Once again, I have to apologize for my lack of updates. What’s it been… 3 months? It’s embarrassing how much time I’ve let slip by. I’ve received a number of emails inquiring if we’ve run out of money or if I’ve given up on blogging—Thankfully, I can say it’s neither. Work has become entirely consuming, my wife is now pregnant(!) and in my spare time, I find myself working at the house instead of working on the blog. What can I say, It’s been over a year now and at this point, I’d like this project to be complete. Thankfully, we’re getting close.

Admittedly, the project has taken much longer than anticipated and we have hit a few bumps along the road. As shocking as it sounds though, we’re actually on budget. The biggest challenge has been maintaining momentum with the trades. One delay, and everything slides. Once that happens, it becomes increasingly difficult to realign everyone’s schedule. That, and we had a number of trades just… disappear. Unfinished work and only partially paid. Poof, not to be heard from again. I don’t know if this is common or not, but I’m shocked how difficult it’s been to get these people to finish what they’ve started.

Thankfully, the interior is close to completion and I must admit, everything has come together quite nicely. It’s entirely satisfying to see the images in your mind finally come to life. I particularly like how everything looks at night (although this is a horrible photo). And I was surprised how difficult it was to find light fixtures that we actually liked (and could afford). Regardless, with everything but smallest of finishing touches left to do, the end is in sight. The exterior on the other hand… Well, we still have a ways to go there.

We admittedly dragged our feet making some decisions on the cladding materials and colours. For some reason it wasn’t really a priority and when we did focus, we couldn’t make up our minds. After months of indecision, we decided on a wood siding with a semi-transparent finish, however just before placing the order, I discovered that the finish didn’t come with a warranty… and we’d need to reapply the stain every few years. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. So we went back to the drawing board and lost another few months disappeared while we sourced new materials, selected new colours, and negotiated material & installation costs.

Once we decided to start over, we had to reevaluate everything. We looked at various product samples and various colours options. However we needed to be mindful of the brick that had already been installed, ‘cause that wasn’t about to change. In the end, we decided on a wood siding for the majority of the house, with a solid stain instead of the semi-transparent (which means it comes with a healthy warranty). We’ll be using HardiePanel for the soffits and fascias, and HardiePanel for entire south wall. Everything has been ordered and if the weather cooperates, installation will begin next week. Fingers crossed.

Once the cladding is finished, we’ll get started on the landscaping… although I doubt we’ll have enough time to do much before winter. Regardless, we intend to move in only a few weeks from now. They’ll be working on the exterior and everything won’t be 100% complete on the interior, but I think it’s been long enough, no?

If you haven’t seen them already, I upload a slew of photos on my Flickr page. Hopefully that’ll tide you over until I get around to writing the next post. Hopefully it won’t take me another 3 months.

Worry not, I am still alive. Indeed, this is certainly a record for the blog… It’s been well over a month since I posted an update, and for that I must apologize. I usually spent some time on the weekend to update the site, but lately my weekends have been spent running around handling errands for the house. Who would have thought building a house would get in the way of updating a blog about building a house. Shocking, I know.

A lot has happened since my previous post—the brickwork has been completed, trim has been installed, the kitchen has been installed, everything has been painted, etc.—but in the spirit of maintaing focus for each post, I’ll stick to a single topic today. Tiling.

All of our tile was purchased from Saltillo, with the exception of the floor tile in the master bathroom. The hexagon carrara marble (pictured above) was actually purchased months ago when we stumbled upon a 40% off sale at Ciot. At $11/sqft, that was still outside of our budget, but Jess had wanted that style from the beginning… and the steep discount made it a little easier to swallow. So purchase it we did. Beyond the hexagon mosaic floor, we went with a polished Fiorito stone for the shower walls and tub surround. The stone is primarily white, with some grey veining and a hint of brown. The grey matches mosaic floor and a single random-brick carrara inlay that wraps the shower wall at about 4”. The brown touches should really bring everything together as it’ll compliment the walnut vanity that’s being made for us.

We also went with a Nuheat radiant floor heating system… although, can someone explain why Nuheat thought they could use the Coda application icon and nobody would notice? For shame.

Ok, so we definitely splurged a little lot in the master bathroom… so we needed to simplify things just a bit in the shared bathroom. The floor is a white penny tile ($6.75/sqft), and the tub surround is a 4×12 white subway tile ($2.32/sqft). For a little additional character, we added a little single inlay of 1/4 polished bluestone bricks. Now, these suckers cost $17/sqft, but luckily we didn’t need many of them.

The main floor is primarily hardwood, but the foyer and powder room floor is a beautiful 16×24 filled/honed Travertino. We had considered a number of options but at $9/sqft, the Travertino was a steal in my opinion. It has a warm, cream colour and the complex veining gives it a lot of character.

In the basement, we had toyed with the idea of stained concrete, but in the ended decided to finish the laundry and mechanical rooms with a simple and inexpensive ($3.38/sqft) 12×24 ashgrey tile. It certainly looks better than stained concrete, although the size of the tile made sloping the floors a little difficult.

The basement bathroom has a similar style to the shared bathroom upstairs, with a 1×1 white hexagon mosaic for the floors and a 3×6 white bevelled subway tile for the tub surround. In retrospect though, I’m not sure we’d do the bevelled tile again—It looks great on the wall, but really messy in the corners. The bevel creates uneven gaps where we cut pieces, which are further exacerbated by the grey grout we used. Granted, it’ll be behind a shower curtain in a room that won’t get much use, so it’s not the end of the world.