Kitchen

Here is the completed kitchen. The cabinets were Thomasville cottage in natural cherry (available at your local Home Depot, who have great free design services). The key in making them look custom is to add "skins" to the outside to finish them nicely on sides facing you. We also added light rail along the bottom to hide the florescent lights under the cabinets and a modified crown moulding along the top, making the band a little thicker be adding in a section of "skin" between the crown, thin scribe moulding to hide the gap between cabinet and wall and light rail. The same pattern was pulled all the way around the kitchen to give it a nice consistent look. All this courtesy of some clever designing by Structural FX on site.

The counters are Tan Brown pre-fab granite. We ordered these from EMG out of Concord, CA mainly because they were the only ones with the 52" x 9 foot pre fab island. I have to say, buying pre fab is a huge savings if you can find stone you like, at least 1/3 the price of a custom stone job. EMG did all the slab cuts and cut out the sinks, faucets and built one side of the island bullnose on site. The tile you see along the back splash and under the vent is a copper tile. It's real copper in squares covers that are fitted over a ceramic base. It takes a special epoxy grout and sealer combo to finish it and once that is applied, there is no further maintenance and the copper should not change color.

The appliances - Sub Zero 601R refrigerator with stainless steel door, Sub Zero 601F Freezer overlaid in cherry to hide the unit near our mini office area, Sub Zero 424S under counter wine cooler which has a neat two zone control for whites and red, viking 36" range top with griddle already used several times now to make pancakes, Thermador microwave/convection combo double oven, Miele Incognito dishwasher, Vent a Hood 42" chimney vent, KitchenAid trash compactor and an additional GE microwave in the island near the refrigerator to heat up leftovers.

A few observations: the Sub Zero 424S is a little noisy especially at night you here it clicking on/off. The fridge and freezer are awesome with their layouts for storage inside. The Viking range kicks butt on heat and quickly cools down. The Vent a Hood magic lung is unbelievably cool - the smoke goes straight up, curls around into the side "magic lungs" and the grease gets pulverized - no cleaning, no smell at all. It's superb and the sales guy was absolutely right to say this is hands down the best in the industry and puts our previous high end Wold vent to shame. The Miele dishasher is so quiet you really have to put your ear next to it and listen carefully to hear that it started up. The top utensil tray takes a little getting used to as you cannot just plunk the utensils down, you have to organize them into little holders all stacked one after the other. Once you get used to it, it's ok and it makes emptying the dishwasher a lot easier. The unit does a great job at cleaning. No rinsing needed before putting the dirty dishes in. Having the extra microwave near the fridge is really nice. We use it all the time. The Insinkerator pro SS units in the sink work great - very quickly mashing up the mess. We're glad we chose the Grohe Europlus II faucets for the main sink and island. They work very well.

Our cabinet layout is working out great so far. We arranged to have all the cutlery and zip lock storage near the fridge and dishwasher. It makes putting leftovers away and packing kids lunches really easy. The only thing we miss is having a slide out type drawer under the range top. We got used to this at our rental house kitchen and it could not be done in our new kitchen because the range top has to sit pretty deep in the cabinet. We still have two shelves under there so it's fairly easy to pull out pots and pans. The narrow cabinet that is in the indented part where we sit has become the liquor cabinet, a good spot. We have all the baking stuff on the back side of the island next to the wine cooler. Having two sinks back to back is also working out great. The main sink, a deep and huge Franke stainless, can hold a mountain of dishes. The smaller Franke stainless in the island is great for food preparation. The double can recylcing cabinet next to the trash compactor makes it very easy to recycle but it tends to fill up rather quickly as it doesn;t hold that much. I don't think there is any good solution to this but ours works well.

The bay window in the middle provides fantastic light but we ordered some faux wood shades that are on the way as we have a view straight into our neighbors master bedroom due to the set back of the house. The four Hubbardton Kakomi pendant lights throw off a lot of light and are very elegant. I hate to think what electricity they are using up. We're fortunately mitigating this with our newly commissioned solar power system up and running for two days now. It's nice to see our electric meter turning backwards during the day!

Having a big pantry is something we should have always had. Easy to see everything you have so you stop buying duplicate products every week at the grocery store and you actually use things up more efficiently. It has adjustable shelves and stores a huge amount of food, small appliances and various other sundries. Access to the attic is through our pantry with a pull down door. Not the greatest spot for the door as it bumps into a lot of things but we didn't have much choice.

Overall we're very pleased. The only complaint is that because we ordered our kitchen in advance of the framing of the windows, we had to be a little too conservative on the width of our cabinets to allow slack for the bay window. Now that the window is in, we could have had much wider glass cabinets and this is where we store our dishes. I'll forever be reminded of that now since we have to open two doors to put a dish plate into the cabinet - darn it. In retrspect we should have waited to order these two cabinets until after the window went in.

Cable Rail Staircase

A photo of the completed cable rail on our staircase. We had a metal rail custom welded and powder coated in "antique penny" color. The posts were welded to the top section and a couple of T footings were bolted to the floor so the whole thing would slide into place and could be locked down with a screw in each T footing. That made it a lot easier to assemble and lock it down.

