Zoning

Today we met with the heating guy to discuss zoning.  We definitely wanted at least 3 zones:  front part of the house, the family room (with its tall ceilings), and the bedrooms.  For an extra $600 we could get 4 zones.  So why not?  The fourth zone is the nursery.  Now we don't have to worry about temperature regulation for any future baby.  yay!  :)

Bubbles chandelier

The Bubbles chandelier from Solaria Home cannot be found anywhere local.  Seems that they mainly sell it online?  So anyway, the saleslady that I worked with at Los Altos Lighting offered to order it for me.  She worked directly with Solaria Home and got me the lowest price I was able to find on the internet (and no sales tax!).

We did the ordering through the phone so I went to go pick up the receipt today at the store.

Unfortunately, the lights aren't coming in until end of January...

Rise of issues

Went to Saratoga Plumbing this morning to see if they would price match the Grohe Brideford faucet with the other showroom's quote.  The sales guy was perplexed as to how the other showroom could get their prices so low!!  Later on, my GC told me that the other showroom was going out of business.  Hence, everything would have to be bought in cash.  eep!

Back at the house, I discovered that the tile store had delivered the wrong color tile.  We were supposed to get white and they shipped celery.  Turns out it was a manufacturer error and that the new tile would be shipped up in a day since the company was in LA (thankfully!).  But thank goodness I was luckily enough to swing by the house just as the worker had laid out the bottom half of the shower which is in celery.  He showed me the tiles for the top part which were the ones with the wrong color.  I'm so glad he did not waste any effort laying out the wrong colored tiles.

Bottom half laid out (no grout yet)

 
Also, while sorting this out with the tile guy, I decided that I'd rather have white quarter rounds to match the white tiles rather than the celery we had previously decided on.  (Actually, I don't remember deciding that but he did.  Oops, my bad.)  So now we'll have some extra celery quarter rounds because those are custom order and can't be returned.

The GC asked me to give the city a call regarding our gas line situation,  Our gas is padlocked shut so we can't turn it on.  The utility guy who came out to open the gas lines said that we needed an inspection sticker before the padlock could be removed.  Now we have to figure out who to talk to find out what to do next.  yay, fun with the city again!

Went by Restoration Hardware to buy a couple of 4" handles to test in our kitchen.  Do we use 4" or 6"??

Shower tiles

Yesterday, finished ordering the rest of the lighting.
Note to self, order lighting earlier (if there's a next time) because some of the lights will not arrive until December or January - 2/3 months away.

They started laying out the tiles in the bathrooms!  Here's the progress:

Master bathroom

Powder room

Master Bathroom: Turino Grey Pebbles by Venetian Floor
Powder Room:  Polished Black Pebbles by Stratastone

Faucet showroom

Visited a kitchen/bath showroom today where my mother had bought all of her faucets for her remodel 10 years ago.  They had a lot of products on display.  Took a good luck at the faucets that are not on display at Saratoga Plumbing.

Hansgrohe Solaris E

Grohe Bridgeford

Really really like the look of the Bridgeford and asked for a quote.  I want to compare their prices with Saratoga Plumbing.

We had a week of not being able to go to the house because they were staining the floors.  Checked up today.  Our baseboard is now in!

(some) Lighting ordered!

For the past few days, I've been emailing companies to find a local store that sells their products.  Solaria Home is difficult!  They have one store that is "local" to me - it's in Tahoe City about 4 hours away.  *sigh*

So anyway, for the Robert Abbey Bling Chandelier, I got a sales rep to tell me of a store located in Redwood City!  yay, it's close to me!  Called up Coast Lighting and asked them to price out the chandelier for me.  Their price was even better than what I found online!  :)

Went there in the afternoon to pay for it.  Easy sale for the sales guy that picked up the phone when I called.

Then went to Los Altos Lighting to order the kitchen pendants.  Probably should've done that days ago when I couldn't find anything else that I liked pendant-wise.


Going around the differnt lighting stores, I realize that I'm definitely attracted to the square lights ror our master bathroom. The saleslady at Los Altos Lighting showed me an awesome one from a German lighting company, Holtkotter. It also had an "awesome" price tag of $664. (Would need 2 of these so it's a bit over our budget.)

Notice how the lights are pointing downwards.  Well, while looking for a cheaper version, we could only find square lights pointing upwards.  Strange, huh?  But at less than $200 a pop, we would go with square upward-facing lights for our master bath.

