A Couple Things You'll Never See

If you come over to Huron there are a few places you probably won't wander into. (Into which you won't wander. Into.) One is the basement. You'll be welcome there but the basement on its own isn't super inviting. The roof rafters, or floor joists depending on your perspective, are just a little taller than the top of my head. I go into automatic monkey mode down there, hunching over and swinging my arms like an ape. It's not a place to stand upright unless you are Stacy or Judy or some other midgety friend of small stature. (I'm looking down at you, Kathy.)

Watch your head.

The other thing about the basement is the blatant indiscretion of the exposed insulation. You can see it on the backside of both new walls, or rather, you'll never see it because you'll never go down there. Because, why would you?

Another secret hideaway at Huron is the crawl space under the back porch. The masons filled it with the cast off bricks that came from the back wall. You may remember that the original back wall was cut open to make space for the sliding doors, as pictured at the bottom of this page. It's definitely a crawl under there, even the midgetys would have to bend over.

And finally, here's something you'll definitely never ever see in person because it doesn't exist anymore. As we all know, snow art by its very nature is transient. It was built by a police officer who, I guess, was bored directing traffic one day.  I happened to be walking by when he added the little twig arms. What a pig. (Ha ha!!)

Wrapped in Plastic

More progress to report.  As of today the floors have been stained, the countertops, fireplace and bathroom stones are all in and most of the light fixtures have been installed. The painters have also been hard at work which means that the inside of the house has been draped in splatter-proofing plastic wrap. So put on your x-ray goggles and take a look around.

The kitchen cabinets, island and most appliances are in.  The ceiling lights in the kitchen and living room are super simple.  

Just a porcelain fixture with an exposed bulb.  Right now they're all hanging by a thread so the painters can get up underneath their business.

The island pendants are from West Elm and they're also very simple: plain black canopy, black cord and black shade.

I found most of the light fixtures for the house on ebay and at salvage stores.  But when I saw these West Elm pendants they reminded me a teeny bit of the fantastic industrial salvage pieces you can find at http://www.skinflintdesign.co.uk/.  Like

 

this

and this. And since I was suffering from re-wiring fatigue (well, loading the car, hauling the lights over to the lighting store, paying someone to re-wire and restore the fixtures, picking them up, hauling them to Huron and unloading them through 10 inches of snow) I decided that the ready-made versions from West Elm would be just fine.

One more glance at the kitchen, here's the fridge and pantry cabinet.  Can you see it all coming together?

Underneath these layers is the stained hardwood flooring.  I really like how the floors turned out.  There are spots that need to be touched up and massaged but overall I'm super happy with the color. 

This is the dining room. For a long time the temporary stairs sat here so it was easy to ignore this spot.  There's a cut out in the first floor ceiling right above here so when you look up you see the second floor ceiling soaring above and, offset slightly, the skylights that are above the landing on the stairs. There are two large lights that hang down from the 2nd floor rafters that have the potential to look great. They're another ebay purchase and the jury in my head is still out on them. But huge thanks go to Sharon and her cousins who picked them up from some guy in Michigan and stored them for me for a couple of weeks. Once the table and chairs are in I think it'll be easier to see if the light choices are a success or not and be easier to appreciate Bill's design for this area. If I don't screw it up it could be really dramatic and lovely.

I love holophane lights and found two for the front part of the house.  One hangs in the entryway and one is in the library.  These came out of a factory in Racine, WI and the guy I bought them from was super nice and he and his wife were very hospitable. And their little girl was a peanut so this transaction was an all around pleasure.

Each stair tread is wearing a warm wooly toupee right now.  I suppose they're covered up because of the painting but it's also nice to have them protected from the many many feet that have been coming in and out of this house.  I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that there have been more people in Huron while the work has been going on than I've had over to my apartment in all the time I've lived in Chicago.  The other morning 4 friendly faces smiled down from the 2nd floor as I was dropping something off before running to work.  I'm going to miss the crowds and the mayhem when this build is done.

Here's another angle on the stairs where you can see the coffee brown stain peeking through.

