50 Shades of Gray

If you are new to the site and aren't familiar with our paint saga you can go back and read Paint: Root word PAIN, and Paint Part Deux! to catch-up.  But don't feel obligated, you can spare yourself my poor writing and power on here.

As mentioned in the previous post the painters started the exterior.  The Eider White is on the garage and front of the house and we love it.  Once the aluminum garage and entry doors are installed, along with the silver exterior lights everything will pull together nicely.  Our concerns that Eider would be blindingly bright were for naught, it is perfect.

Sherwin Williams Eider White

After a great deal of fussing and test painting we chose Grizzle Gray for the front and rear bump outs.  And when we saw it on the house we knew...

The problem was it didn't look gray, or grizzly, at all.  It looked green.  Here it is on the house:

Fortunately, it was the holidays, and the weather took a cold turn, so it wasn't a problem to put the painters on hold while we scrambled to find an alternate color.  But we were still quite shocked at the result.  At first we thought perhaps the paint shop mixed the color incorrectly but as we held up color swatches and looked at more photos of Grizzly Gray online it looked correct.  The green didn't really pop until it was in direct sunlight.  In the shade it actually looked about right.  Having white paint reflecting onto the gray also played a part in the outcome, but that didn't change our minds about changing the color.  Roberta and I are both Michigan State grads and we joked about adding a large white block "S" to the bump-out and convert this to an MSU spirit house.

After all of that time spent painting test patches on the house, researching online, and fretting over shades of gray we still got it wrong.  What could we possibly do to somehow correct our process?  As we returned to the color pallets we realized there aren't any plain gray colors.  Every gray is based on a brown, or blue, or green base family.  What ever happened to just mixing white and black together in various concentrations to get Old School gray?  The Sherwin Williams color consultant didn't have an

answer either.  There was one gray color that the store said was discontinued called Westchester Gray.  And low and behold it looked like a true black based grey.  We added that to our list of candidates.  By the way, a quick web search and we were convinced that this was not a discontinued color as it is Pottery Barns "Color of the Month" that very moment.  Thanks Sherwin Williams...  After considerable discussion in the store we bought a few variations of gray, and we also bought a barn red sample.  What the heck - maybe the red would look good.  At this point we were up for anything.

Roberta had some business to take care of with Addie and Gavin so Alex and I got to work painting entire sheets of poster board of each color.  She is truly and artist as you can see here.

Then it was a trip out to the house to place these posters in various places on the house.  In the sun, in the shade, against the white and green.  In the front and back...  

And here Roberta holds up the winner - Westchester Gray.  Should be going up on the walls this week so come back for an update.  

We're hoping we chose... wisely.

The Art of Drywall

Goodness, it has been a while since I have posted an updated.  Not for a lack of activity but it seems the holidays just chewed us up and spit us into a new year of madness.  There has been a lot of progress and I'll need to spread updates into several posts, so check back often over the next few days.

I suppose it's best to start where we left off: DRYWALL

The drywall crew came and covered the studs within a few days.  Seams were taped & floated, and everything really looked great.  A few days later we returned to check things out and had a couple of surprises.  First, from the road we could see the exterior had been painted!  This was exciting because, as you know from this post, and this one, we were worked up about paint color (I'll save further comment on paint for the next post).  We walked toward the garage under the hypnotic trance of the glistening Eider White paint when we noticed the drywall had been textured.

Buzz. Kill.

I know this sounds ridiculous to some of you, but we were crystal clear to our builder that this home wasn't going to have "Monterrey" styled paint texture like 99% of the homes in our area.  It just doesn't fit the aesthetic of our home.  For the uninitiated, the drywall crew basically points a nozzle at the wall and throws globs of plaster onto perfectly normal drywall and gives it a texture like this:

Textured dry wall (old hand not included)

and this:

and this:

and Roberta looked like this:

Which begs the question - what happened to plain, smooth walls in homes?  Is this a central Texas phenomenon where everyone thinks they live in Tuscany?  Obviously, it is cheaper to produce.  You basically hang the drywall, conceal the seems and then blow this plaster snot over everything to camouflage dents and surface variation.

