Week 31 of the remodel brought something new to the house: a splash of color. Ever since the drywall went up, the interior has been some shade of white (or near-white). Even after the painters started working, it was somewhat difficult to tell the difference between the areas that had just been primed and those that had received two full coats of our chosen off-white color (which I’ll remind you is called Mawmaw’s Pearls).

This week was different, though. When we arrived on Saturday, it was clear that the painters had been hard at work: Julia’s room was the very minty shade of green that she had selected, and William’s room was the muted blue he had chosen to fit with his Star Wars theme. Joe’s room was still bare, but we found cans of orange and blue paint labeled, helpfully, “Joe’s Bedroom”. We’re still trying to hash out some final questions, such as the type of finish to use in the bathrooms, but things are moving very quickly.

Paint wasn’t the only front along which advancements were being made. The sun tunnels upstairs were finally installed, and they seemed to bring in a lot of light, at least when we stopped by in the late morning.

Enzo’s carpenter also finished installing shiplap on the walls of the dining room and the stairs. Julie and Lesley are thrilled with the way it looks and the fact that it sustains the coastal theme that’s a central element of the overall design (the kids’ paint selections notwithstanding), so it was well worth the (not insignificant) extra cost: as Enzo has reminded us on a number of occasions, lumber prices are at or near all-time highs.

We finally nailed down the carpet this week, figuratively speaking. As planned, we’re going with Pecan upstairs, but we opted for a greenish color, Balsam, in the master bedroom. In this case, we actually went against Lesley’s advice: she thought it might be significantly more expensive to have two different colors. But the difference turned out to be relatively small, so we chose to splurge a bit and add some color to our bedroom.

In the coming week, we have a few major decisions to work through. First and foremost, we have to figure out what we’re going to do with respect to concrete structures in the front and back yards. We have a fairly clear idea of what we want in terms of the back patio, though it helps that our options are somewhat constrained by the fact that the old patio was completely removed during demolition. In the front, however, we have some tougher calls: first, we need to decide what, if anything, we’re going to keep; second, we need to figure out what we want to do with the parts that are changing.

Our original goal was to save money by reusing as much of the existing concrete as possible, but Enzo has more or less convinced us that simply adding on to the existing driveway to accommodate the new two-car garage would not be a good choice. The color of the new portion would never match the old, and it would be very obvious from the street that different parts of the driveway were poured many decades apart.

We also have to figure out what to do about the front porch and walk. Enzo asked us to come by and assess the situation, but his team hadn’t actually cleared the walk by Saturday, so it was still buried under an inch or two of dirt and mud. If it’s still intact, we’d like to keep it, but we won’t know what’s left until next week.

Gallery: Week 31: A Splash of Color