Door knobs were a trickier choice than I thought they'd be. The front door hardware was a splurge and it's really beautiful. The door is painted a dark, high-gloss bronzetone and the hardware is white bronze. The rest of the interior doors (bathrooms and closets) are all painted white so I opted to do the opposite of the front door and go with light doors and dark knobs. The shape of the knobs sort of match so I think it all might be okay in the end. I have wondered if I spent too much time thinking about this...

On the 2nd floor the doors for the bedroom and guest room are still in the design process. They'll be sliding doors with the hardware mounted along the wall above the door openings. Remember when Bill was featured in Chicago Home + Garden magazine? A few pages after his piece there was an article on a design collective here in town so I shot them an email to see if anyone wanted to make some doors for Huron. This project is in the very initial stages, no decisions made yet, but I'm hopeful that someday there will be custom sliding doors for both of the bedrooms.

Here's the view back at the guest room / office. One more project on the to do list is to install a window unit over that half wall. I have some ideas about it but no source to do the work yet. Maybe the guy who's making the doors will have some thoughts on that. Mystery project, it remains a giant TBD.

More Inspiration

Below are pictures of a super groovy bathroom in New Jersey. Mark, who has served as my remote design advisor/sounding board, found this article on House Beautiful.com back in the early Huron planning stages. I like this bathroom a lot and once the tile is in downstairs you'll see how much was stolen from this room.  Right down to the charcoal gray grout on the subway tiles and the very very dark walls.

Also stolen, but installed in the upstairs bath, are the tiled cutout niches in the walls.

These tile nooks are tastefully staged, filled with fluffy white towels and decorative sundries.

Whereas mine are built to hold extra rolls of toilet paper.  Super classy.

Here's a really fun unexpected surprise in the New Jersey bathroom, there's a half wall that separates it from a giant dressing room.  These guys know how to live.

Sampler Platter

The work in the house is almost done.  So close, so close.  Below are some samples of what's going on and going in.

Here's the floor stain.  It wasn't what I would have picked but the finish that I've seen and liked is a multi-step process (or so I hear).  Coffee Brown is what I chose one day when I walked in the house and saw two stain samples on the floor.  It was right before I was heading out of town for work for a week and I thought the stain color decision should be made quickly. Of the two colors this is the one I preferred.  I like dark brown floors although you see them everywhere.  So the choice wasn't very original but it's secretly what I've really wanted all along.

The true color is near the bottom of the picture where the sun isn't casting a glare.  I like the amount of grain that shows through, it gives the floors a lot of life.

This is the marble for the upstairs bathroom.  The trip to the fabricator went well yesterday, she taped off parts of the stones that I liked.  The bottom part of this slab will be the front of the tub.  Above the tape is the portion that will be used for the tub deck. There will be lots of leftovers from this piece of marble, I'm having a cheese board made.  Anything too large will be super heavy and there's not tons of storage in the kitchen so I passed on getting a cutting / pastry board.

Here's the slab for the kitchen island.  This particular stone has lots of variations.  There was a piece from a different lot that had a bunch of speckles in it.  The stone I originally saw in the stone store didn't have as much vertical white veining.  But this is what I ended up with and I hope I'll like it.

Here's a different piece that will be used for the kitchen counter.  

And here's the tile design for the downstairs bathroom.  The layout is almost the same as the upstairs bath with just minor height and design differences. The floors in the downstairs bath are hardwood.  Now that they've been stained I think the tile guy can hop back to it and tile the downstairs bathroom and finish tiling in the upstairs bath. Countertops, fireplace and bathroom stones go in at the end of the week.  Sinks, faucets and toilets need to be installed.  Gates and fencing and...that's about it.  So close.

C'mon Baby

Light my fireplace.  Soon this

and this

will become one.  You can see that this marble has tons of movement.  The dark indigo blue is really vibrant and dynamic.  Natural stone is a pretty amazing thing to behold, the colors, layers, veining and depth can be mesmerizing. I walked through the stone slab warehouse, saw this piece and knew it'd be perfect for the fireplace.  The owner tagged it for me; check out the handwritten label on the blue tape in the picture below.

