Fear of choosing the wrong thing

OMG we cannot pick a tub. What is wrong with us?

We're decisive people, and yet we have procrastinated about choosing a tub. I'm reminded about that Sex & the City episode where Miranda has to choose a crib, and she says (wisely): "Evidently, I'm to go to Crib World, because it's a whole world of cribs. I guess Crib City wasn't big enough. Why isn't there a store called ''This is The Crib For You''? And they just have one great crib. They deliver it and assemble it, and help raise the child."

That's basically how I feel about this tub.

Exterior Transformation

Driving up our street last night, I rounded the corner, caught sight of the house, and literally gasped. What a difference paint and cedar shake can make!

First, for those of you who thought we were painting the house light blue: that was the primer! Second, we're still deciding on the trim color (it's between three shades of white...and exactly as mind-numbing as you would imagine it to be). And finally, we have to decide on the stain color for our cedar.

Here she is!

Let the painting begin!

We chose 'Seal', a Martha Stewart paint color (using Sherwin Williams paint):

What do you think?

Porch update

Did I tell you we decided on a poured concrete porch? No? Well, we did.

Why, you may ask, when you think of all the beautiful porch floor possibilities did you go and choose concrete of all things? Well, I'll tell you: it is the least expensive; it's easily maintained; it's not slippery; it's easy to update in the future (meaning, you can install anything over it); and, after checking around on some concrete design sites, we decided we rather liked it.

They poured it yesterday, and I now present to you our still-wet, as-yet-to-be-stained, concrete porch floor:

Undermount, self-rimming and vessel (oh my)

We're all particular about something most other people generally don't give much thought to. For example, my dessert must be either hot or cold, and not both (like the horror that is a brownie sundae), and I only eat tomatoes if they've been thoroughly seeded (that pulpy center is awful). Turns out, I'm also rather choosy about my sinks.

All about bathrooms

After scouring site after site after site and store after store after store for possible bath vanities, guess what we up and did? Got some custom cabinet quotes.

We had a clear idea about what we wanted; style, shape, functionality and color. And we found lots of options online, to be sure. I suggested we get a custom quote for our master bath just to see what we could get.

So we met with two guys who listened to our ideas, suggested some approaches, and measured our spaces. And since it's all free at this point, we asked them to quote all three baths and the laundry room. We told ourselves repeatedly there was no way we were going custom on everything - too expensive. Then we got the bid.

Choosing the perfect house color...again

A house in our neighborhood has been four different colors in the six years we've lived here. We don't want to be those people.

Before we had our final architect plans we had a paint color for the house selected. We wanted something dark, with hints of steel blue and dark gray. Turns out, choosing the color - wrought iron - was pretty easy. We congratulated one another on our fine taste. Fast forward to this past week when Chris slapped up a swatch just so we could gaze upon its beauty. Two minutes after the paint went up, picture us checking the swatch to be sure it was the same color.

Mmmmkay. Well, that wasn't what we expected. It was definitely dark, with a hint of gray. But the blue? It wasn't so much a hint as it was a bullhorn announcement. Basically, we'd have a no-doubt-about-it blue house. So, back to the store two more times for yet more swatch deliberation. Ultimately we darkened our original color in hopes that would tone the blue down, and chose six additional options (one of which we decided against before it made it onto the house). So the front and side of house now look like this:

We think we've got a winner in this bunch, and want to watch it over the next couple of days to be sure. From left to right (on the front of the house): sorceror; wrought iron (darkened); dark granite; blue-grey slate; seal; wrought iron (original). Stay tuned.

Before and now: some pictures

We started out here:

 And now we are here:

Tile, Part One

Our builder told us we didn't have to choose tile yet. We told our builder we were seriously convinced it was possible all progress on the house would stop because we hadn't yet made our selection. So two weeks ago we met with Yesim at Transitions in Tile.

She calmly listened to us talk about all the things we liked (dark colors, and subway tile, and penny rounds), and all the things we didn't (big grout lines, overly large square tiles, anything brown or beige). She looked at our budget and didn't start cackling. Our conversation then went something like this:

We got ourselves a porch...sort of

Building the porch started out like this:

Then we saw this a couple of days later:

Do you see what I see?

Two things have changed since the last posted picture. See if you can figure out what's new:

Besides the tire tracks in the yard. Okay, the first change is that we now have windows! windows! windows! I mean, these windows rock. And they're so shiny.

The second change is that work has begun on our front porch. The old front porch railing has been removed, the yard has been dug up and (granted, you can't see it from this angle) concrete has been initially poured. They're continuing that tomorrow, hoping to finish up the block work and face it with brick, which will ultimately be painted the color of the house.

We have to make a decision on the porch floor soon. Like, this week. There are only so many hours in the day to Google 'beautiful porches', 'best porch flooring', 'show me the freakin' porch floor and quit with all the street views already'. We know we want a light-colored porch for reasons that will reveal themselves in time, and we know we want it low-to-no maintenance. I thought about slate, but apparently it crumbles ever so minutely and you drag it in on your shoes, thus making your house full of tiny little slate droppings over time. Uh...next option please.

The process from here on out will go something like this (in the next 48 hours): I have to research all the horror stories about every flooring type, fall in love with something out of our price range, scour Pinterest, and porch-stalk some homes in our neighborhood. Really, it's fine. I'm sure we'll choose something great.

More pics in the gallery for your viewing pleasure!