It's all agrout the expert installation

There are quite a few steps to proper tile installation, and the thing to do is to hire expert installers. We had thought that we would tackle it ourselves, but decided to find a crew with many years of experience, and it has been a good decision. Delegate, delegate.

Laying out the warm floors

 

Mixing the mud

Laying down the mud on top of the warm floors

 

The second upstairs bathroom

 

Tools of the trade

 

Just one of our piles of tiles

We're not too chicken to lay out the wire

More tools of the tile-setting trade

Tiles for the master bathroom floor

An expert getting his job done

Choosing a pile of tile

We recently had a marathon session at Emser Tile in San Jose to choose tile for our three full baths. Our Emser helper was amazing and led us through the process with patience and confidence. Highly recommended showroom!

We are incorporating a few tiles from Fireclay in San Jose with others in our guest bathroom.

Our second upstairs bath. 

The wide variety of grout colors.

A good match for grout color!

The selections of metal trim.

The importance of color in our lives

Looking for inspiration from our collection of San Jose produce labels

Color has always been important to us, as I imagine it is to many others. You can get so much energy and positivity from being around colors that you love, and we are at the stage where we need to choose interior colors for our rooms. There are lots of methods to make this decision, including choosing only colors named after food. Celery, persimmon, honey, vanilla bean, espresso, cinnamon, saffron... I could go on and on long enough to create a full recipe of a delicious set of rooms.

Instead of that, we are getting samples, painting them on the ceiling and walls, and looking at them during various times of day. It's just like other big tasks, take it one step at a time to avoid overwhelm.

Tile we hope to use in our guest bathroom. mmmmm, Banana Cream.

Downstairs half bath

Finding the right combination for our kitchen / family room

It's an old, old world

Three examples of the Old World finish on our drywall

There are lots of decisions to be made during a remodel, and -many- of them I let Bill make because of his vision and experience with building so many houses over the years. He definitively knew that he wanted to use an Old World finish on our drywall, which is one of the seemingly endless textures for mudding the drywall. It is hand-applied by a skillful craftsman and each wall is unique.

These photos show a bathroom wall (with blue board for moisture protection) and other walls upstairs. Paint will be applied on top of this texture to enable the Old World finish to blend in just enough to be interesting and unique. We love it!

Accepting, trusting, going with the flow

Ever since the drywall installation process started, there has been a layer of drywall dust all over the house. As the installation was completed and taping/mudding started, I didn't think much of it. The layer of powdered sugar-like stuff was pretty much everywhere, but I found myself noticing it but not reacting in any way to it.

Later, Bill told me that the experts recommended leaving the dust so that extra drywall mud would plop onto it and then be easier to clean up if it fell on a dry, powdered surface rather than the subfloor or masonite sheets. I found myself listening, learning, and realizing that I trust his skills and expertise so fully (and the experience of his chosen subcontractors) that I knew there must be a reason for leaving the dust there. There's a lot of comfort in trusting someone so fully and having zero interest in questioning their approach.

And, yes, we will be using a rake indoors!

Rock on!

The sheetrock is up! Taping of the seams has started with the help of Chris Justi, local rockstar in the drywall business. Check him out if you need drywall!

Just like powdered sugar everywhere, but not at all ediible

Chris Justi working in his latest office

No truer words could be spoken

Lots of evidence but no crimes here

After the drywall sheets are put up, the seams must be taped. Mud comes next.

A magical Monday

Somehow, magically, while we were in out of town with friends, drywall appeared on some of our walls. We noticed elven footprints in the street, on the stairs, here and there throughout the house. Blue board appeared in the bathrooms, white drywall appeared in other rooms, pooooof!

This is how it may seem to others, that this stuff gets done while we hike and sightsee and enjoy time with friends. The actual story is that through many, many phone calls, emails, texts, in-person conversations, and contract signings, Bill arranged for the drywall installation to begin while we were away and it was terribly exciting to see the progress as we returned home. After all of the drywall is installed, it will be taped and mud will be applied using the Old World finish, which we saw in its traditional form at the Ahwahnee Hotel in plaster rather than drywall mud. We continue to thoroughly love our construction journey and see it as the realization of a wonderfully sweet dream that we are so lucky to be able to carry out. Thank you to today's elves, and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow to continue the exciting journey.

Our first clue that elves had been there today

 

Progress!

Pieces of the puzzle

Blue board in the bathrooms

Tieing up loose ends

Elven footprints