It very clearly says "COUNTERTOP LING."  Or maybe it's "COUNTERTOP 4NG."  Based on the label it's not surprising that when I went back in the other day to make final decisions on the kitchen slabs the stone place didn't have this piece identified as mine.  I found out later, through a slip of the tongue, that after I chose it in December they tagged it for someone else and had to do some fancy footwork to get it back for me and rectify the situation. Working with this place was foolio central, they screwed up in lots of ways, but in the end all that really matters is that I love the pieces that end up in the house.    

Saturday I'l go out to the fabricator's workroom where they'll lay the templates for the fireplace, kitchen countertops and bathroom marble directly on the slabs.

That's when I'll get to pick out which part to use for the fireplace surround 

and which to use for the hearth.  

The plan is to keep the stone fairly intact using one piece for the surround, cutting out the middle for the fireplace opening and folding it over at the bottom for the hearth.  It kills me that there will be leftover stone that will probably go to waste.  I asked to have it all delivered to the house but as much as I might have you fooled I don't know how to cut slabs or make marble chairs or stone ottomans.  So let me know if you want any of this before 4NG gets his hands on the leftovers.

Hop on the Subway Train

Ok, people love white subway tile.  Just look at any page on Remodelista and you'll see it everywhere.  But I don't care how ubiquitous it's become, I'm still crazy for it.  A couple reference pictures were straight up inspiration for the bath and the half bath at Huron.  First is a still from a movie I really liked.  If you didn't like it you didn't see it twice, like I did, and spend time really appreciating the layers and metaphors and how pretty Jennifer Aniston's hair is.  That movie was "The Switch" and there's a pivotal scene that takes place in someone's bathroom. And that bathroom became the template for the tile layout upstairs.  Here's Jason Bateman who's about to make a very serious, alcohol-fueled, life changing decision:

And here's how that wall tile translated to Huron's upstairs bathroom:

Storage space is tight so there's a shelf nook in the corner to hold towels and whatnots.  The tub decking, which you can kind of see, will be covered with marble - just a taste around the edges and on the front of the tub wall.

I really like how the chair rail runs through the middle of the shower wall.  That was Bill's design and the way it gives your eye a break on that expanse of tile feels really nice.  The floors are a Carrera marble, or maybe Calcutta, I don't remember.  It's polished, white hexagonal marble tile and I got it for a decent price over at Tile Outlet Center on Fullerton. My friend Sharon has a theory about who's running the operation over at the Tile Outlet that, in one fell swoop, explains their extremely competitive prices, why there are cops hanging out behind the counter and why a tile store would be open til midnight.  On a Tuesday.  Each on its own is slightly unusual, taken all together things smell distinctly fishy.  I totally agree with her Al Capone speculations, it is Chicago after all.

(Did this floor tile fall off the back of a truck? Sharon thinks the chances are pretty good that it did.)

The ledge on the half wall and curb into the shower will be covered in the same marble as the tub deck.

And here's a fun little extra that just makes me so happy.  These little niches are the perfect size to hold a couple rolls of toilet paper.  The inspiration for these came from pictures of another bathroom.  More on those pictures and the downstairs bath next time.

Floored

The last owners wouldn't recognize the place.  The layout is COMPLETELY different than pre-demo.  Now it's open, airy and full of light.  The floors are in and need to be stained.  The stairs are in progress.  Tile is going on the bathroom walls and floors.  We're a couple weeks away from being totally finished.  I hope.  Next in are kitchen cabinets then stone for countertops, bathroom and the fireplace surround.  Light fixtures need to go in, appliances connected, doors painted and installed and then it's done.  Almost.  Almost!!!!!

Looking from the guest bedroom down to the living/dining room.  If you need a place to stay and want to yell at me to hurry up and cook your eggs faster, this is the place for you.

"Get a move on, and I want them scrambled!"

Master bedroom.  This photograph was taken before the great Stormageddon of February 1,2011.  ThunderSnow!

Looking toward the walk-in closet.  Snow drifts optional.

Inside the walk-in.  This will soon be filled to the brim with clothes and junk.

Next up is a look inside that bathroom back there. I absolutely love it, white subway tile and wall niches. Gorgeous.

Do you see what I see?

Walls!  They're covered with primer and looking bright, white and clean.  This is progress.