Agreed!

We agreed on our final design and I put money down. Now we're committed.

Jill thinks that the cabinets, always the critical path, will be done in about four weeks, making our tentative start date around 1/24/2011.

We still need to pick out the granite for the radiator cover in the foyer. We'll do then whenever Jill has something cool for us to look at.

Here are the preliminary drawings. (The sink and fixture are wrong)

Close To A Design

Jill--

Starting with your original design dated 10/13/2010, let's make the following changes:

• Two piece Kohler toilet
• No crown molding in either area
• 19" vanity w/ glass vessel
• No picture light in the entrance way

We want to stick with the cabinets you originally proposed with the glass & LED lighting on the south wall and the bottom drawer on the vanity cabinet. We also want the glass, pendant lights (similar to the dining room).

A couple other repair items I'd like your to include would be the closet doors in the entrance was (the rollers are not working properly), a new latch on the 2nd floor medicine cabinet, and, as we discussed, the dishwasher mounting brackets.

I think that's everything that we talked about, but I'm probably forgetting something.

Let me know if you need anything else. Otherwise, I'll see you Tuesday.

--Matt

Cost Cutting Options

I have been looking at the project to see where changes can be made to keep the design the same but bring down the price…

Alternatives would be to:

1) Delete lighting from top of back wall cabinet, just have solid doors (this would then avoid the up charge applied to the cabinet for interior finishing)

2) Eliminate crown molding from around the room

3) Replace the trim around the door and window, but not take it around the mirror. Paint trim around window to match door color (not vanity). Install a decorative mirror instead of the tile work/wood frame concept.

4) Standard two coat single color paint technique rather than decorative.

5) Delete pendant lighting and stick with recessed lights only above vanity.

6) Change to a standard, tall, two piece white toilet, rather than the one piece model

Do any of the above appeal to you?

Jill

Cost Estimate

We met last night with Jill. We have a few things left to decide:What do we want for lights - recessed, pendants, or a combination of the two?

• The color we chose for the cabinets is no longer available. What color do we want now?
• Do we want a bottom drawer on the vanity?
• Should we switch to an oval vessel sink so that we could go with a 18" vanity, saving three inches of space?

These are details. The big question is the cost. The total was just shy of $21K.

Do we want to spend that kind of money on a powder room?

Time to think.

Design Meeting on September 15th.

We met with Jill at Artisan K & B yesterday.

Before our trip to San Francisco, Jill had dropped off some samples of cabinet colors, wall tiles, paint, and floor tiles. She also has a sample of a very interesting terrazzo product made of recycled concrete and cobalt blue glass (actually fragmants of Sky vodka bottles). They had recently installed counter-tops with that product at Miller Park. Laurie didn't really care for any of the tile choices, and we were both intrigued by the terrazzo.

We discussed this with Jill, and she suggested a grey for the cabinet color. None of the tiles she had really worked, we we went over to 21st Century Tile to look at options.

Every time I am involved in these things I thank my lucky stars to have the advice of people who know what their doing. I mostly watched as Jill and Laurie looked at different tiles for the wall and the floor.

We have a small window in the powder room that is stained glass and are incorporating that into the design. We're thinking of an over-sized mirror to the right of the window and framed the same. Inside the frame will be a 3" border of clear, cracked glass. The vanity top will be the blue terrazzo, with grey cabinet beneath. The floor will be 20" square, grey/blue tiles laid diagonally.

The lighting will probably be one recessed with a couple of hanging fixtures similar to that in our dining room. we'll also have lights inside the cabinets with glass doors on the south wall.

The design is coming together nicely.

Design Considerations

We met with Jill at our house to discuss some options - counter tops, floor, cabinets, lighting, mirrors, etc.

Here is a note from her:

Matt:

I have set up a time for next week Friday (the 27^th) at the house with the HVAC person to stop by and look at the bathroom at 2:00. Can you leave a key available?

I have ordered the color samples and hope to have them by next week Friday. If I do, I will leave them behind for you look over and provide your thoughts.

We have a very interesting looking piece of Vitrazzo in the back in a blue tone right now (a recycled product made with glass and concrete) that I am hoping will work your new cabinet color. We used the material for a recent installation at Miller Park in one of the suite areas.

For the front hall, over the radiator, Soap stone would be an excellent choice, both in color and material. Soap stone is often used for making large, wood burning, fireplace cladding. The material absorbs and radiates heat and would work out well in that location. We happen to have some available right now….

Talk to you soon!

Initial Meeting

On 7/29/2010 we met with Jill, our designer from Artisan Kitchen & Bath (the same people we used in our kitchen project and our den project) to discuss remodeling of our first floor powder room.

The meeting went well and we came away with a lot of ideas and questions.

• Do we need to replace the radiator? Should we?
• How do we access the shelves behind the toilet, reach or scootch?
• The toilet and vanity will be at comfort height (17” & 36” respectively)
• What is the orientation of the foyer floorboards, east-west or north-south?
• Do we keep the door (how does it swing?)?
• What about a big mirror above the vanity?
• What about cupboards?

It's not going to be a very big project, but I don't want to guess on what the cost will be. Laurie and I differ by a factor of 2.5!

I will post 'before' pictures soon.