Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Updated pics of the house

are what's in store for today. The siding's been done for a while but I realized I never posted anything so here they are!


here's the front view of the house. The garage is going to the left so the left side of the house hasn't been sided yet.
Next summer we are putting a front porch across the entire length of the front of the house and hopefully a back deck/patio as well. This year we're just concentrating on getting the garage done and sided which we'll be working some more on this weekend.

I love our front door and the lantern lights!


The right side of the house:


and the back of the house


And for your viewing pleasure, a few pics of Darrell on his tractor!

Monday, October 28, 2013

Inside tour part 1: basement and first floor

So we are about a month away from moving in, even so, that feels like an eternity and we still have so much to do that we're exhausted just thinking about it. Now that a majority of the work is finished I thought I'd take some pictures of the inside of the house (as best I can) to give you a feel for the place. There are still a lot of things that need to be finished and TONS of painting to be done but these will serve as some nice before pictures.

So!

Here we go!

prepare yourself for the picture onslaught!


These are our basement stairs... This is how we've been getting in and out of the house as the front/back/side doors still have no stairs to the ground. So we've been going down through the basement and up through to the first floor which up until about a week ago meant climbing a ladder to the doorway that is supposed to lead to stairs down into the basement.. that hadn't been built yet.

view from the stairs into the rest of the basement (featuring new stairs!)and the ladder that we used to use...


So that's one level of the house - the basement. Moving up to the first floor,lets pretend we're entering through the front door and not climbing stairs or ladders...


This is the view of the entry and our small foyer. We weren't looking for a huge foyer because we plan on using the side entrance that will connect to the garage (currently being built) and a future mudroom as part of the garage. If you enter the house from the front door you immediately have the stairs in front of you, hallway just to the right of the stairs, coat closet to the right side and entrance to the dining room to the left.


Here's a better view down the hall. The pictures were cramped because I couldn't actually stand outside the front door to take pictures down the hallway.. I was backed up against the front door. Anyway - down the hall past the coat closet is our 4th bedroom/home office, the full downstairs bathroom and at the far end of the hall it opens up into the great room.

closer look at the office and downstairs bathroom- as you look through the french doors into the office you see a door to the main bathroom, a walk in closet, and one of the windows. Second picture is of the other side of the room -nice big windows.
The bathroom on the main floor has access from the office and hallway - which explains the 2 different views. We used the same tile in the foyer as the bathroom and even carried it up into our master bathroom.


in the great room as you come down the hall from the front door you immediately see the breakfast nook:

to the right is the living room with sliding glass doors and gas fireplace (Darrell and I actually finished putting that together this past week and lit our first fire!)

to the left of the breakfast nook is my absolute favorite place - the kitchen!

the opening in the left of the kitchen goes out into the dining room. The picture of the kitchen with the microwave in the center of the frame was taken from the dining room, actually. We have a door to the garage (eventually an opening into a mudroom) a pantry, and some more cabinet storage across from the peninsula.


Here's a view of the dining room from the kitchen. I love the huge open pass-through between the two rooms.

We've gotten a bit more done since then but I don't want to post any of those pics yet so they can be a great before/after. I'll be talking more about each room and what we picked out for the furnishings after we move in and get decorating, etc.

I'll post some pics of the upstairs soon - I've taken them already but don't want to overload this post, and I don't think they're as exciting as all of the downstairs stuff :)

Fun Fact! We actually got to start painting this past weekend!!! aahhh!! so exciting to start seeing the transformation! We're hoping to paint a majority of the house before we move in but we'll see how that goes!

Anyway, that's enough for now!

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Who knew building your own home

was a precursor to nervous breakdowns... I feel like after the past week we've had, Darrell and I are about at the end of our ropes. The outside crew is finished, the inside crew comes 1 day here and there and there's still a lot of work to be done on their end and ours. Fall is quickly approaching/fading into winter and there seem to be fewer hours in the day - in terms of sunlight and just in general.

My back has been on the fritz for almost 3 weeks now. I finally broke down and went to the chiropractor on Saturday and again Monday morning before work when I couldn't stand or sit for any length of time... I'm doing a bit better today but I'm still really sore and car rides/driving is the bane of my existence.

On top of waiting for crews and having a crap ton of work to do on the house our little fur-baby Ellie decided to eat our couch today... and Darrell's truck needs a new wheel-bearing... and I have a lot going on at school this week... and there still aren't enough hours in the day...

Thursday, October 3, 2013

It's coming

along! The outside crew finished this week and my cousin installed the boiler. Now we're waiting for the plumbing to be hooked up, one final hot water heater check and the inside crew to be finished. It's funny because G&I said that usually the house is finished and it's delays on the buyers end that hold them up from moving in (waiting on a boiler install, or septic or well, etc) and for once I think the buyer (us) will be waiting on them! After they finish the inside the only thing we have left to do is hook up the plumbing, which we can't do until they finish the house...

The inside crew was supposed to be there this week to finish by this Friday or next Monday. After Wednesday rolled around and they still weren't there my husband called them and they said they'd been assigned a different house to do first and that they'd be at our lot next week.. That doesn't make much sense to me since they'd already started at our house, then returned to the one they were on before to officially finish up some things.. oh well
It's all happening a lot sooner than I expected it to so these minor delays still put us way ahead of the schedule I had in my head :). Even if they don't finish until next week we will be painting as soon as they finish and hopefully moving in by the end of the month!