New Build Progress: Part III

Good morning! I hope your week is off to a great start! I’m popping on today to share our latest new build progress and updates, since it’s now been a little over two months since my last official recap.

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In an effort to avoid redundancy, if you missed my preview update reports, you may want to start with those first! I go into more about why we’re moving, some of our favorite features of our new build, as well as the initial progress and selection meetings:

• We’re Moving! Again!
• New Build Progress: Part I
• New Build Progress: Part II

Since my last update, I’ve also started sharing some of the design selections and mood boards for various spaces in the home. I have plenty more to share soon.

• Moody Navy Blue & Plaid Home Office Plans with Ralph Lauren Vibes
• Blue & White Striped Pool Bath Design Plans
• The Case for Color: Interior Painted Doors Other Than White

A lot of progress has been over the past two+ months since my last full update, so let’s get into it!

First and foremost, in case you missed it, we’re under contract on our current home! We are thrilled with how quickly we received offers and we’ve now had a discussion with our builder that we would like to shoot for a closing date before July 4th. That gives us a bit of a buffer if there are any details, time to move our personal belongings (we sold furnished!), and time to have it all deep cleaned. You can read more about all of that here.

When we last left off in January’s progress post, the drywall had all just been primed and they were working on trim work. Kurtis’ office ceiling was one of the last spots to get installed.

This little bathroom is being referred to as the “cat bathroom” because it’s where we’ll store their litter boxes! With that, we kept the floor tile fairly large scale to minimize grout lines. We ordered it locally, but the only spot I can find it online is here at The Tile Shop. We then paired it with these penny tiles for the shower floor and affordable white subway tiles (I can’t find these online anywhere). They ran out of subway tile and it still needs to be finished, but we love how it all turned out!

In late January, they formed and poured our pool!

The other upstairs bathroom is one of our favorites! It will connect to the guest bedroom, but we’re also calling it Kurtis’ office bathroom, because it will be the closest for him to use when he’s working. So I let him have a little more say than normal on the space 😉

I’ll just go ahead and share the mood board for this one, since everything has already been ordered and is finalized! We may eventually add wallpaper in here, but for now, I think the vanity will be a really fun feature and bring some great color into the space! We love these subway tiles so much, we’re thinking we’ll use them in our pantry once the cabinets go in!

DESIGN BOARD SOURCES: Subway Tile | Basketweave Floor Tile | Shower Hardware | Mirror | Sconces | Vanity (smaller version here) | Faucet

Our interior doors were all delivered in mid-February, which allowed them to get those hung and then finish all the door casing trim.

We finalized our interior door and wall/trim paint colors! You can read more about that in this post. We’re 99% of the way there on cabinet hardware selection.

We absolutely love how the tile in our primary bath turned out! We used 2×9 honed Calacatta Prima marble and had it laid in a double herringbone pattern. In the image below, the vanity wall will be to the left, the bathtub straight ahead under the window, and the shower will be to the right.

We went back and forth on cabinet color for this space, but ultimately we felt like it’s so bright and neutral already. We decided to go with the same color we’ll be using on all the doors, Benjamin Moore Silver Gray. I was really hoping that the doors would have been painted by now, so if I hated it, I could have the cabinet company flip back to white. Fingers crossed it turns out how we hope and it looks a bit blue and not too gray! Here’s my model holding up a sample.

Our carriage house bath tile turned out to be one of our favorites, but it was really hard to get a good pic the day it was all still uncovered. It was pretty dark out and it made the contrast on both sets of tiles super noticeable. But in person, the variations are very subtle and have that beautiful handmade look! It may be a few months before the floor is uncovered again, but I’ll get a better picture once it is! You can find the shower tile here but the floor tile is not linkable.

We also met with our pool company in mid-February to select the color of the body of the pool. We ultimately decided to go with QuartzScapes Blue. It looks fairly cream to the eye with grey, blue, and beige specs, but you can see below that, how it looks in varying depths of water. Just a really pretty blue that works well with our coastal vibes!

