Upstairs kids' bath replacement medicine cabinet is in. This time, both kids and grownups will be able to see themselves in the mirror. Recall that I'd expected the color to be much lighter -- this finish is great, but so not a kids' bathroom!
However, those tacky plastic gold-colored knobs must go. I think I'll replace them with something like this. I have to get my kicks somewhere, after all.
My kitchen pendants are in. They make the desired punch all right!
(Still, hand-wringing -- do they fit in with the style? Are they too high? Will the bulbs glare in my eyes?)
The family room fireplace works! I'm going to love this.
Another mistake, this time an honest one: we planned for this shower door to hinge on the left, so you reach for it with your right hand. Unfortunately, we didn't anticipate that the outswing would hit the robe hook and towel bar I'd planned for the wall right next to it. Which is why you don't see a towel bar or robe hook. And in general, doors opening right into walls is a bad idea.
But the real problem with this door is that it swings in slightly too, and hits the plumbing fixtures. My 5-year-old was VERY surprised when he was playing inside the shower, tried to get out by pulling the door toward him, which hit the cross-handle knob, turned it on, and blasted him with cold water! Poor kid. The worst part for him was that I was too busy rolling on the floor laughing to go fetch a towel!
Another "obvious" mistake I only just realized: in general, one should try to avoid a toilet being in view when a bathroom door is ajar. And bathroom doors are often kept ajar, and should be, to identify its availability. (I had a roommate once who insisted on closing the bathroom door at all times for this reason, because the toilet was in plain sight of the whole living room, but I never knew if he was in there, and I really didn't like to knock and bug him if he was!)
This is actually a nice-looking toilet, as toilets go, but really, who wants to look at one? We should have switched the vanity and toilet in the design. (It's a Kohler Memoirs toilet, and the same 5-year-old was the first to honor it with his rear end too. I think it works better than the Toto's that are all the rage, and that we have 3 of.)
Another decision I made, against my architect's and window salesman's recommendations, was to make this bay window lower than the usual 30". I wanted to actually sit on it, even if its proportions look odd. That's me, function over form.
But you know, it looks odd. And somehow, it ended up only 18" off the ground. And really, there's a major function I didn't think of: wall space. If it were 30" off the ground, a table would fit neatly in front of it. What an idyllic place for a sewing table, for instance. Being as low as it is, it's a lot of unusable wall space. And this house is very, very short on wall space!
However, for the split second that my sons weren't tearing around the house screaming their heads off today, they assured me that it's at the right height.
There are still countless details awaiting attention; a light fixture here, they ran out of flooring for the kitchen there, uneven floors wreaking havoc with the tall baseboard....but nothing that will hold up our schedule. The final construction cleaning is planned for the 12th and 13th, just in time for an open house -- and for us to move in!
No comments:
Post a Comment