We’ve been shopping a while for flooring. We looked at wood, laminate, cork, slate, and ceramic and porcealan tile. It’s important for me to have an easy care floor that doesn’t show a lot of dog hair and dirt since right now I spend a lot of time cleaning floors and carpet. We live on a lake, have two large dogs, and our lot is still a “construction zone” according to one of our neighbors. We still have years left of site development work to do. I had finally settled on a teak wood and a raja slate, but I discounted both for solid reasons. One of my neighbors owned a dog kennel and she told me that eventually with two large dogs, they’d wear a path in the hardwood. Stevie found the raja slate to be too rough for his feet. That left me back to square one again until I saw this add on Craig’s list. I had always been attracted to the wood look tile. We had hoped for something darker, but what we found was not that light, and at 62 cents a square foot delivered, it seemed like quite a deal. We bought enough to do the whole house if we feel like it.
February 24, 2010
February 2, 2010
Painting the Kitchen Graceful Gray
I’m just taking a break in the middle of painting the last wall in the kitchen. Graceful Gray is the color of choice. I just love how the color contrasts with the new expresso color of the kitceh cabinet. But painting is a lot of work. The kitchen has 3 walls and I had already painted 2 of the walls. The last wall was the longest wall. All 35 feet of it. With taping off cabinets, trim and windows and cutting in, the first coat took almost 5 hours. I’m almost tempted to save the second coat for tomorrow, but I want to get the job over with. Anyway, while I was cleaning the walls and then painting, I noticed a little cracking of the sheetrock around the windows. It’s been almost 6 years since I built the house so it’s not unexpected. I didn’t bother to slow down. I figured it would be a waste of time. I plan to change out the trim around the windows, perhaps even replace the windows further down the road. it would have have been a waste of time. I really like the color. It echoes the gray skies of typical Washington weather out the windows, and the grey of the Bay Lake beyond the walls. Interesting contrasts.
 
Here’s a sample of the paint colors that I looked at.