Apparently, this is what progress looks like

It's now 24 been days since move-in, and the house seems pretty... well, there's a long road ahead, that's for sure. The kitchen is 95% together. There are significantly fewer boxes in the garage and basement. Still, just about every surface is covered in "stuff that has no place to live." I have some faith that we'll continue to make slow progress.

So, here are just a bunch of pictures of what things look like today. The master bedroom isn't so bad - we're down to only 2 boxes left in there. Only major construction issues remaining are the master bath shower enclosure (conspicuous in its absence), the lack of countertops & sinks in the 2nd bathroom, and a missing pendant light above the island (it was broken and had to be reordered). Other than that, there are minor construction touchups just about everywhere.

Still, we are loving living here. It's so great to have room to move around. Our dishwasher is freakishly quiet (and effective!), as is the garbage disposal. The water pressure is wonderful (unless you have all 3 outside spigots going at the same time - see Dennis's latest project below), and the indoor temperature is just about always perfect. We're far from settled, but we'll get there. Eventually.

Enjoy!





In brighter news, our island pendant lights are pretty awesome. (Note the hole in the ceiling where the third light should go. Klassy.)


OH! And here is Dennis, hard at work at his latest project - growing us some grass. 30,000 square feet of yard is not an easy thing to keep watered. Looks great, eh? (Ignore the weed patch in the back. That's the future home of our gazebo, and it was deemed out of scope for the original yard seeding.)

OK, in his defense, it was originally supposed to rain this week; instead, it's been 90 and sunny every single day since he planted the seed. Dennis remains determined, though.

Hopefully I'll have more progress to report soon. Maybe there'll even some fresh grass!

new kitchen sink, some new pictures

Not a ton of progress since before. But still some good stuff. I'm really liking the glass tile accent in the master bath. The blue in there still seems somewhat garish to me; hopefully we can tone it down with some chocolate accents.

Only a few lights left to install (kitchen island pendants and guest bedroom light were on backorder), and more of the doors and trim have been installed. The baseboards (mostly) look pretty good, but the pantry door has now overtaken the coat closet door in the "ugliest door ever" contest.

Also, it turns out that the sink we shopped for 2 weeks ago won't really fit after all, especially with the faucet we chose, so we got a new kitchen sink. The old one had 2 identical bowls. This one has the asymmetrical bowls. Not ideal, but I think we'll find a way to live with it.




June 23

Doors and lights!

Interior doors were delivered today. ... I'm not sure how I feel about them. Well, that's not true. I feel they are ugly. But there's still a chance they'll grow on me. And let's hope so, as this is really not something we can change at this point unless the ugliness is very very serious. I guess this is what happens when you can only look at a tiny sample of something to pick a stain color. Maybe we should have anticipated the extreme differences in how the grain would take the stain. Maybe we should have asked for Maple doors. (But does such a thing even exist in mainstream building? Would we have been willing to pay that much more for it?)

Anyway, there they are.



On a more positive note, I am ridiculously in love with the lighting and cabinetry that's been installed! That entryway chandelier was the best splurge of the whole house. Well, that and the wood floors. And the master bath shower. OK, so we splurged on quite a few things. But the entryway chandelier just seemed so frivolous, especially since it's something so easily updated later. But I looooooove it!

There were a lot of updates today. The electricians came and installed many of the lighting fixtures we had purchased at Home Depot. They also installed all of the light switches and electrical outlets.

Adam & Terry also finished putting in the hardwood floors in the breakfast area, and about half of the interior doors are installed. (See? Too late to change now.) Our other lighting is due to be delivered tomorrow, so that part will be finished soon. And apparently the rest of the interior doors & trim will not take a long time. So there's progress.

It almost looks like a real house!

I'm told we will be able to move on June 21. But we might not be able to live in the house on June 22. Interestingly, the critical path seems to involve the kitchen countertops and plumbing. They measure for the countertops tomorrow (or Wednesday), then there's production time, THEN the plumber can come out and hook up the kitchen faucet & the like.

