The Bripa Project

If you’ve been following the blog, you noticed there’s been a big gap since our last post.

Spoiler: yes, we DID move in!!

So why the delay? Well, there was a snafu with the post-construction cleaning, so we didn’t get a good chance to take pictures as planned of the place right before our stuff arrived.

The lack of a professional cleaning also meant that we ended up spending about a week after moving in fighting sawdust and making the two rooms where we and our kiddo sleep hygienic and livable. We then spent another 3 weeks opening boxes to find stuff and then moving boxes from the basement to the 2nd floor and vice versa. There was also some post move-in work (e.g. mis-sized custom appliance panels, electrical adjustments, etc.) that we had to schedule over the next 6 weeks – but which are all complete now!

So we’re mildly settled in, but no room is fully designed or decorate-complete, so it’s hard to share photos since it doesn’t feel totally “done” – but it might be a while until everything is done given the time constraints of having a 2 year-old and full time jobs.

So in the meantime, here’s a sneak preview of the first floor – we’ll do more detailed posts of each room (specifically the kitchen and 1st floor bathroom) as the final boxes get put away and decor is completed. 🙂

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We got word that move-in will be in 2 weeks! Note to self: actually book movers before celebrating too much.

It’s been a busy last month with making tons of purchases for the electricians, plumbers, carpenters to install, and picking out colors for the painters.

Floors stained

We went with a white oak, and chose a clear stain that has a yellow-brown color. Kripa wanted to avoid any red undertones, and I wanted to keep the natural wood color instead of staining darker or artificially lightening with a whitener – so here’s where we ended up:

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Kitchen install

We’ve had a stove since February, and a faucet since March – and they’re finally installed! We’ve had to finalize a lot of decisions, like the pendants over the island, over the past few weeks to make sure they arrived in time to be installed.

We’re still waiting on some of the cabinet pulls, most notably the appliance pulls, which means the fridge and dishwasher can’t have the panel installed yet.

[Kripa: I had to take out pictures of the stove installed. Since it’s such a beauty, it deserves its own post. (This is where Brian starts nagging me to write that post…)]

The hood is now constructed but not installed – hopefully it’s painted and installed next week, and we can show it off.

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Everything coming together

The pictures below show a bunch of the in-progress areas – which is basically the whole house.

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Preface: I STRONGLY encourage you to scroll down to the “Big sink” section for the pictures of Kripa. An instant classic.

OK, now to the big news: kitchen counters are in! As you’ll see, Kripa is a fan:

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[Kripa: Listen, the only real way to test the quality of countertops is a full body caress.]

Big sink

Some insight into Kripa and my’s relationship: I do the dishes, and Kripa empties the dishwasher (now accompanied by our kid, who it turns out LOVES emptying the dishwasher). I hate that whenever we cook, our current sink immediately seems full – so I went on the hunt for the largest sink I could find that fit a 36″ cabinet (we ended up with a 39″ cabinet, but I had already ordered the sink so c’est la vie).

[Kripa: My goal is to teach our toddler to love (and therefore take over) all of “my” household chores. The exception is probably meal prep, otherwise all we’d eat is cheese. Incidentally, that would also be true if I let Brian meal prep.]

This is what we ended up with:

But how big is that sink? It’s hard to tell, right? Well, I thought of a great way to illustrate how large this sink actually is: let’s put Kripa next to the sink for reference!

Hmmm, that’s helpful, but doesn’t quite give the real-world sense of how much could fit in the sink. Luckily Kripa is a great sport and was willing to indulge my next idea: let’s put Kripa IN the sink for reference!

Oh, I love this sink. And this photo.

[Kripa: This was, admittedly, a bad idea in retrospect. If only for how much joy it gives Brian literally every hour he looks at it.]

What’s next

Trim has really come along – baseboards and crown molding are going in:

This week both trim and most tile work should be done and painting should begin, though my (new) understanding is that the beginning of painting doesn’t mean paint – it involves caulking and filling gaps in everything before painting. Next week painting should start, and then the hardwood floors should be sanded the week after and then it’s down to the “small” stuff: appliances, light fixtures, bath fixtures, closets. We’re thinking mid-September move-in – but we’ll see (fingers crossed).

