Home Build Series, Volume 1

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So this post is going to be pretty long because it’s way overdue. This is the third house we’ve worked on and we started demo in January… as in almost a year ago. So these are progress pictures from the last year. We’re not quite down with the house yet, but we’re in the final stretch. I apologize for the quality of the photos, as they were all taken with my iPhone. I’m hoping to get some better pictures as we near the end of the project.

And if you want to see progress pictures from our first home, just search “Friday Flip” on my blog and the posts will pop-up broken down by room. It’s actually funny to me seeing photos from our first home because it seems like our taste continues to change with each home we build. I haven’t done any posts of the current house we’re in right now, but will try to get to that later.

This process has definitely been a long road, but the house is finally starting to look like a home and I’m so, so excited for this one. We’re almost there!

So these pictures are from almost a year ago. As you can see, we gutted the entire house and all that was remaining was an old fireplace. We decided we wanted to have 10-foot ceilings, so we pretty much started from scratch.

We did add an square footage to the back and a little to the side of the kitchen. This is the foundation for the master bedroom.

See that intense hill in the yard? That would eventually go.

Next up are photos from the framing of the house. That process actually went surprisingly fast.

Once the drywall went up, it finally started to look like a house!

The space to the right is where the kitchen will go.

The hill is gone and the pool is framed out. But we’re actually going to shift the pool to the left instead of keeping it on the right.

Okay, now for the fun stuff… tile selection. We spent A LOT of time at Floor & Decor contemplating tile selections. We have a total of 4 bathrooms we had to choose tile for, which is not an easy feat. The problem was that I liked so many different kinds of tile, so it was hard to narrow them down and then agree on a design. People always ask where I get my inspiration from, and it’s Pinterest all the way!

This is the combination we went with for the master bathroom. It’s a dolomite stone and it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s white with vary little variation, which is what we were looking for. We put this on the shower wall and this on the bathroom floor.

We put this Carrara basketweave marble tile in Hannah’s bathroom floor. It actually almost made it into our master, but we went with the dolomite instead. For her bathroom, we debated between the porcelain basketweave and the marble, but ended up going with the marble because I personally think it looks prettier. However, we did do a ceramic subway tile for her bathroom wall. The marble basketweave also comes in a black mosaic which would look really pretty in a black and white bathroom or powder room.

Trying to make some decisions. You can see the porcelain basketweave that we ultimately decided against above.

For the guest bathroom in the hallway, I knew I wanted to do a herringbone floor. But we debated between the size, so we laid out the 2 options in the store. We ended up going with the smaller one, which is a thassos herringbone polished marble.

I REALLY wanted to do a cement tile for the laundry room and fell in love with this one at a store we visited in Anaheim (similar style can be found here, here and here). I also thought this tile was really fun. But we ultimately decided against cement tile because of the maintenance and the fact that it was going to be in a high traffic area. Instead, we went with a ceramic version (below) and I absolutely love how it turned out. We bought ours in Anaheim, but it can also be found here.

So after we chose the tile, we then had to choose a grout color (so many small decisions to make, but with big impact!) For us, it was basically between white or grey grout, so our tile guy made samples of each tile with both colors. This helped SO MUCH because the grout actually makes a huge difference in the appearance of the actual tile! See for yourself below. We chose white grout all around, except for Hannah’s bathroom wall, which we grouted in a soft grey.

We laid this dolomite tile in the guest bathroom shower wall.

We laid this thassos water jet marble in the powder room.

Guest bathroom

Hannah’s bathroom

I absolutely LOVE how every bathroom turned out, but especially the master, below. The stand alone tub should be going in soon, which I’m so excited to see!

For our hardwood floor, we went with a 9.5 inch plank by Belair called Copa Coast Oak. So a weird thing happened with the floor. When we first got the floors delivered to the house and we went to look at them, we noticed a lot of color variation between the planks and these very prominent black lines (the filler they used for the “cracks”) that looked like tiger stripes. It wasn’t what we remembered from the sample we viewed in store so we actually ended up switching out the batch. The second batch we received was much better and more like what we expected.

Last week, the kitchen started going in which is making this finally feel real! I’m really excited for this room because it really is the “heart” of a home. We haven’t yet picked out our countertops, but we have a pretty good idea of what we’re going with, so that’s next up to order. Stay tuned for more updates!

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