Even more lighting

Another possible chandelier for the family room is something quite different from the Bubbles chandelier.


Oly Studio Serena Chandelier

This morning, my little one started to cry (so sad!) when I was leaving. Since she's been teething and suffering from a low-grade fever, I decided to spare her and brought her and the nanny along for my morning errands. First stop was Accent Counters again to return the sample of Caesarstone Organic White - which totally works with our cabinets! Funny thing was that our nanny is familiar with the area and told me not to venture far into the neighborhoods there because it's a small gangland. Plus, our Prius would stick out like a sore thumb and most certainly would be broken into. Good things to know! As we were leaving, we passed a pimped out car; she knew the driver. haha!

Since my little tyke was with us, I decided to push up my Safeway run so that she could get the chance to ride in a shopping cart (versus going to look at lighting). Bought some fresh bagels - so yummy!!! - haven't had a fresh bagel in so long that I had forgotten how good they are. And the Safeway prices are great!

After the little one went down for her nap, I went out to run the rest of my errands. Another mom in our playgroup suggested Beacon Lighting in Sunnyvale since they had a lot of selection and were having a sale. It was a 20% off everything sale! Pretty darn cool. :) I bought two vanity lights for the kids' bathroom and hauled them home.

Floor stain

Now that the wood flooring has been installed, now is the time for staining!  The flooring guys laid out a bunch of samples from Dura Seal.

The GC and I picked out a few colors to test in a bigger swath. I believe the picture below shows Golden Brown (r) and Provincial (l). I ended up picking Provincial.

More lighting

After a few days of online research for lighting, I did find a few that seem to work (hopefully).


Arctic Pear Glass Chandelier by Ochre

This one is the one where you see a picture of it and you gasp because it stuns you with its beauty.
Of course, there's no price online for it. You have to call in for the price. But the smallest version of this is about $3800 so I'm assuming this size, which is the next up, is maybe around $5000? It's all hand-blown glass from the UK and takes like 3 months to make because it's a custom order.
[After showing this to my DH, he promptly put together a lighting budget for me. hehehe.]

Thankfully, it's not a new chandelier. Other people who had previously fallen in love with it had found more affordable similar-looking chandeliers...and posted them online! Yay for me! Someone was kind enough to post their research. So now we're going with...


Robert Abbey Bling Crystal Drop Chandelier

Emailed the company for a local dealer. So much more peace of mind to work with an actual store and salesperson versus online. Especially if you're dropping $$.


After much browsing, I found another "gasp, this is what I want!" chandelier that would work for the family room.


Bubbles Chandelier by Solaria Home Lighting

For the family room, we need 2 chandeliers so price is definitely a factor (not that it wasn't before). It took forever to find out that the manufacturer of this Bubbles chandelier was Solaria Home. They have an exclusive website that you cannot access unless you're a lighting dealer/wholesaler. I took the picture of this one to different lighting stores to see if they could find something similar. Nothing!

Today's errands took me back to Accent Counters to return the samples. This time I brought a cabinet door to compare the colors with. The only sample that I had brought home that seemed to work was Caesarstone Nougat which I am not particularly fond of. But thankfully the lady thought that Caesarstone Organic White would work just fine. That was the color that I really wanted to work too! So she had me take a large sample back to test against the bathroom cabinets.

Also, two more lighting stores today. Lots of catalog browsing. And again, every other light that I liked was discontinued. :p

Granite selection

Today, I went up to IRG at noon to meet with my GC to select the slabs of granite for the kitchen. Once I got there, I verified that the Princess White was definitely the one that I wanted. Once it's in, it's final!
 

Matching cabinetry to granite

First we had the owner measure out the slabs. Then, using a lot of scrap paper, the GC and I calculated and diagrammed how to fit all the kitchen counters on to 2 slabs. Based on the price, he didn't want us to have to buy too much extra.

Then, with the GC's help, I was able to look at the entire pile of Princess White slabs available. It was a good thing too because the first 4 or so slabs had grey splotches. He thought that those splotches were unacceptable. The last 3 slabs were perfect - no big splashes of grey. So we reserved all 3! While the workers were moving the slabs, another couple were also looking at the slabs and commenting. I was silently hoping they weren't going to try to jump in and take the slabs I wanted. Thankfully they decided to go with the original blue granite at which they were previously looking before the slab moving.

