Renovation Part II: Picking Finishes

In my last renovation post I discussed the design of our upcoming home reno project and now in this post I'll discuss a little about the process of picking finishes. It was both an enjoyable and fun experience while at the same time being very scary and stressful. It was fun to plan but scary to think that you might make a bad decision and regret it. Buyers remorse is a major fear of mine and we aren't designers by any means and it's hard to know and envision how everything will come together in the end.

But anyway, enough preamble. Let me start with the bathrooms.

We ended up getting the design drawings for our ensuite bathroom. In them you can see the wall that's being removed, the other that's expanding into our bedroom a little, and the doorway that will shift to the center of the wall.

The next photo (above) shows the vanity and linen tower that's being built.

Choosing tiles for the space was somewhat challenging but we went in with an inspiration photo and came out with what you see above. The black tiles will go on the floor, walls and shower and the reeded tiles will be a small accent wall in the shower only.

The vanity will be made from walnut wood with a French Walnut stain. These are the finishes all together.

My wife found these walnut wood pulls that were designed in Denmark that we love. They will be the handles for the vanity and cabinet.

We had a harder time choosing tiles for the other bathroom because we didn't have a good inspiration photo going into our selection. We actually chose one set of tiles and then completely changed it a few weeks later when we changed our mind. We wanted the two bathrooms to be different, one dark and one light, and in the end we went with the tiles that you see above - plain white on the floor with the rippled tile as a wall accent behind the tub and vanity. Okay on to the kitchen now.

Choosing wood stains for the kitchen cabinets was challenging also. We received a bunch of samples from the kitchen people but they were all so similar.

There was quite a bit of second guessing involved throughout the process.

We had to look at the samples in different lights - natural sunlight, and indoor lighting, both during the day and at night.

We ended up landing on a golden cedar stain that has more red tones than brown. It's a non-traditional stain for walnut, which tends to be more brown, but my wife and I love teak wood and mid-century architecture and design, so that color fit that profile the best.

We had to try the stains against the floor tiles and the counter samples.

The pantry cabinets are going to be painted since the pantry will be a separate room and painted cabinets are a lot cheaper.

We had a few paint samples to choose from and eventually landed on Lafayette green. It looks a little different in the photos than it does in person.

Lighting made a difference but in this case we didn't check it in the natural sunlight since the room will be closed off without any windows.

We are going to have some walnut accents in the pantry as discussed in the previous post (I.e. the coffee bar and the wine rack) so we tried the paint sample against the wood stain that we chose for the main kitchen cabinets. We were hoping that we could use the same stain in both locations.

Unfortunately they didn't go great together. The Golden cedar was a little too red and gave off a slight Christmas vibe.

In the end we went with a wood stain called San Miguel that was more brown.

The handles in both parts of the kitchen will be a gold / brassy finish. We wanted to use the wood pulls in the kitchen but they come pre-stained and they were too far off from our cabinet stain color.

So that was a little about the process of choosing our finishes. I'm both excited and terrified to see the final result and how it all turns out. Fingers crossed for good results.

Until next time, thanks for stopping by. If you want to see the previous post on the design stage then follow the link below.

Part I: Design