Draft drawings of tile murals

We've been working with Paul Lewing to come up with the designs for our tile murals. This is the current draft of the kitchen mural (located over the cooktop):

In the kitchen we're mainly looking for an old-style kitchen scene, hence the old-fasioned stove, plus small elements taken from our own lives: our much-missed boxer, a plant dangling down the side of the cabinet (my wife loves dangling plants), a pie on the kitchen table (my wife loves to bake pies, and I love to eat them), etc. The small squares in the upper right are intended to be accent tiles, but we've asked Paul to re-work those in food themes: another pie, milk and cookies, bread and butter, etc.

And this is the current shower design:

I was looking for a Seattle waterfront theme, no I don't mean cranes and container-ships but basically what you see above: mountains, Space Needle, orcas, ferries, and yes that's a trimaran in the middle there. I like the sunken ship too. For awhile I was considering having some Ivar's billboards on the sea-bottom as well (a local seafood restauranteur anchored some billboards on the bottom of Puget Sound as an advertising stunt back in the 50's) but decided that would be too specific and would get dated too quick. The accent tiles in the lower right will be located in a border row of tiles above the tub surround.

If the designs above seem a bit "sparse", i.e. they don't cover every square inch of tile, keep in mind that the tiles are all 6"x6" in size so the total square footage is more than you would think; also, the price is based per square foot and we're limited budget-wise. I think Paul does a nice job of trying to "suggest" a broader view without actually painting all of the tiles.

Oh yes, forgot one thing: last weekend we went (with my mother who was visiting - hi Mom!) down to the DalTile showroom in Seattle to pick out tiles. We took along tile samples for our master bathroom, and the granite countertop sample for the kitchen. We ended up selecting their "Matte Urban Putty" (code 0761) for the kitchen backsplash tile, and "Matte Desert Gray" (code X714) for the shower surround tile. These will be the colors/tiles that Paul will paint these murals onto. He says he's never had a tile or color that he couldn't work with, but I suspect we made his life a bit difficult with the gray colored tile in the shower. I'm sure it will look great when finished though.

Lastly: I've never commissioned a work of art before, and I have to say the experience is very fun, and at the same time gives you a heady feeling of power: all you have to do is come up with some vague ideas, and a creative and experienced artist turns them into real-life for you. Pretty cool! :-)

Interior paint choices

Given the amount of time we spent at the paint store staring at samples, I wanted to have a separate post to capture our choices. Or maybe I'm making a bet with myself to see if we either love or hate these a year from now... :-)

Our basic color choice throughout the house is Benjamin Moore "Linen White" - it's a nice, safe color that's hard to make a mistake on. In four specific rooms though, we have also decided to add crown molding (at the ceiling\wall line) and a chair rub rail. In those four rooms is where we are going with custom color choices, to try to jazz things up a bit. We're going with a three-part scheme in each: below the chair rub rail, above the chair rub rail, and on the ceiling. Well the ceilings are mostly staying linen white just to keep costs down...

Anyway, here are the choices with their Benjamin Moore paint codes:

My office (a brown theme):
Below chair rail: AF-180 “Wenge”
Above chair rail: 1039 “Stonehouse”

Dining room (a blue theme - blue has been a favorite color of ours for years):
Below chair rail: HC-154 “Hale Navy”
Above chair rail: also HC-154, but mixed at 50%

My wife's office (a beige-ish theme):
Below chair rail: HC-47 “Brookline Beige”
Above chair rail: HC-48 “Bradstreet Beige”

And finally, in the upstairs game room (a green theme):
Below chair rail: AF480 “Boreal Forest”
Above chair rail: AF460 “Jojoba”
Ceiling: AF435 “Spa”

All of these will be in an "eggshell" sheen.

I have mentioned previously that we are not very good at selecting colors. That hasn't changed - we still suck at it. Fortunately the nice folks at the Benjamin Moore store are more than happy to help the clueless, so they get the credit for providing us with lots of ideas to choose from. :)

Almost forgot: the garage is being done in an entirely separate color: "Thundercloud Gray", paint code 2124-40, also in eggshell. If you look thru previous posts, you can see that the mechanical corner was pre-painted in this color before stuff started getting installed.

Interior priming\painting begins

The texture was sprayed yesterday apparently, and now the crew is working on priming out the interior of the house. Lots of stuff to mask off and cover, especially in the garage:

Here they're priming the dining room:

Rebecca is holding the spray wand in the picture above; she is the owner of the company that is building our house. I've also mentioned Paul several times before; he is the chief job site manager. Here's Rebecca after several hours of spraying primer:

They mentioned they had already gone through 20 gallons of primer, and still had 1/4 of the downstairs plus the garage left, so Paul had just arrived with an additional 10 gallons.

It's still raining today unfortunately, so not much more progress has been made on the final trim details on the outside of the house:

This is the ceiling of the rear porch area, done in clear pine:

It looks really nice; the plan is to finish it in a clear semi-gloss stain.

The propane tank has been partially covered up and will sit like this until it has passed inspection:

See the white drain pipe in the foreground? Brad laid some "footing drains" around the propane tank, to allow excess water to drain away. I'm very glad about this, given the puddling I'm seeing.

The crew will be working through the weekend to get the house interior fully painted. Our garage doors are scheduled for installation on Monday, and the millwork and oak flooring will also be delivered on Monday - busy times as usual! I'm looking forward to seeing how some of our custom color choices look in real life.