By the time we arrived at our home, it was really too dark to take any pictures inside of the home. As we stepped outside, the sky was a very peculiar colour…a huge rainfall was seconds away.
The rain is just not letting up this week. On the bright side, we now have a huge pool in our backyard 🙂
It has been so dark and dreary here this week. Even during the day it is quite dark inside. I’m surprised the trades people can even see what they are doing. Earlier in the week, we had seen the electricians start the wiring. As we pulled up yesterday, we saw that duct work started.
For our exterior elevation we are trying to go for a “Modern Mediterranean” look. It has the classic Mediterranean details such as the corbels, stucco body, arched windows and pillars. And though pillars are normally considered a Mediterranean accent, we are going to strip them down of any carvings and keep them completely simple which will push the look into a modern look with the addition of the paint colours used on the body and as accents.
Even though we have the architects drawing on for our front elevation, it’s still a little difficult to imagine how our house elevation will look like when completed. Below are the colours we have chosen for the exterior. The main body of the house will be stucco and will be the lighter beige called “Accessible Beige” in the palette below. The darker beige called “Tony Taupe” will be the accent colour used for the trim and the corbels. As another accent, white, beige and gray stone will also be used which will play off the beiges in the body and accents. The door colour will be the dark brown called “Well Bred Brown” which will really emphasize the entrance.
As we approached our home yesterday evening, we noticed that Adam, our builder was inside the home doing some quality checks. Since he knows that we come by each night, he wanted to go over some electrical issues with us.
Most of the electrical work had been completed, except in the kitchen and grand room which has the most number of lights and switches. In our kitchen and grand room area, we have a double tray ceiling. This means that the height of the ceilings are 10′ (outer part of the room), 11′ (transition step between 10′ and 12′) and 12′ (inner part of the room). Our kitchen uppers sit under the 10′ part, the lowers and countertop sit under the 11′ part and the area between the island and wall cabinets sit under the 12′ part. The ideal placement of the pot lights would be at the 11′ part, however because of crown molding that will be installed in the tray ceiling, there won’t be enough space for the large pot light fixtures to fit into. If we put the pot light fixtures in the 10′ area, there won’t be direct light for the area between the island and wall cabinets. If we put the pot fixtures in the 12′ area, there won’t be enough light to work on the countertops along the wall. After some going back and forth with Adam, we decided the best solution is to install 6 pot lights in the 12′ area and install about 3-4 along the 10′ area which will all be connected to the same switch.
All the windows except the big window over the entrance doors were finished being installed. The arches matching the arches above the windows had also been constructed.
The wood part of the house which is mainly the second floor was covered by a yellow paper/plastic. It seems that this might be the vapour barrier.
Despite all the rain we have been getting the last little while, they have been slowly making progress on the roof in between rain falls throughout the day. Most of the roof has been covered by a black plastic which I think might be used for water proofing and laid down before they start on the shingles.
It has been raining cats and dogs almost everyday here, so as we walked up to our house yesterday evening we weren’t expecting too much to have been completed. The first thing we noticed was that there was no longer a huge opening in the front of the house, rather our front doors had been installed. In fact, all the exterior doors had been installed including the kitchen and grand room sliders, master to lanai door, as well as the service door into the garage. The garage doors are the only doors that haven’t been installed and we told that those are one of the last things that are installed along with the garage door openers.
Another surprise to us were the wires dangling from the master bedroom ceiling especially since we were told that electrical would be started towards the end the week. The roof waterproofing and shingles were to be installed early in the week, but because of all the rain, it was swapped with the electrical work. We walked around and took our time to figure out how we wanted our light switches mapped to various lights, fans and electrical sockets. Because of our open concept main floor, we don’t have many walls, so it was challenging finding a location for all our switches especially in the grand room and kitchen area. Our builder calls this our “switch board” for obvious reasons.
As we walked upstairs we saw that for the most part the electrical was close to completion on the second floor. A few of the upstairs windows still needed to be installed, but its getting there…
For the most part we both have a similar taste when it comes to design. Satpreet has a contemporary design style where I like more of a modern mixed with a touch of rustic. I’m more in line with the beiges and browns and Satpreet likes the grays and the blues. Because of our varying design and colour choices, we tried to blend our styles together.
Here is the colour palette we have chosen for the kitchen:
As we were doing our daily inspection, we saw that all our home’s windows have arrived on site.
