We have continued to plan for the interior of the house, but no work has been started, yet. Winter simply won't give up. There is still snow on the ground in some areas, and the forecast calls for a wintry mix today.
The snow that has melted has resulted in massive amount of mud, and soggy ground. We need for all of that to dry up a bit before we can start work on the house.
We went to Home Depot on Valentines Day (and out for Sushi)... some people may not understand what is romantic about home depot. What could be more romantic than spending a day together making plans for turning a house into a home?
So, I made a direct beeline to the paint section, and grabbed up every Behr color style guide they had. Then we wandered through appliances, and wandered past the different samples for counter tops, and cabinetry.
We'll start with the paint. All of my paint inspiration is coming from Behr Color (images are from their free color style guides and color palettes).
I really like the style sample below. I think the front wall color would be excellent for the living room, and the back-wall color would be great for the kitchen. In the new house layout, these 2 rooms are part of the large open space. (Please note, that for some reason the colors in the scanned image do not match the color swatch. They appear correct in the printed material... but the color swatch is accurate)
| Front Wall | Back Wall | Trim | Decor |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Below is another combination that I liked - Although I had not quite determined where it would go -- it may be a good substitute for the living room/kitchen combination. Or perhaps even the upstairs hallway with the wainscot in Pumpkin Butter, and the upper wall in Spicy Cayenne.
|
F |
|
|
B |
 |
|
|
T |
 |
I also got some great ideas for bathrooms.
| Wall | Trim | Decor |
 |
 |
 |
| Front Wall | Back Wall | Trim | Decor |
 |
 |
 |
 |
I also found some style ideas that I thought would be great for the spare bedrooms.
| Wall | Trim/Wainscot | Floor | Decor |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Wall | Trim | Decor 1 | Decor 2 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
One of the things that I loved that I think we should definitely have is the cabinet door damper, that keeps the cabinet doors from slamming:
I started looking for a more vintage looking stove for the kitchen, and of course, what I found was outrageously expensive, at $7500. It's absolutely gorgeous... but I am not sure that it's $7500 worth of fantastic!
Randomly, the other day, Chris was lucky enough stumble across this website for Murco Recycling. They harvest fixtures, cabinets, and appliances from house remodels, and the like. At the time of this posting they had a great deal on the entire kitchen pictured below for $9,500
We had also been looking at showers, and decided that we wanted a steam shower for our master bath. We had originally looked at the Aquapeutics Caribbean Steam Shower (pictured below) but after reading some reviews, we're going to do some additional shopping around to see if we can find another manufacturer/model that has better reviews. The reviews were not horrible, but when you spend $5,000 on a shower, you have certain expectations.
So, there has been no physical progress made, but lots of ideas and planning that will, hopefully, help to expedite the process once we can start work. When we started this whole process we had about 100 days to get the house to a place where we could move in while we finished the work. We had hoped to have completed 1 bathroom, 1 bedroom, and the kitchen. Winter has significantly postponed the progress, and now we're looking at closer to 80 days. It's not a big deal, though, because we don't have any deadline for moving out of where we're living now.