I guess I'll take it. We can do the air mattress thing in either house for a while if necessary, and as long as the toilets and at least one sink work, I'm happy.

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.

We have a garage!

Man, it's killing me not to have Photoshop so I can get the pictures on here in proper format.

Yesterday, we went for our electrical walkthrough (to ensure electrical outlets and light switches are properly placed, etc.) and we have a garage! And trusses! (on site but not on the house)

It looks great. Except that there is just about NO space to the right of the rightmost garage door, so we can't put our favorite gorgeous coach light out there. We'll have 3 spaces and 2 lights, plus a floodlight on top so we can actually see something. It figures - the one thing we LOVE and it doesn't work out.

We also revised some choices on the bathroom vanities. We were $1800 overbudget after choosing solid surface for the bathroom vanities. And we didn't even really like it that much. So we went instead with cultured marble for the master bath (plain white with integrated sinks) and ... laminate for the 2nd bath. Gah. I can't believe it. But it was either that or the white cultured marble. We went with pale green and pale blue, so it'll be nice and coordinating. Hopefully we don't have girly girls who insist on pink and purple bathroom decor. Anyway, at least this way we have some color, and we won't be wracked with guilt if we want to rip it out in 5 or 10 years.

Who knew it was so impossible to find attractive and durable countertop materials?

Lighting update

HA! Our original lighting allowance/budget was $1250. Our quote from the lighting store is
$2741.40, and I don't think that includes any recessed lighting, of which there will be a considerable amount. Obviously, we can cut that down quite a bit, but I don't see how we can halve it without sacrificing a lot of aesthetics.

The good news is that lighting - unlike, say, flooring or cabinetry - is easy to switch out just about any time. So, worst case, we just go cheap now and start upgrading lights one at a time.

I wonder what would happen if I just went to Home Depot with my lighting list and came up with stuff there.

Lighitng!!

Saturday was an amazing adventure! Alison, our interior designer, came into town. I think she'll be among the best money we spend on this adventure. She helped us pick out lighting for the whole house (see below) , a siding (and gutter and soffit and downspout) color (a medium gray), and helped us out with the granddaddy of decisions - the kitchen countertop (maybe black or black and brown). We even started talking paint colors for the whooooole house (again, see below).

A selection of the lighting choices are featured below, in no particular order (click on the picture to see the larger version and read the text). The flushmount is pretty boring, but hey, you need lights in the hallways and closets. The most exciting (to me, at least) is the exterior lighting. We saw a few that we liked but didn't love, and then it was like heaven opened up and shone a light on this one. And THEN it turned out to be one of the less expensive options. It's great.




Like I said, that was the most exciting part. We also got approval on our previous kitchen selections (which will go a long way to keeping me from second-guessing myself) and talked paint colors. I'm a dork, so I made an image with the paint colors we talked about. Nobody's rushing out to buy paint or anything, so this all could change, but I do like it overall, especially looking at them all together. It's not like we have one room that really sticks out like a sore thumb (I don't think).


As far as construction progress goes, there is waterproofing material on the outsides of the basement walls. It's ugly, but it's there. And the ugly part is getting covered with dirt, so it's all good.

OH! I almost forgot. We're at strike two on the ceiling fan for the master bedroom. The one I posted about earlier looked even more questionable after our visit to the lighting store; it's definitely out. We picked another one at the lighting store. I was unsure about it at the time, and it got worse after I slept on it. Strike two.

In browsing the web this evening, though, we may have found a winner! It's Hunter's "Palermo" ceiling fan. I am really digging it; the downside seems to be that it uses a compact fluorescent bulb, which some customer reviews describe as "harsh." (Not exactly ideal for a cozy master bedroom.) Maybe it would be better for the breakfast area and we can move the one we picked for that into the master bedroom.

And THAT, my friends, is all she wrote. For tonight, at least. Phew.