Locked out again

So, we went to the house last night to ooh and aah at our new cabinets, some of which are actually installed, and we couldn't get in! The super-secret-side-door-key was nowhere to be found, so we came home to get the front door key that Terry had rather unceremoniously given us a couple of weeks ago. It, too, had mysteriously vanished.

I had put it on top of our key box right when we got it, so we'd be able to find it, etc. Dennis even said, "yeah, leave it there and we'll get copies made." Neither one of us had any reason to use, move, touch, or otherwise disturb the key since that day. yet, it is not there anymore.

We have a call out to Terry - hopefully he has the side door key in his pocket or has another key to the front door. I know we're not willing to pay weekend rates for a locksmith, but we'd *reallly* like to get in there and do some more painting this weekend, as the floors are not yet in.

In the meantime, Dennis is over there now digging a hole for the front steps. Don't need a key for that.

Anyway, during the many days before the lockout, we made some significant progress on paint, and other people made progress on the master bath. Over the Memorial Day weekend, we had lots of help in the form of Ruby, my friend Sarah, and our incredibly generous (current) neighbors Tom and Sue. I shudder to think how much painting we'd have left to do if we hadn't had so much help. Here are some photos:

May 23
Not too exciting. We got grout in the kitchen & 2nd bath, but it's hard to even tell because the grout haze is still on the tile in these pictures. I think you can at least tell that it looks better than the pre-grouted versions of these photos.




May 26
Significant progress on the painting during the 3-day weekend, thanks to a lot of work from a lot of people. Some rooms are done - with 2 coats of paint on them and everything. Other rooms still require a 2nd coat. Everything except the nursery and the closets have at least a first coat of paint. We're confident there will be a need for touch-ups anyway, but we're trying to do as much as we can before the floors go in. It is really nice not to have to worry about paint drips on the floor!



In the guest bedroom, we had originally decided to go with SW's "Clary Sage." At some times of the day it looked OK, but other times it was just awful, awful, awful! I kept staring at it and saying, "seafoam green! ugh!" So I went one shade darker - "Artichoke." It's still wet in that picture; it dries a little darker than that and is a huge improvement over the Clary Sage. That's what happens when you have to quickly pick paint colors for your new house when you're still in your old, dark house. (No, your eyes are not deceiving you - only one wall is Artichoke so far. I was afraid I wouldn't like it, either, and then we'd have 4 walls of a really dark color to paint over.)




May 27
The beginnings of the shower system being installed. Isn't that a nice orange? Hell, it can be fluorescent rainbow stripes as long as it maintains a water-tight seal. And the whirlpool tub is finally nestled in its little home. The bathroom seems much larger without a giant bathtub in the middle of it.



May 28
A little more progress here. The floor tile in the master bath is in (no grout, of course), and the cabinets were delivered. If anyone is wondering if this baby is eating my brain, here is more evidence - I walked through the garage to get into the house and completely missed the giant stack of boxes pictured. I was so focused on not tripping over the other stuff littering the floor of the garage - I guess I was just concentrating on my footing instead of looking up. At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Appliances & final paint selections

Moving forward...

We've spent a LOT of time and money at Home Depot lately. Just yesterday, I bought 11 gallons of paint. That's on top of the 20 or 30 we already bought. We also bought some lighting, 2 sinks for the 2nd bathroom, and appliances. Well, Sears got the appliance $, but you get my point.

We finally have paint colors for the entire house. Let's see if I can run them all down:
Entryway: Sands of Time
Dining Room Walls - Bracing Blue
Dining Room Ceiling - Upward
Office Walls - Connected Gray (which isn't really gray at all...)
Living Room Walls - Sands of Time
Living Room Accent Wall - Pennywise
Kitchen - Sands of Time
Breakfast - Sands of Time
Breakfast Accent Wall - Pennywise
Bedroom Hallway - Nice White
Laundry Room - Reticence
Half Bath Walls - Jonquil
Half Bath Ceiling - Pennywise
Guest Bedroom - Clary Sage
Nursery - shade of baby blue TBD (we have 5 shades of blue in the works throughout the house already - surely one of them will be OK for this room.)
2nd Bathroom (incl. both vanities) - Reticence
Master Bedroom - Sleepy Blue
Master Bedroom Hallway - Languid Blue
Master Bathroom - Meditative

None of the closets are painted yet. I'd like to paint them (just white) to help keep the plaster looking fresh, but I don't think that's going to happen unless we get a LOT of painting help in the next week or so.

I love almost all of it. I do think we had to make too many color decisions too quickly, and it does show. If I had it to do over (and I certainly do not), I would probably change (if only slightly) the guest bedroom, laundry room, dining room, and possibly the master bathroom. And I really hope the 2nd bathroom color goes with whatever we do in there, since we haven't actually chosen anything yet. Oh well.

Pics below - 2nd bath sinks (Kohler Archer), Microwave (Kenmore Elite 80829), and the dishwasher (Kenmore Elite 13159). Yeah, they pretty much just look like a standard sink, microwave, and dishwasher. But somehow the appliance purchases seem like a big deal since we researched them for what seems like an eternity.




Next up: Choosing & buying a kitchen sink!

Some new pictures

More progress = more pictures. As of last night (probably before then), we have tile in the laundry room and kitchen. Nothing is grouted, but that's surely coming soon. Kitchen will get gray grout; laundry room will get something beige-y to match the tile.

I really like how it came out. And we do have some leftover tile to return, so that's a little bit of money back in our pockets!

I can't believe *WE* get to live here!

Long time, no updates... mostly because we've been too busy doing stuff over there to actually post about it. But I've been taking pictures!

Terry has finally conceded that he won't be finished by May 28. Good thing we knew that a long time ago, or we'd be very disappointed. We're now shooting for final trim-out the week of June 16 and moving most of the big stuff the weekend of June 20. So, another month.

There's SO much to update... I'll just throw in a ton of pictures and (mostly) let them speak for themselves.


Photos from 5/10
Wow! What a world of difference some plaster makes! The rooms seemed incredibly small with the dark gray drywall. When it's all white, it seems much bigger.





Photos from 5/16
On this day, we began priming. It's so much easier to paint when there is no flooring or trim to mask off. Dennis painted from 6pm - 6am.




Photos from 5/18
Really, we worked all weekend in the house. Bud even came over and helped on both Saturday and Sunday. We managed to get everything primed except the hallway, half bath, 2nd bath, and closets, and we got one coat of "real" paint on the living room, kitchen, breakfast, entryway, and laundry room. Sadly, I am still investigating paint colors for the office, nursery, 2nd bath, master bath, and master bedroom. And I think I went too dark in the laundry room, so that might require a do-over. :(

Thankfully, the hardwood floors still won't be in next weekend, so we'll have a few more days to paint.

NOW we're talking!

After a seemingly slow few weeks, things seem to be moving again, and we *might* even be done by 5/28! (I doubt it, but early June is looking entirely feasible.)

Siding has started to go up (they started on the back of the house), and -as of last night- there is quite a bit of drywall inside (flat ceilings are done; walls are done in the 3rd bedroom and 2nd bath). The big irony is that we are apparently now locked out of our own (in-progress) home, so we can only peek in the windows to see what's going on.

(5/3 Update: We aren't locked out anymore and got to walk around. It's even more exciting inside, and much more was done on Friday. As expected, having walls and ceilings makes the rooms seem smaller (especially because the drywall is dark and we only have natural light for the moment), but the rooms are the right size, so I'm sure everything will work out fine.)

For your enjoyment, some photos (click the small picture to see a larger version):

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Sorry for the underexposures - Like I said, we were locked out! So I had to try to take pics through the windows.