The Sixth House: Progress Update

Hello. I have the middle Wednesday of every month assigned as The Sixth House Update on my "blog post calendar" and unfortunately there is not a ton to share this month. We are still waiting for our final proposal from the builder (you can see the update on finishes and some renderings that I posted here). The builders and their trade partners were here to check for any surprises behind the walls on March 1 to assure accuracy in the estimates so we are close to receiving the proposal. The weather is just starting to turn to be a little warmer and drier so there has been some landscaping work done too.

Here is the lowdown.

Over Christmas break my children began tearing down the brown wallpaper in the dining room where the edges from the 1996 decor were starting to lift up. Within the course of a few days it was all gone, with the exception of the border in the soffit. The soffit is going to be removed so it did not seem worth the effort to move out all of the furniture to take down the lovely lion head motif - I was close to doing it though!

Underneath the wallpaper, the walls were never painted beyond some type of primer. I really like the color of the walls though in their rough state, they are a soft white, almost a plaster look. Here is the room without the wallpaper:

I have decided this is the exact white I want to use throughout my house. I looked through a lot of white paint chips and thought I had found a match with Farrow & Ball White Tie. It looked like the exact color when you held the chip to the wall. I had a sample can made and I also wanted to try "Ahearn White" a fifty/fifty mix of Benjamin Moore White Linen and China White. Patrick Ahearn, a fabulous architect from Massachusetts with offices in Boston and on Martha's Vineyard, uses this combination on all of his projects and swears by this mix. His work is gorgeous and I trust him! I had sample cans made of both White Linen and China White and mixed them and applied the mix to the dining room wall as well as White Tie:

"Ahearn White" is on the left and is actually the one that matches the color perfectly. I circled it in red because you cannot even make out the swatch of paint in the photograph. White Tie is creamier. I painted both colors all around my house, we have spots like this everywhere to see how each color works in different lighting (this is in the hallway to the powder room, garage door, and soon or later mudroom:

I have decided any wall that will be white in my house once the renovation is done will be this fifty/fifty mixture. This is how it looks next to Farrow & Ball Black Blue which will be the color of the cabinetry in the master bathroom. I actually really like White Tie with this color, majority wins though. "Ahearn White" looks better throughout the house and is a better match with Farrow & Ball Mouse's Back which will be the kitchen cabinetry color.

I also tested out Benjamin Moore Hale Navy in the circle room:

It will be awesome and dramatic!

Hale Navy will also be the color of the cabinetry in what will be the mudroom:

This is how Benjamin Moore's Brewster Gray will look leading into the Hale Navy circle room. This is the spot where the new opening will be between the two rooms.

I am thankfully checking most paint colors off of my list. I still need to pick a trim color for all of the rooms that will have "Ahearn White" that will both look good with the kitchen cabinetry and with the rest of the house. I also need to pick a trim color for my son's bedroom which I know I want to be in the dark blue family.

Moving to the outside. John has been working on the shutters. This is what we have so far. John is making them out of PVC so they will not warp or rot. They still need to be painted. They will be painted Farrow & Ball Drop Cloth to match our garage doors (currently) and all outside woodwork eventually.

We still do not have covered porch entrances on the house. Still no permit and now we are planning to wait to build them until the interior renovation. We plan to replace the front door and side door and also push the front door out to be flush with the house so it seems to make sense to do all of that at the same time now. The front stoop will hopefully be finished by the end of the week. One of the large stones right in the middle seems to have developed an "oil stain" that will not go away and it looks terrible so it needs to be removed and replaced before it is all finished. Here are the (hopefully someday) porches as of now:

The plantings are almost complete. We added hydrangea bushes to the back of the deck and the space between the back patio and underneath the deck. I cannot wait for these to grow and bloom!

That's it for now. Hopefully there will be some grass growing and flowers blooming by next month. Fingers crossed also that we will have finalized our scope for the interior renovation and have the start date for demo! Slow and steady I keep telling myself. It will happen.

I will be back tomorrow with a Move In Ready post. See you then.

Thank you for dropping by today to check out The Sixth House!

Kerry