Carpeting & Plumbing

I have a lot of pics to share with everyone. I finally remembered to take photos of the plumbing and as of yesterday, we have carpeting! Yay! And the BEST news.....FINAL INSPECTION IS MONDAY!!! Woohoo!!! The AC is up and running too (just in time for our 90+ degree weekend coming up). We have some touch painting to do this weekend(AGAIN) courtesy of the carpet guys. But it certainly looks like next weekend is moving weekend!

Powder room....it's hard to take a pic of such a small room!! Joe says the "ugly" green towel has to go!:

Master Bathroom:

Guest/Main Bath:

The tile guys came back to finish the tile surround for the bath tub in the guest bath:

And now...the carpeting! I took these at sunset so they're a little dark. Great Room:

Foyer/Stairs:

Master Bedroom:

One of the guest bedrooms:

Walk-In Closet:

We have a mailbox!

First, the exciting news....we should have final inspection the end of next week! Yay! So if all goes as planned, we'll be moving in next weekend! :)

Last weekend, we registered with the post office and put up a mailbox. So now we can get mail! Woohoo! I sent out change of address cards yesterday. So everyone that needs one should be getting one shortly. If I forgot you, please let me know. Here's a photo of our new mailbox...


We have all of our plumbing (sinks, toilets, etc) and I just realized I didn't take photos of any of it! So I will try to remember to do that this weekend. We also got our new washer and dryer (we went with front loading Bosch ones) and all of the appliances are in and working. The final grade is being done today. The air conditioning should be done this weekend and then carpeting is going in Monday. And....that's it! FINALLY!

More painting and appliances

I thought the painting days were almost over...ha! We now have touch up painting (for the gazillion holes and scratches from people working on the house) and all of our doors need a second coat. So this past weekend I caulked the holes in the trim on the first floor and then repainted it all. I also got the fireplace mantel done....it looks much better!

And all of our appliances are now in (minus washer and dryer). Of course, some still have protective wrapping on them but they work. Yay! We need to order a stainless steel backsplash for behind the stove.

If you noticed, our pendant lights above the island aren't in yet. That's because the electrician mismeasured and they're not centered. Big oops! So....they can cut the ceiling, move them, drywall and spackle again (and we'd have to repaint) OR we can move the island over. Joe measured and the electrician is off by 2.5 inches. So we'd have to move the island 2.5 inches closer to the stove. It leaves us with a 16 inch walk way, instead of 18.5 inches. So we're going to have them do that. We really don't want to repaint the ceiling. It would mean covering everything and a huge mess. So the electrician gets off easy...this time.

Fireplace and Front Porch

Trying my best to stay on top of the updates....as I said before, things are moving along quickly! The trim guys finished 90% of all the trim yesterday. It looks good! Our appliances were also delivered. They're waiting in the dining room to be installed.

So we now have a fireplace mantel (that needs to be painted!) and a front porch (also needs to be painted). Photos below.

I think the fireplace is too big. Joe likes it. It's 5'3" from the floor to the top...that's as tall as me! The photo below shows the size better.

At this point, there's no way to make it smaller. I'll just have to live with it, I suppose. The front porch really makes the house look finished.

Final plumbing and electric are up next!

Tile and Pergo

Well, we had an "oops" over the weekend. It's the first one in a long time. Titan's fault, of course. The tile guys showed up Saturday and got to work right away. I had a fundraiser for therapy dogs all day. Joe got to the house around 2pm, after he fixed the AC at someone's house. The poor tile guy was putting the very last tile on the tub surround (goes from top of the tub to the ceiling)....and Joe saw that it was the wrong size tile! They put those itty bitty 6x6 tiles in and we had specified 12x12 tiles. So they had to carefully rip out all of the tile they had just put up. Titan had never given the change order to the tile guys. And it gets even better....the tile guys are on a company trip for the next 10 days! So needlesstosay, we won't have tile in our main bath for two weeks. It shouldn't put that much of a kink in things. Just annoying....more annoying to the tile guys, I'm sure! So on to the pictures....

Tile around the fireplace....still missing the mantle (ignore the disgruntled Sheltie pup in the x-pen):

Tile in the foyer and hallway:

Tile in the bathrooms (hard to get a good photo since they're not big, open rooms):

And finally, the Pergo floor in the dining room:

Cooper "tested" all of the new flooring. We caught him napping on the tile, the Pergo and the kitchen floor. Goofy puppy! He seems to like the tile best. Here he is napping on the kitchen floor:

Appliances are being delivered today. Then we just need the plumbing, electric and trim to be finished. Followed by the carpeting. And that's it!

