Right now I’m gardening in Chicago. But when we complete the India apartment, I hope our garden terrace looks something like this:
We already have the space, the balusters very much like these, and even the banana and coconut trees!
For now, this low maintenance cyberspace garden was created by me at Olioboard. Thank goodness, because I already have enough gardens to keep watered and weeded in real life.
I love being outside in our gardens in the spring, summer and fall — seasons that every year feel too short, winter too long. Thankfully our India pied a terre has two outdoor terraces, one of them just a few steps up from our main door! Both are 1,200 sq ft spaces and someday you know I’ll be decorating them with plants and areas to sit. Plus, we’ll create plenty of shade from the sun. Coconut and banana trees are already there casting some shade.
Here is some outdoor living inspiration, of all styles and for all purposes …
Found at Desire to Inspire, this is a house for sale, so this could be your backyard (with some funds of course):
Found at MariaRR on weheartit, lower budget and I like this even better. Imagine:
Found at Outdoor Sanctuaries Tumblr, the movies outside, like drive-in movies but more comfortable!
Also from Outdoor Sanctuaries Tumblr:
If you can open an indoor space wide to the outside, it’s like being outside. Like this found at Delight by Design:
Even in winter. Found at The World According to Isa:
This feels wabi sabi? Definitely simply back to nature. Found at paonote_room269:
Less simple, also beautiful, from Better Homes and Gardens:
A city view. Found at the little book of secrets tumblr:
Found at Pinterest — a totally different view. Anyone know where photos copyrighted by Gaby are posted? I’m sure there’s more goodies there!
From Chris Court Photography. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
There is no shortage of images of how people are livin’ it up beautifully outdoors. Follow my Pinterest Living Outdoors Board for more (400+ images there), and a Houzz Ideabook of patio/veranda/lanai photos. For now, I am going outdoors!
Although I wrote yesterday about being surprised that my memory of tile color was way off, we are pleased with how the construction process is going. They did a nice job of laying down the tile. We are doing several things that are different than our India team is used to doing — we’re laying the tiles diagonally across the rooms, and instead of tile skirting we will install wide wood moldings. We are using bigger 2-foot by 2-foot tiles. Here are shots of some of the living/dining area:
So you can see we ran the same tile out onto the balconies to maintain some visual consistency. I thought it would look “choppy” if we used a different tile outdoors that you could see from the indoors. Fenesta french doors with wood frames will be installed in a few weeks, so you’ll see the indoor tile flow outdoors through the glass doors.
We wanted some grout lines to show between tiles, but not too big and not too small. This looks about right to me. Shades of Cinderella! The grout color will be matched to the tiles (they’re not grouted yet in these photos) so the color will blend in across the room. In the Millimeters Count post, I wrote about the visual impact of grout line choices. In fact I live in parallel worlds right now — at the same time we’re doing work in the Chennai apartment, this is finally the year we’re replacing old cracked tile in our Chicago sunroom. Just tonight we were in Home Depot choosing grout color and placing a tile order. (Yes I will post before & after pics of that project here too!)
Our team is paying such attention to detail that this is how they laid the tiles where the different colors meet at the bedroom and bathroom doors:
Surely there will be door thresholds there, but the grout lines will be well-aligned on either side of the thresholds. Look how they even did cuts where needed so the tiles fit close:
I have to admit, I was apprehensive about how this would go, based on our previous experiences with renovations and contractors, in the house we live in while we were here and we met with the contractors personally every morning. And now we’re working from the near complete opposite side of the planet. However it’s been going well. One key is, my husband is working with the architect to ensure that we receive detailed mock-ups of how everything will be laid out, every step of the way. We carefully review it and through email and scanned images, communicate back and forth until all details are correct. The architect doesn’t proceed until we sign approval.
We provide pictures to help communicate what we’re looking for as clearly as possible. For example, we sent pictures to the architect of a bathroom in our Chicago house to show how we’d like raised tile to separate the showers from the rest of the bathrooms:
This is travertine tile skirting from The Tile Shop in the U.S. — we won’t be doing anything this fancy in the Chennai apartment. They will cut standard tiles to fit the step. In fact we haven’t yet seen bullnosed tile there and are wondering if it’s available because it would make nicer edges. We are also installing glass shower doors and sent photos to show examples of that:
So eventually the Chennai showers will look somewhat like this. The master bath is tiny, so the shower will be a straight glass wall with a hinge to open a glass door. The guest and public bathroom is much bigger and will have a three-wall shower somewhat like the shower above, which is in our Chicago home. It was so difficult to get to this result when we renovated this bathroom — we had to fight each step of the way and I don’t know why it had to be so difficult with contractors. It was a strain on many areas of life at the time, thank goodness it lasted only 8 weeks. I cannot even rehash all the stories — I just want to forget them. The process is going much, much smoother with our team in Chennai and we really appreciate that!
Next the Chennai team is installing the bathroom wall and floor tiles. Excited to see this! Here are photos from the store display (Vaigai Sanitation in Chennai) of the master bath tile:
The mosaic feature will be on two opposite walls of the bathroom — behind the toilet as shown here, and also repeated in the shower. The remainder of the walls will have the beige tile shown here. I hope on our next trip to India to find an old small wood cabinet to revamp as a sink vanity. I think that would go nice with this natural tile.
And here’s the guest bath tile (all tile in the whole apartment is from Vaigai Sanitation in Chennai):
Looking forward to following up soon with photos of the tile installed in the bathrooms!
Posted in India pied-à-terre Construction
Tagged balcony, bathroom, floor, floor tile, French doors, tile
Speaking of the “ugly photos coming soon” message posted earlier today – and the process of turning unfinished space into something glorious — while blog surfing earlier today I found this photo which gave me an idea:
Our India apartment has two balconies. One is a larger balcony with room to sit outdoors. (The whole building also has two generous outdoor terraces accessible to residents, each 1200 square feet.) But the other balcony has a depth of only 18 inches:
We were planning to install French doors here anyway, and I imagined swinging them open and letting sheer curtains billow in the breeze. It’s a 10-foot wide opening so there would be two sets of substantial doors. But then again, I am from the Windy City where I hear wind blowing around our house as I sit here now. Perhaps my dreams aren’t so realistic for a place in Chennai. The effect may be more like receiving a humid furnace blast in the face much of the year.
But, what if this balcony were enclosed with windows and architectural trim, as the photo above? This would bump out the interior space a bit too, and would eliminate the issue of French doors gobbling up otherwise usable space. We’ll have to check on the restrictions and the effect on the exterior. It’s an idea to consider any time you can take advantage of it, because even a small amount of floorspace can make a difference when you think of the cubic space added. It’s not that we really need the space. The apartment has a very open and spacious floorplan. Mostly, I like unique nooks and cubbies of the kind that Sarah Susanka advocates.
Posted in India pied-à-terre Construction
Tagged balcony, French doors, nooks n' cubbies