At the pool meeting, they also showed us some of their in-house tile options, and the one we liked best was actually the one we currently have – but didn’t realize it until we got home and I looked it up! You can read more about our current pool here. But, at the meeting they said we could also go to one of their partner stores, Sellers, and look at their options. I liked so many of their tiles and we felt it was more than worth the slight upgrade charge to get something we were really happy with! Ultimately, we loved the combo below. The tiles will all be the shape of the white one (meaning the blue will be just as tall) and we’ll be doing a vertical stripe pattern around the waterline. The tiles are House of Ezra 2×6 zellige tile in the light blue (duck egg blue) and white. The order has been placed, so once they arrive, I believe they add those right away. They’ll wait several more months to then do the QuartzScapes install.

Earlier in the tile shopping day, we also made another pass through the countertop vendor Florida Bath & Surfaces. I’d see a slab I loved from further away and literally every single one started with “Calacatta” and had a diamond sign for the price tag (all other slabs are marked $-$$$$$). They started using diamonds when they ran out of dollar signs. Ha! Actually not funny, but it gave our contact some ideas, and he found some slabs that weren’t quite as expensive in their Atlanta warehouse. They’re currently in route for us to look at, but I’m hoping they’re “the ones”. I’ll share more on that soon!

One of my favorite tile combos in the house is the marble tile we’re using in the little mud room and laundry room! Here it was getting installed so it’s darker than it looks now that it’s all dried. Unfortunately, we were out of town when the laundry room was finished and it has since been fully covered. But the little peek I got is so pretty!

While we were out of town, they also finished tile in the outdoor pool bath! You can see my full striped pool bath design plans for everything we plan to use in the space. I love how the tile turned out and can’t wait to see it all come together! We used this tile in the Azul and Bianco colorways, with six rows of white stripes for every one row of blue stripes. It was a fairly affordable way to get a more designer look without designer tile prices! Rather than using our cabinet maker for this space (which then also requires more countertop slabs), I ordered this vanity to save on expenses.

Last week, they wrapped up all of the exterior stucco work on our chimneys (for the main house and covered porch). I realized I never grabbed a picture of how it looks on the porch now that it’s complete, but I love it!

Such a thrill to see all of the trim and doors getting primed! I’m even more excited to see the paint. The door paint color has me most anxious at this point – I’m really hoping we love it!

They’ve begun to install more of the decorative work on some of our exterior, including the railings on the carriage house balcony and some of the decorative corbels/beams below it. Still some work to do, but you can also see here our garage doors were installed and have already been primed!

Here you can see how the railing looks once complete with the wire fencing inserted at our friend Chris and Rachel’s house. It’s almost invisible from the street, but required to keep them within code (or the gaps are too big). Hawkeye was obsessed with going out on the balcony the day we crashed their carriage house for showings.

My office continues to be one of the brightest rooms in the house, getting both eastern and southern light. I love it, and it’s extra bright now with all the trim painted!

Kurtis was very disappointed that I didn’t create an Instagram Story yet sharing one of his favorite features. Gutters are not standard on houses here (so weird to us) so we met with a company and he is having all the lines buried to dump in the grass or beds. But since our driveway is going in shortly, we had to do some pre-planning and the gutter crew had to trench all the drains in. You can see the black tube below. We actually need that one moved slightly, but this way they’ll shear them off level with the ground and the gutters and downspouts will connect to these and the water will run underground rather than just dump at the termination of the downspout.

When we popped over last night, they had removed most of the plastic from the windows and doors and we could see all the primer in natural light! I loved to finally see the beams and boards all white! Granted, they’re just a matte primer white but it helps me envision how they’ll eventually look! They also made some more progress on installing our floors (Lotus stain) in the living room. We’re really happy with how they’re looking so far!

Here’s a look facing the other direction into the dining/kitchen areas. It’s starting to feel like a real house now!

They had already started wood filling and puttying the ceiling and trim in Kurtis’ office upstairs as well as most of the other upstairs areas, and I’m still in absolute awe at how thorough these painters always are. This is the space that will be colordrenched in Benjamin Moore Hale Navy, from ceiling to walls to built-ins to trim. You can see the full design board here.

Now that we know our house is officially being sold furnished, I have some clarity on the design boards (knowing I don’t have to reuse specific items). So I’ll be sharing more design boards soon – including the living room, dining room and kitchen next.

And that wraps up this new build update! I’m guessing by the next one, we’ll have some cabinets installed and possibly even lighting. Less than four months until moving day (hopefully)!

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