Picking Lighting and Tile For The Model Home

Things are moving at warp speed these days at the Homearama Showhouse, so we have tons of updates to share since last week (especially since more fixtures, cabinets, and counters are now officially installed). Let’s start on the front porch, where the centerpiece of our rustic, vaulted ceiling has been added. It’s from Restoration Hardware, so it was definitely a splurge (our team joined their trade program to save 20%) but we think it’s an awesome thing to see up there before stepping into the house for the first time.

As we snapped these photos yesterday, they were just beginning to pull up the protective floor coverings, but the hardwoods were still really dusty (they’re putting a final sealant coat on them today – so we’re all banned from the house). Dust and all, this picture captures that pretty wall of windows and doors at the back of the living room that leads out the covered porch.

Even though the kitchen is still a work in progress – literally, you can see the vent hood getting installed below – we couldn’t resist sharing a wider shot of the navy island with those brass accordion fixtures that we shared last week above it (the island is Hale Navy by Ben Moore, the same color as the fireplace column across the room, which you see in the shot above). Speaking of the island, the builder made one a bit smaller than this in his last house and everyone’s feedback was “go bigger!” – so by jove he did. We can’t wait to get four stools in there to fill things out.

It was cool to see things come together that we had only seen in showrooms and vendor booklets months ago when we chose them. Like these glass x-fronted doors that flank the range hood. We didn’t do any open shelving in this kitchen, but thought it would be a nice touch to add a few cabinets where someone could display their nice dishes, bowls, and glasses.

To the left of the kitchen is the breakfast nook, which has been quite the adventure to accomplish. Carpenter John (not to be confused with Builder John or me, Blogger John) did us a solid in making this space cozier after it ended up being bigger/wider than we all originally planned (other considerations like how things lined up in the kitchen and how things looked from the back of the house inched it up from our initial dimensions). There’s still a big table to be constructed and plenty of shelves to be filled, but it’s getting there – especially now that the silver dome light (donated by Shades of Light) is in.

Just one wall away from the breakfast nook is the pantry. Excuse me, I mean walk-in pantry. It has me and Sherry green with envy. Is it wrong that we kinda want to fill it with candy like the store in the opening of Willy Wonka? The prism flushmount light is also from Shades of Light. It’s made of up pentagons, but we like to pretend they’re hexagons so it’s kind of a nod to our bee love.

I probably shouldn’t force the hex thing there, since the carpet that we chose for the boy’s room has actual hexagons in it. We thought it’d be fun to do something a little different than plain carpet (we have hardwoods throughout the house except for the two kids rooms and the guest room), so this Revere pattern by Stanton (selected at a local place called ProSource) seemed fun without being too crazy. And as you can see, the installation was also in progress when we were there yesterday.

Now on to the en-suite bathroom, which is a bit of a mess at the moment, but still manages to get us excited. We’re taking this as our chance to do that luxe & light, hotel-like bathroom that I’m not sure we’ll ever have the space to execute in our own home. So we’ve chosen lots of tone-on-tone whites and grays with a few unexpected hits of color – some of which we’ll reveal today, and some that’ll come in later with art/accessories. Of course we went for a big freestanding tub that’s probably a pipe dream (plumbing pun!) for our own bathroom. You should see Sherry look at this thing lustily.

Since we couldn’t just leave the room totally colorless, we did a nice big plane of spa-like color on the back wall of the shower, which is still semi-floorless, totally doorless, and inexplicably has a mirror leaning in it at the moment.

Those bluey-green glass tiles are this 3 x 12″ New Haven tile and the sides are 3 x 6″ white subway tiles, both donated by The Tile Shop. Here’s a shot from back in December (!!) when we picked it out. The shower flooring is the one in the background of this tile shot, which is their Evanston series in Frost Snow. The little glass squares mixed with marble help tie everything in the room together.

In the interest of trying to take some risks in the name of a good show and stretch outside of our comfort zone, we resisted the urge to go with all-white marble for the vanity counters, and selected something a little less common (it has soft seaglass colored veins, which tie into the shower tiles). All of the fixtures are polished chrome, including the glass chandelier from Shades of Light, and the sink faucets and shower trim were donated by Brizo (Delta donated the tub filler).

Across from the bathroom is the closet, which is another jealousy inducing space for the lady-wife. We gave the carpenter a couple of suggestions, but pretty much just let him do his thing. The layout is hard to wrap your head around, so this post with a floor plan might help (there’s a his and hers area with a storage-saturated divider).

He packed it with awesome features like this angled shoe rack that’s sure to get all the Charlotte Bradshaws out there excited. No wait, Carrie Bradshaw. Oh geez, I’m such a Miranda.

The last space we’ll share today is a peek at the shower in the jack-and-jill bathroom (this is the same kids room that has the green vanity in the adjacent sink area that we shared last week). We planned on taking a bunch of panned out shots of the whole room for you, but a headboard that’s waiting to be painted for the girls bedroom is actually sitting in the middle of the bathroom, along with a spare toilet – so we just couldn’t get those shots yesterday. But check out that shower tile! We chose two different types of colored glass subway tiles and had the tile guy (surprisingly not named John) install them in fat, 12″-ish stripes up the wall.

We picked these at The Tile Shop by laying out a few different combinations, including a frost white &  gloss white version, a gray & white version, a green & white version, and a blue & gray version. Ultimately we picked the combination in the upper right corner of this picture, which is Snow Glass and Glass Winter.

And last but not least, since we wanted to have some fun in the kids bathroom, we went for this cool Moxie showerhead (donated by Kohler). It has a waterproof bluetooth speaker in it that stays in place magnetically, while the shower still sprays water around it. Somewhere my high school self is feeling quite embarrassed by the shower radio with spotty reception that I was addicted to at the time.

We’re scheduled to begin moving furniture in next week, so hopefully the next update we have for you will have this place looking even more like home. We’re supposed to have the whole place furnished and decorated by early April, so consider us completely 100% freaked out by this. Cue the cold sweats!

Psst – Wanna see more showhouse info & photos? Click here for Our Full Showhouse Tour, which includes final pictures of every room, the floor plan, budget info, a video walk-through, and shoppable showhouse furniture & accessories.