More big changes are afoot

All that beautiful Oregon white oak from Zena Forest that I showed you last week is now installed on the first floor of our home. For the first time, the floor does not look like a construction site. The floor still must be sanded and stained, but these photos should give you an idea of how beautiful it will look.

This week our cabinet-maker delivered the kitchen cabinets as well as our built-in entertainment center, so now we're starting to get a better sense of what the completed living room and kitchen might look like.

This is the entertainment center, which will be painted, most likely white. Under each window is bookshelves, and the middle section, which will be pushed back against the wall, will hold the TV and related components:

The kitchen cabinets have not been put into place yet, but we can now see what they look like. These will be stained a medium brown color. Here I'm standing at our future kitchen island, which is actually sitting upside down at the moment. It will have drawer and cabinet storage, a bookshelf on one end for holding cookbooks, and a bar for seating on one side:

Our future pantry:

Kitchen sink area:

Oven area:

Upper cabinets:

Upstairs, the bathroom cabinets have been moved more or less into place. Here are the cabinets in our master bathroom:

A quick side note here about the wood in the cabinets and inside the closets: whenever the cabinet-maker and carpenter used MDF (medium-density fiberboard, commonly used for inner parts of cabinets and for closet shelves), they bought a special type that is free of urea-formaldehyde. Urea-formaldehyde is a type of resin that is common in MDF, but it can release toxic vapors that affect your air quality. By using MDF that is free of this resin, our air quality will improve.

Our new neighbors are seeing some dramatic changes on the outside. The painters came by this week and started painting the main body color. We chose a dark slate-like blue. It looks very different depending on the light. With sunlight shining directly on it, it looks a bit more gray:

When it's more shaded, the blue really comes out more:

No matter what lighting we see it in, we love the color! The trim around windows and doors will be white, which will really pop against the blue. We can't wait to see the whole house this way.