Kitchen Flooring and Stair Railing

Things are moving along very quickly now. I'm going to try to keep up with the updates. We *should* be moving in around the end of May. Yesterday, they installed our kitchen floor. We had originally wanted tile in the kitchen, but the upgrade charge was ridiculous (somewhere around $10k, I think). So instead we went with the best linoleum you can get. Supposedly nothing sticks to it and it has a lifetime warranty. We plan on putting tile and granite in the kitchen in a few years. Until then, this will do! The island was moved temporarily until the flooring is finished.


Kitchen floor (photo is a little dark, it was sunset when I took it):

You can click on the photo to make it larger.

They also installed our stair railing. We were originally going to paint it all white. But now, we're kind of glad we stained it. Well, Joe stained it. We did miss the little screw covers, so those will be stained this weekend. The stairs will be carpeted. We picked a dark brown color.

Monday, the tile guy starts. The foyer, hallway and bathrooms all get tile. Then the electrician and plumbers will be back to finish their stuff. Oh, and our appliances are being delivered Tuesday. I'll try to update after the weekend!

Painting is DONE!

Well, three weekends later and all the painting is done. Thank goodness! I mean, they'll still be touch ups later....but all of the yucky, all day painting is done. We went with color everywhere. I'm not a fan of white walls, nor was I going to paint the whole house one color. Right now, we're pleased with how everything turned out. I think it'll look even nicer once the trim is up. Trim starts tomorrow. Followed by the tile guy, final electric, final plumbing and the rest of the flooring. The end is in sight! Woohoo!

It was a gloomy, rainy day so the kitchen looks darker than it is...there are two pantries to the right that you can't see in this photo:

So you can get an idea of the flow of the floorplan...this is standing in the laundry room, looking through the kitchen to the great room....we love open floorplans!



The next two are the Great Room...same paint color as the kitchen (it looks different in every photo):

Dining Room (two windows to the right)....I had to take this at an odd angle to show the paint color correctly...it was showing up too dark:

One of the guest rooms....it's not that dark of a purple, bad lighting again:

Other guest room, also not this dark:

Master Bedroom:

Master Bath...color is "Squirrel" :)..

And finally the master walk-in closet....

The only thing missing is the laundry room. It's the same color as the walk-in closet above. There was just too many things in there to take a nice photo. So the next set of photos will have the laundry room.

And last but not least....our little painting helper, Cooper:

Who was sleeping when he wasn't getting into the paint:

Painting begins...

Ah, the joys of painting an entire house. It seems a lot bigger when you have to paint every square inch....THREE times! I think Joe said there was 6500 sq ft of walls and ceilings (the whole house is only 2200 sq ft of living space). We sprayed and then back rolled the primer. That took about 7 or 8 hours. Then we started the ceilings that night with the first coat of paint. The next day, we finished the first coat on the ceilings and went back for the second coat. And finally, by Sunday afternoon....we started the color on the walls. That's the fun part....well, ok, maybe not "fun"...but interesting! We got a first coat on the laundry room and the walk-in closet. They're two of the smaller rooms (walk-in - 9x10 ft; laundry- 8x10 ft) so it was a good place to start. Now onto the photos.... :)

Part of the Great Room:




Kitchen:



Master Bedroom (ask Joe how much fun it is to paint vaulted ceilings!):





Master Walk-In Closet:




Sorry for the darkness of the photos. It was pretty late before I had a chance to grab the camera and take some photos. The color in the walk-in closet is actually a grayish blue-green, if that makes sense. The paint was still wet when I took the photo (and that's only one coat).

We'll finish painting this weekend. So LOTS of photos after this weekend!

We have siding!

The siding and shutters are finally complete. All we need yet on the exterior are the gutters and porch railing. Still waiting on the HVAC to be finished and then we can paint!


The latest photos:














View from the fields...we love how the color blends with the scenery.

Garage door and the start of siding...finally!

We now have a garage door and they started siding yesterday. The siding guys hope to be finished by the end of this week. They should be digging trenches for the underground utilities shortly. Painting and the rest of the HVAC are up next!

Garage Door:

The walk-out basement is sided:

Best of all, almost a perfect match between the Pella windows and the siding....yay! We were worried there would be a noticable difference...we're trying to avoid that white window/tan siding look (it's fine for replacement windows, but not on a new house):

More updates when the siding is finished!