wood stair railing with character for a lot less money than the metal rods. It’s not like the stairs are heavily used and you have to worry about a lot of rubbing on them
I read through the installation instructions for this stuff. The top of each baluster where it fits into the railing is round, the bottom is square. You drill round holes at top and bottom that are large enough to fit, you fill the holes with epoxy and set the iron in the holes. If you do a neat job you don’t really notice there is a square object in a round hole, but if you want to jazz it up, they make decorative shoes that cover the holes. No chiseling out square holes.
See, this is where I fall down. I just don’t have the style sense. It would never have occurred to me that “coastal staircase” was a thing.
There’s some nice-looking staircases there, although I couldn’t say why those are “coastal”, other than there’s lots of white.
As an architect, I’m baffled by what coastal style is supposed to be. To me some of those staircases are straight up colonial and others are modern. I think of coastal as a decorating style that uses a lot of white and blue and fish and anchor ornaments and rope.
I think what I meant for coastal style, is leaning more towards white wood trim work with some kind of character.
I love the shaker style newel posts and I think they would go great with the shaker style cabinetry you selected. Since you are going to live with that cabinetry for a long time, it might be nice to tie the staircase into the design.
After selecting the newel posts, you could decide to have the square wood balusters or the iron balusters and then a nice wood stained top rail to add some contrast. It’s a hard decision overall because it is a big focal point of your entry, whether you wanted it to be or not.
Building storage under the staircase would be outstanding.
We would then carry this style of railing across the balcony, where it should be fairly unobtrusive.
And ultimately replace the current deck railing, which uses wood balusters and really obstructs the view when seated on the deck, with a cable system as well, tying everything together.
I like the railings on p. 19. Aalto. Very clean, simple, yet sophisticated.