Kitchen cabinets

The kitchen cabinets were delivered at the beginning of July, and it only took about about a week for the cabinets and trim (i.e. crown molding) to go up – we’re just behind on actually posting updates.

Here’s the rendering for the kitchen plans:

And here’s the current state of the cabinets – no countertops or appliances yet, but looking pretty good!

Here are some videos of the kitchen as of a week or so ago:

The pantry has cabinets, and we’ll be adding a beverage [beer] fridge in the middle under a butcher-block top:

I don’t have a good photo of the island as it stands, but here is the rendering from the plans:

You can see a little of it here, behind the pull-out 50-quart trashcans, which I’m very excited about:

Tile

Tile has been going in over the last two weeks. As individual rooms get closer to being complete, Kripa will do posts showing the details and design decisions, and some of the challenges – but for now, here’s a sneak peak:

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What’s next

The doors and trim started going in last week, and my read is that should hopefully wrap up this week. So pretty soon either painting or floor staining/sealing should start, then the other after that (they need to happen sequentially but my read is that order doesn’t ultimately matter). We ordered countertops, so hopefully those are ready in ~2.5 weeks for install. After that, there are a ton of fixtures to go in: lights, shower doors, handles (kitchen and bath), faucets, etc. So my guess is that in 3 weeks it’ll look close to done but still have a month or so of work left – which would put us at a mid-September move in (!).

Per the post title, this update has 3 parts: hardwood floors are in (!), interior doors are picked and being delivered, and some other fun updates.

Floors

Flooring started ~2 weeks ago! Here’s what we saw when we visited back in June:

We knew we wanted to do hardwood floors, but it turns out there are LOTS of sizes and species of wood floor. After doing some research (that is, going to Home Depot and looking at floors), we decided to go with white oak, ~3-4 inch wide. I was originally thinking we do the classic 2-1/4″ red oak you see throughout Chicago, but we wanted to avoid reddish undertones since (we think) we’re going to keep the wood pretty light/natural in color.

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We also decided to do the front formal living room floor in a herringbone pattern. I like how it turned out, though after seeing it I would have preferred a slightly longer board.

Doors

We picked two interior door styles: a 5-panel door for the entryways into rooms, and a 3-panel door for the closets. They’re all solid wood core doors (not hollow), so they’re pretty beefy. The plan is to paint the 5-panel doors black, and leave the closet doors white. I’ll note that we looked at TONS of door styles, including spending hours trying to find someone who sells the door featured in this blog post, but after getting quotes, we found we were very happy with the price point of these doors – it turns out individual doors can get SUPER expensive.

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More(s)

The skylights are in and with the drywall finished, they look Tony-the-Tiger-greeeeeeat! The middle of both the first and second floors have great natural light pouring in. Two of the skylights are operable via a solar-powered motor – how cool is that?!?

The back of the house is looking good – the black cladding has been added, and it’s looking much better. We had to nudge the French doors in the kitchen over to make room for the cabinets, so it’s more asymmetric than we planned for, but c’est la vie. 🙂

What’s next?

All the fun stuff seems to be happening at once: tiling is starting, kitchen cabinets started going in this week, and trim is about to start next week.

We’ve been delayed about 5 weeks waiting for the second plumbing inspection to happen so we could start drywall.

Well, the inspection finally, happened – and our contractor had the drywall starting the same day. So now we have drywall!

First floor

Here’s a video looking at the formal living room with drywall:

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And another video of the pantry (and a bit of the kitchen at the end):

Second floor

Here’s a video of the master bedroom walkthrough:

Here are photos of the drywalled 2nd floor. Our kiddo was there, and the only thing he cared about was going up and down the stairs. Over. And. Over. His legs are too short to go up himself, and there’s no safety railing, so I got a good back workout holding him up as Kripa took photos.

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Here’s a video of the light well, which still has scaffolding so it’s hard to anticipate the final effect:

Basement

The lights don’t have bulbs yet, so it was hard to shoot the basement well, so here are just a few photos. You’ll notice that the main basement living space has two windows now – we had to add one to complete an inspection – and it looks very symmetrical now.

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The drywall phase is half done – while the drywall is up, we still need to get the seams taped and mudded so that it’s ready for paint priming. Then floors go in, which leads to both tiling and cabinets going in. To prepare we’ve been furiously purchasing tiles and appliances – more on that in a later post.