Thursday: Kitchen doors (12/22/11)

So this is now what you see when you come through the front door:  double coat closet doors to the left, and double kitchen entry doors to the right.  They'll be painted white...

Monday: Christmas decor (12/19/11)

After lamenting not being able to inhabit our house for so long, I decided we needed more Christmas decorations (without risking damaging our currently tender floors or walls).  After ordering the decoration on the Etsy website, I realized it had taken more than two weeks to get here.  One day later it arrived, and I finally understood that I'd unwittingly ordered a decal from Beijing, China.  But I love it.

I even got some tiny little lights from IKEA (on my (hopefully) last God-forsaken drive there).

Monday: Cabinet drawer handles (12/12/11)

The week before, they had installed a few of the inset cabinet door handles.  They look slightly crooked on first glance, but I think that's just due to the torn away areas of the protective blue film being uneven.  I think I really like them...

Here, the handles were put into the top cabinet doors.  But we went back and forth about how high to put the handles on the tall doors.

They also did most of the drywall work on the kitchen wall opening that looks out toward the new hallway and the courtayard garden.

And I've struggled with whether we could put up a Christmas tree this year and I finally decided we couldn't until the final finish is put on the floor - which will be the very last thing.  Next best?  My white board fridge.  I just love this thing.

On Tuesday, they installed our new front door!  Let's start with before photos - here's the old front door:

From the outside...

And from the inside.

I left for a short meeting at school while the install was happening on a dark dreary day...

And this is what I returned to an hour-and-a-half later.  The outside...

And the inside.  I  love it, but am always startled when I look at the sidelight window.  Maybe I'm just not used to clean glass...

Friday: Deck progress and inset handles (12/2/11)

I haven't stayed current with new deck photos.  They're almost finished with it - just about half of the pad in front of the front door to go.  They started choosing the board colors more randomly, and I think it looks gorgeous.

Here you can see where it wraps around the back windows.  They changed out four boards that I specified and it really softened the stripey effect.  We have the wide cedar cladding that will wrap the outside edge of the deck, but it hasn't been treated yet.

And I chose inset handles for the few cabinet doors that we have.  Using the same wire pulls as those on the drawers would have caused too many opportunities for the handles on the doors to bang into the drawers as almost every door is located next to a corner.  This was a test case, and I like it.