Unfortunately I don’t have a whole lot of exciting stuff to show. You are welcome to come over and watch my primer dry if you like. The electrician has been working away and hopefully the AC contractor will start in the next week or two. My regular contractor is done until the AC contractor is finished. In the meantime though I needed to pick out a paint color for the hallway and a ceiling fan for the bedroom, and prime and paint the bedroom and hallway. The paint samples required 4 testers, but we have a winner! Cool Sky by Behr it is! I would say that it is a light gray blue. If left to choose by myself I would have chose something slightly darker, but since Mr. S. and I have to agree (and both live with it) this is what we are going with. One of the few downsides to my other half being an Art Director is that we spend a lot of time discussing color. The good thing is that we usually come to a consensus after a few rounds. The lights in the final space with be halogen and LED so the color should feel more blue and less gray once those are in (currently there is a sad incandescent bulb hanging in the hallway which give a yellow glow).

I am having a hard time getting a good picture of the color. It is less gray in person. And yes all of the trim in the hallway will eventually get painted. The white trim is pretty dingy looking at the moment.

So it is on to the Master Bedroom Ceiling Fan. We chose this one for the hallway:

Acqua Ceiling Fan in Bronze from Matthews Fan Company, purchased from Joss & Main but available at Lamps Plus

We had been planning on installing a silver colored fan for our room, but then I started to doubt my choice with the oil rubbed bronze in the hallway. I went on a long tangent of searching for the perfect fan (with a light) and in the end I pretty much ended where I started, but not quite. Clearly a Ceiling Fan Round Up is in order.

Acero Ceiling Fan by Minka Aire, $399 at YLighting

I first pinned this Acero fan over a year ago. I still like it and its slightly industrial vibe. The price was a little bit more then I wanted to spend, but given all of the ugly ceiling fans out there I was pretty much resigned to go with it until…

Hampton Bay Vercelli Ceiling Fan in Brushed Steel, Home Depot $209

I came across this almost identical one at Home Depot for half the price! The only difference I can find is that it has 5 blades instead of three and the blade shape looks slightly different. It is on its way now! It should be here tomorrow.  I am just relieved to cross this off my list. Hopefully I will like it in person!

Does anyone else have any ceiling fans to recommend?

Sometimes it is the little stuff that makes a design work. I find particularly in renovations it almost always comes down those last couple of inches that makes or breaks the project. For our current house project the key dimension was fitting a regular depth closet in our bedroom behind our bedroom door. This unfortunately meant shifting the door 8 1/2″ to allow for the closet and the door to sit fully open. This design has been in the works for several years, just waiting for the right time (as I grow ever impatient with our closet situation). We have decided to pair this with our air conditioning and electrical work, since we need to coordinate duct and vent placement.

One of the first steps was emptying out our sorry closet and alcove to make way for the new closets. We had an old clothing rack that we hoped to use. Alas it was not meant to be and it crumpled under the weight. Fortunately Ikea came to the rescue and we picked up 2 of these Rigga clothes racks for $12.99 a piece. They are super sturdy! I give them a thumbs up. They even have wheels on them. Now the playroom has become the holder of stuff, it was time to actually get the door moved.

Of course this wasn’t an easy job and required my contractor to do some careful surgery (after Mr. S. and Sam demoed the hallway plaster).  Fortunately it is now complete, and we even have a functioning door again (if you ignore the temporary plywood on the floor)!

The other thing that he installed was an electrical conduit to the third floor. This has been a hotly debated topic with me, my contractor and the electrican. We all agreed that we need a way to get electric up the third floor to feed the air handling unit for the new air conditioner. There was LOTS of back and forth. The general agreement was that somewhere near the pocket door and this newly exposed wall made the most sense. Unfortunately once we opened this wall, we realized it was not as straight as a shot as we hoped, and we didn’t want to hurt the structural integrity of the wall.

Fortunately my contractor came up with a great plan. The pocket door down below in within a thickened wall. We had planned on installing the wiring on the hallway side, but hadn’t considered the bedroom side. It turns out that as long as I could live with a conduit in the back of my closet he could get a straight shot from the basement ceiling all the way up to the third floor. Awesome (yes I did just express my excitement of gray electrical conduit)! So here it is, along with the partially removed ceiling trim (to be modified and reused) and some interesting wallpaper from probably the 50s or 60s (there was 70s-80s wallpaper on top of this pattern when we bought the house).

My contractor will be back next week to work on these walls and some more of the bathroom doorway. I just need my AC contractor, roofer and electrician to call me back. I’m sure with the heat this week my AC guy is now swamped. Maybe I need to reiterate my air conditioning before Memorial Day mantra to him.

I can’t wait until we are done with the bit of demolition and mechanical stuff so we can actually move onto the fun stuff. So stay tuned.