Anyway, we left the house a lot grumpier than we arrived.

Roberta immediately made it clear that we might sell the house if this wasn't corrected.  I'm kidding, of course, (not really) but it was a major impact to my quality of life.  I acknowledge this is a first-world problem and it is embarrassing to even write about it.  But when you are emotionally involved in a project like this, and it's your money, you tend to fuss over the things that are important to you.  So Roberta called the builder and hashed it out.  Long story short - they agreed to re-float every wall and ceiling in the house and the garage.

It took about a week for the crew to return to the site and get started but it is now done.  And let me tell you, that drywall crew hates us.  First off, it is not an easy house to drywall.  Most of the ceilings are sloped and in the 11-16 foot range.  It's a royal pain in the ass to touch these surfaces.  Second, in order to hang the drywall on the west wall they had to remove the temporary stairs.  So all access to the second floor was via ladder, and take it from me, it is not a fun trip up and down this ladder.  In general I am not afraid of heights but one round trip up that widow-maker had me questioning agnosticism.

You might be asking, "What happened to the stairs that were removed?  Why don't they re-attach them?"  And the answer is, the paint crew cut them up and built scaffolding to paint the exterior.  I think the drywall crew would like to fight the paint crew... similar to Celebrity Death Match.  Wouldn't that be an EXCELLENT HGTV show?  You heard it here first - contractors fighting with homeowners just like MMA fighting.

Not only that, the drywall crew applied 2 coats of plaster to every wall and sanded them to perfection.  And I truly mean perfect.  When we returned last week it was incredibly smooth.  I did not think this was even possible.  The floors are covered in 1/2" of plaster powder from sanding - it looks like a winter wonderland.  But the end result is fabulous and we are very happy.  Check this out!

Thank you drywall crew.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And by the way, you would totally kick the painters' ass in an MMA fight.

Drywall for Christmas

I was at the Hideout this past weekend because our kitchen cabinets were being delivered.  I arrived 30 minutes early to check out some updates.  The drywall was in place and there was a crew on site taping and floating.  Unfortunately, they began in the house and were just getting started in the garage - which meant I was going to be piling up a bunch of cabinets in the middle of their work.  After some 'negotiating' in Spanish we got everything dropped off and covered in the garage.  I managed to snap a few pictures before heading back home, but I couldn't get to the second floor because the staircase had been removed so I'll return soon to get some more shots when the work is done.

The had to remove the stairs to drywall the west wall.  The ladder is providing the crew access to the upstairs.

There is a nice pile of trash on our back porch!

The drywall crew told me they will be complete this week.  We are scheduling the garage door install for Saturday the 28th, and will be getting the welders in for the stair install as soon as possible. Merry Christmas!

Insulation and Water

We've had some electrical updates - mostly moving recessed light cans around and pushed some receptacles up or down as needed.  Once that was done the insulation crews came by and did their stuff.

We went with batt insulation in the garage which should be fine for that space.  Since we are planning to set this up as "kid hangout" we will be installing a split system ductless AC unit in back wall to keep it comfortable in the summer time.  I really like the Mitsubishi systems and have heard good reviews on the product.  I'll post an update once we get it installed and field tested in the 100 degree heat.

The house was shot with spray foam insulation.  All of the exterior walls are 2x6 framing so we get a great thermal and moisture barrier with the spray product.

Directly behind the insulation crew is the drywall team and the builder asked us to get water onsite ASAP as they will need it to complete the dry wall finishing.  We called APEX back to the site to finish the pump & tank install, and they had it wrapped up in a day.  We will be building a shed to house the pump and pressure tank and protect them from freezing temperatures (yes, it freezes in Austin).  We were glad to discover the water was odor free.  Some of our neighbors' well water has a strong sulfur smell.  We'll put a conditioning system in the house to remove some minerals and then we're ready to go.  The tank in the photo is 2500 gal and will ensure we have consistent pressure and volume in times of peak demand.

The weather here has been wonderful this week so we hope to have the exterior paint applied, and some photos of the drywall to share soon.

Roof is Up

The Galvalume standing seam roof is finally installed!  We are now water tight and just in time to ward off the first winter storm of the season.