As for price, IRG will not price match because they believe they have priced everything fairly for the quality.

So before we bought our slabs outright, I wanted to check up with Da Vinci Marble...the price different was almost $10/sq ft. To be continued...

Lighting!

During this whole house remodel process, I suddenly remembered that we needed to order lighting. eep!

Went over to Los Altos Lighting. We had dropped by this store a couple of years ago and liked their pendant display. Plus, their prices seemed reasonable. So this was the store I had in mind for lighting despite their abysmal yelp reviews. When the lady there found out when the remodel was projected to finish (mid-November), she looked kind of horrified at how late it was. :p My bad!

If I had known how long it would take to order lighting, it would've been one of the first things to do in the early stages. *sigh*

So anyway, I picked out a pendant light for the kitchen just to find out that it had been discontinued. We then looked through lighting books to find something similar. That was really tough. Towards the end, she suggested a pendant in the store that I had missed...and it was perfect!



Van Buren Pendant by Wilmette Lighting


On the house front, they've installed the cabinets!

Kitchen

Master Bathroom

Bathroom Countertops and Hardware

Day of running around and getting quotes for our bathroom countertops. We had decided to go with quartz in the bathrooms for easy maintenance. Plus, there's enough granite in the kitchen to make granite in the bathroom a bit of granite overkill.

First stop was Accent Counters. The lady there was very helpful in helping me select some possible colors from different quartz manufacturers. They also have a yard of remnants which are discounted. She sent me home with 5 different samples. They will send me a quote via email.

Next stop was the counter store that I went to last time we did this remodel thing. They had a lot of the major quartz manufacturers on display. It was pretty much a "let me know when you find something you like" place. The guy there pretty much said that all the quartz manufacturers use the same machine for manufacturing since there's a patent on it, and that all the manufacturers copy each other so their colors are similar. I got quotes for two different grades of Caesarstone.

Drove over to Da Vinci Marble since someone had bought their Princess White granite from them (all research from online). They have an absolutely beautiful showroom with many unique mosaics. Definitely looked like an upscale place. Found my slab of Princess White granite and took a picture of the price for price comparison with IRG.

Shuffled over to Restoration Hardware in downtown Palo Alto to look at hardware for our kitchen cabinets. They have a really nice display by collection. It's great how they have different sizes of drawer pulls and matching knobs for each collection. Now I understand why it seems that a lot of people online purchase their kitchen hardware from Restoration Hardware.

For price comparison, I had to stop by Home Depot just to look at their pulls and knobs. Definitely a lot more affordable than Restoration Hardware but not so great on the selection. The handles were a bit shorter than I would like. At least now I won't feel guilty about shelling out for RH hardware. :p

Here's a photo of baseboard ready to be installed:

Wednesday: GC called us - cabinets are finished and delivered. In my mind, "WHAT?!?! It's only been 2 weeks!!"

Actually, it was a week and a half. But I hadn't called him about the cabinet colors yet! I thought it would take him about 4-6 weeks to finish the cabinetry!!!

Thursday: We met and figured out what had happened. Turns out that there was a misunderstanding about the cabinet color. When he said that he usually uses Kelly Moore Swiss Coffee (which contractor doesn't???), I told him that I would be picking out a Benjamin Moore color. Well, he thought that I said I wanted the Swiss Coffee from Benjamin Moore. cripes.

So anyhoo, our GC talked to him and the cabinet maker was willing to take the cabinets back and paint them with the color of our choice for no extra charge. I told them to give me the weekend to figure it out. So in the evening, I decided which colors to test.

Friday: Rushed to the paint store to pick out 3 samples of white - Chantilly Lace, White Diamond, and Swiss Coffee. Painted the samples at home.

Saturday: We went to the granite place to test the white paint samples against our chosen granite. While there, we met a friendly woman who had also picked out the same granite as us for her kitchen and was also going to do quartz in her bathrooms. She helped me decide which white worked best. Luckily for the cabinet maker, Swiss Coffee proved to be best against the granite. The other two whites were too stark - would've made the cabinets look like hospital cabinetry. I called our GC right away to let him know that it was OK to install the cabinets as is.

Since the lady had already installed her granite, she gave me her samples of granite!! yay!

Btw, our little one had an awesome time at the granite place because it was easy to play hide-n-seek with daddy. Plus, the truck that moves the granite beeps and was fun to watch. heehee.