Up next…the purple nursery

So, it’s been a while since the bathroom posts. We’ve been pretty busy with life of course. And with the new baby on the way in about a month, we’ve been working on her room. The green balcony guest room is now the purple – or should I say “ice grape” – nursery. I’ve been busy painting, putting up a new lighting fixtures & fan, and still have some minor things to do, and Cristina’s been busy sewing! So, it’s almost ready for pictures..but here’s a sneak peek.

I must add that our front garden is looking pretty smashing as well so we’ll have to post some photos of that as well 🙂

99% Complete – Our new master bathroom

Well, it’s official.  With our cabinet maker coming by today to install the knobs and pulls on the vanity, the bathroom is officially 99% complete.  Still need to do final inspection and hang the chandelier – in that order 😉 – but otherwise it’s ready!

Needless to say, we are super thrilled with the results.  Everything came together in the end and even the shower door opens – we were concerned for a while whether there wouldn’t be enough space between the shower and the toilet for the glass door to swing out – I guess we should’ve trusted the contractor,  he was right.

Of course there are a million things we can pick apart and notice, but that’s the difference between a design and the real thing, the real thing will have imperfections!  But, we can step back and look at the end results as a whole and be proud of this little piece of improvement we have made to our home.

• Here are the photos:

Here’s the entrance to our new master bathroom. We changed the single door to a french door (with frosted privacy glass) to give the bathroom a more open feel. After a lot of searching, we ended up ordering the doors from Ashby Lumber. It took 3-4 weeks since they were coming from Canada. Never knew how hard it is to get doors!

Here’s our custom floating vanity in walnut with restoration hardware pulls. The vanity was designed by Kane and made by a wonderful cabinet maker – Jesus Espinoza – of Espinoza Cabinets. It was a joy working with him and his work is affordable and exceptionally crafted. Kane got a thrill out of driving into the heart of Richmond to Jesus’ shop! The Hansgrohe focus s bathroom faucets were purchased from http://www.qualitybath.com and the Botticini Marble counter top was purchased from http://www.intertile.com and fabricated and installed by http://www.sullivancountertops.com.

View of vanity, toilet, and custom glass shower enclosure. The medicine cabinets were purchased from restoration hardware. They are mirrored on both sides of the doors and in the back. We initially bought some from Home Depot – but the online reviews were so bad, we took them back. The butterfly is from one of our favorite stores, the bone room! The KOHLER Santa Rosa Toilet was purchased at the home depot.

These are the custom wooden floating shelves our cabinet maker created for us. Walnut veneer. Initially we were only going to have him make the cabinet and we didn’t know what we were going to do about the shelves, but then I asked if he could make them and the matching tub curtain, and his response was, “sure” The guy is pretty cool.

Custom vanity in walnut with restoration hardware Spritz knobs and pulls. Jesus came to the house to put the hardware on, we weren’t about to let just anyone drill into this beautiful wood.

Custom vanity in walnut with restoration hardware pulls. The doors have soft close hinges so they glide into place. And the vanity is made of plywood inside – as opposed to particle board – which makes a huge difference on how it feels.

This awesome hansgrohe 27160 rain dance shower faucet with thermostat and hand shower was purchased from http://www.qualitybath.com (which is a great site for well priced high end fixtures.)

We added vertical niches in the shower and tub area. The skylight is from home depot and the custom glass shower door is from Schikcer Shower Doors. http://schickershowerdoors.com/

This awesome hansgrohe rainshower is great. And the skylight brings in natural light. We saved a lot by going with a stock cream tile from intertile.

It’s definitely nice to stand under this rainshower with the natural light spilling in from the skylight – it’s like your standing in the rain in the tropics.

We cut a hole in the wall to put in a picture window in the bathroom. We still need to figure out what we are going to do about the window dressing, but for now we’re hoping that our neighbors aren’t watching 🙂

The niches in the tub and shower are tiled with BlueTooth Olive Porcelain from intertile. (the grout on these is a bit messy, but we’ll see if we can clean it up)

We ended up with a jetted tub – the American Standard EverClean 5 ft. Whirlpool Tub from Home Depot – after Kane accidentally ordered the wrong tub online initially. Haven’t used it yet, but tested the jets and they worked great. The hansgrohe focus roman tub filler faucet with diverter, was purchased from http://www.qualitybath.com – initially the diverter knob was lost/missing, but our contractor Dan Dragomir found the replacement and now it works!

This is one of my favorite parts. The cabinet maker also made us a tub curtain from a piece of walnut veneer, it’s just beautiful.

The towels are imported turkish towels from http://www.yelp.com/biz/turkish-towel-collections-berkeley

This is the view from our master bathroom picture window above tub. Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, San Francisco, San Rafael, Angel Island, and Richmond.

And here’s the original render of the design from June.

How (not) to be on TV

So our big moment on HGTV’s Curb Appeal: The Block . . .  is not happening.

Why? Because John Gidding’s design concept is as big as his ego.

Here’s what happened: HGTV came out and spent a whole day with us. They filmed us answering leading questions about our home (much to the delight of the elderly neighbor whose lawn we were standing on, and the little boy who enthusiastically told his mom “I’ve always wanted to see a real movie set!” and proceeded to sit and watch from his SUV front-row seat), had us change outfits, and then wait a bit while the star of the show arrived.

Ever wake up to camera crews filming your house? I have. Here an HGTV team take "before" shots of our frontyard.

Show Time!

Today is the day we discover what John Gidding, the designer for HGTV’s Curb Appeal: The Block, has cooked up for our house! Over the past weeks we’ve come home to interns crawling around and measuring our front yard, to the tanned host himself scoping out our fixer. The team has been busy designing, getting permits, and planning our makeover. This afternoon we go into full action with a production crew coming to shoot an interview with us and then the on camera reveal of our design! Actual construction will begin November 8 and wrap up by November 19.

Stay tuned for details, if we’re allowed to share them 🙂

Who wants to be on HGTV?

As everyone knows, Kane is an HGTV addict. Recently, we began to wonder how do you get to be on HGTV? After all, it would be pretty cool to get some free professional help on the house. Turns out there is a listing of open casting calls on the HGTV website. And when we checked there was a call for houses in the San Francisco area to feature on a new season of Curb Appeal: The Block.

In need of serious curb appeal.

If you haven’t watched this show before, it involves a $20,000 frontyard makeover plus two $1,000 mini-makeovers of nearby homes. The idea is to raise the value of the chosen home and the street as a whole. The main makeover usually includes painting the house, landscaping, hardscaping, and creating or modifying one or more other features.

Now, our frontyard is kind of an eyesore and frankly we’re not much for gardening. So we applied with our heartfelt story about having spent all this time and money on the interior of our fixer-upper, having a baby on the way, and the infinite patience of our poor neighbors wondering about when we would finally spruce up the yard.

Our fellow fixers

Turns out we’re not the only blogging fixers out there. Our friends Trevor and Amanda recently began blogging about fixing up their new house across the Bay. Check out their blog, A Place Called Aspen (also in the link section to the right). Let’s see how much they can accomplish in a year!