We sourced our cable railes from Ultratec sold by the Cable Connection. We used 3/16" stainless steel cable that had a "stud" swaged on one end (machine clamped on). The stud screws into a lock fitting that you can get of various lengths to fit through the rail post width you choose. At the other end, the cable has nothing on it and you cut it to length and put a self locking fitting on that end once it is in place in the rail post. Then you tighten the lock fitting with an allen key. It's a little tricky to do, especially trying to turn a cable 90 degrees in a post. You're not supposed to do that because it's really hard but Structural FX pulled it off. It looks really nice with the Hubbardton lights we chose around it and beige berber carpet.

Slate Fireplace

Here is a photo of the completed slate surround on our fireplace. It took two shipments from Vermont Natural Stone but the second time the shipper worked out great (Old Dominion) with no damage. It was glued together with some metal anchor hooks in the back of the main column and mantel pieces to hook it into the wall. Most of the pieces facing out are natural split stone (rough surface) and then we had a few edges honed like the mantel piece which is one long 74" slab that came out of Pennsylvania. The grey middle pieces are "J-grey" slate. We used a pewter colored grout and then covered the whole thing in a high gloss wet look style sealer.

The fireplace insert is a Napoleon NZ26. It's a superb unit that draws air from outside through heating tubes and has an automatic thermostat to blow hot air into the house. I've had a hard time burning 3 small California oak logs in a 3 hour period, that's how efficient it is.

All that remains is to put a metal trim bar around the transition from the slate to the fireplace insert where you can still see the drywall a little. I also need to figure out a way to get a screen on this baby. We like to hear the crackling sound which you cannot do if you close the main door. You are supposed to operate it door closed but it's nice to hear that crackling.

We're very pleased with the way it all turned out. Thanks to the Structural FX team who did the assembly.

We're Moved in!

We're way behind on a blog post because.....we've been frantically unpacking and getting settled in. The movers arrived on Dec 22 and we got ourselves into the house, which was in great shape thanks to a hurculean effort on the part of the crews.

So lets back up and update you on what's been happening the past few days:

- Our slate arrived from Vermont Natural Stone, this time shipped by Old Dominion freight, a much better shipper than SAIA that wrecked our last batch. All arrived in order and was installed on Friday. I'll get a picture out soon enough, it looks terrific. We tried out our Napoleon fireplace during the holidays and it works just great.

- Our half bath granite vessel, automatic sink faucet from Faucet Decor and Toto washlet were all hooked up. If you have never tried a washlet before, I highly encourage it. We had to add a magazine rack in the bathroom...you have to love that heated seat and the warm air dryer.

- The cable rail was finished on the stairway. It was a challenge to get it all to connect right in a tight spot but Brian and Barney of Structural FX made it work. I have to say, it looks awesome and makes the staircase area really stand out now.

- The carpet was all installed just before we moved in. No problems and high praise for Paul Ondricek who carried out the work. He even came back on a Saturday to finish our stairway just before Christmas.

- Once we moved in, we logged a list of minor issues that needed to be addressed, pretty normal for a new house. Things like screws missing, trim pieces not quite sticking, plumbing switched around. Brian and team quickly addressed these and the list is getting down to almost nothing.

- Above and beyond the call of duty, the Structural FX team helped with a lot of other things outside the scope of their work - putting up blinds and bike hooks, helping move stuff in, cutting extra shelves etc. We're really thankful for that and it's made our move much more pleasant.

- Jason and the painting crew came through once more to touch up all the little dings made during the move and frantic days leading to our getting in the house.

- the deck work started with concrete being poured for the main pillars and the sub structure went up Friday. If all goes well, we should have a deck out of the family room patio door on Monday! This is the last major project being tackled, everything else is just wrapping up.

- the landscaping crew continues to make good progress. They completed the irrigation systems across the property, finished the bender boards for the planters and laid out sod which we sourced from the Grass Farm in Gilroy. We used their special blend of primarily fescue grass. The sod was well needed, providing a welcome escape from the mud. All that is left on the hardscape is to finish a wall hugging the house under the deck and complete some stairs cut into it. Next up will be plantings.

Speaking of fences, we had a nasty wind storm here the day after Christmas and it ended up blowing down one of our fences. We'll have to change that one early now and have talked to our neighbor about it, who seem willing to split the cost. At the same time, a huge gust of wind ended up lifting our landscape trailer and crashing it into our car causing some nasty bumper damage. I've never seen a gust like that and it makes you appreciate what it muct be like in a hurricane.

We have yet to connect our solar system to the grid. We've been disappointed of late with Ready Solar. The latest gaffe was that we have the wrong inverter designed into our system. We expect to have the proper one in couple of weeks although we've lost some 6 weeks already on hooking our system up and generating power.

Aside from this, the project is coming to an end. It will be sad to see the crew leave but what an awesome house they have left behind for us to enjoy! And what must be a record build - 7 months from complete tear down to move in. We could only hope to build another house with Structural FX!