Worn out

Lisa and I spent 3 hours today with the interior designer at Star Lumber. We are close to getting everything picked out for our interior selections. We ran out of time today but both of us were ready to call it a day. The only thing left to pick out is what tile we want for the fireplace. Once that is picked out we should be done. I just hope that when they send us the quote we are within budget. Some of the tiles we loved ended up being way over our price. It is amazing how much a 12" x 12" tile can cost when you start looking at glass and metal tiles. Lisa seems to be very happy with what she got to pick out. I am just glad that I get to sleep in the bed and not on the couch. Nothing happened on the inside of the home today because we still don't have any gas to turn on the heat. The masons continued on with the brick install.

Finished up above Winter's bedroom window.

First Coat of Mud

Today the house was cleaned out and the first coat of mud was applied to the drywall. Not much more can be done until they get some heat on inside the house. Masons were plugging away on the front of the house. Going to the lighting supplier was a big waste of time. They didn't have any of the lighst that we had picked out online to see in person. Lisa didn't find anything there that she wanted so back to searching until we get all the lights picked out.

Getting closer.
Picture of the kitchen. You can see one of the fixes in this picture.
Living Room.
Garage.

Thanksgiving Update

Thanksgiving put me behind on posting anything about the house since I took a nice trip back home for a few days. Since I left last Tuesday afternoon I am not sure if anyone has worked on the house since then. The brick on the front of the house is getting there but I hope that this will be their last week. The drywall should be all hung in the next few days and maybe by then we will have gas ran to the house. After walking the house today we spotted a few things that need to be fixed. Nothing that can't be done in a days time. Lisa and I have a very busy week this week since we are going to need to play catch up on finalizing some selections. We plan on meeting real quick with the lighting supplier to order lights for the house. Then on Wednesday, we have our big meeting to pick out tile, carpet, and hardwood. Now onto the pictures.

Daytime picture of the brick.
Walked into a garage that is completely drywalled. Not going to complain about this just yet.Looking at the main floor living room. Built in bookshelves are going in the nooks on both sides of the fireplace.

Looking at the kitchen. Master shower is still missing some water resistant drywall.

Day 2 of drywall

Today they got a lot of the drywall up on the ceilings along with a few walls. Still need a gas meter so we can have some heat in the house. It is getting to cold at night to have drywall mud on the walls and have to worry about it freezing.
The masons got one wall finished up and it looks good. I didn't get to see it up close since it was dark outside when I got over to the house. It started to rain this evening so we will see if this slows them down tomorrow. It would be nice to have it finished up and then the house would be pretty much sealed off.

Pantry.
Master Ceiling.
Front entry.
Kitchen ceiling.
Brick on the north side of the garage.

Drywall has started

Friday afternoon the drywall company delivered all the drywall material for the house. Saturday afternoon we stopped by the house to find some of the drywall had made it up onto the ceiling and walls. I had some free time today so I went over to the house to see if anyone was working, low and behold there were 2 guys working on the front bedroom. Not sure how much they got down today but I am guessing they will have a majority of the house done by Thanksgiving.

Stocked drywall for the main floor living room.
Back bedroom finished.

Insulation

The brick is going up so slow that I am glad something else is being done on the inside of the house. Today they did a ton of insulating work. To me it looks like the first floor and basement walls are completely insulated. If that is the case then all they lack is the ceiling insulation and that won't happen until drywall is complete.

Front bedroom.
Part of the basement.Garage wall.
Brick installed on the garage wall.

Slow going

The masons got a few more bricks laid today but nothing to get excited about. The second shutter was built and there was some pre-insulation work done on the house. Off site, Lisa and I picked out our granite today. After much debate we decided on 2 slabs of Santa Cecilia granite for our home. I will post a picture below to show you a close up of what we picked. In two weeks we have our big interior meeting to pick out carpet, tile and hard wood flooring. Once that meeting is finished we should be done with all of our selections. Heck the granite is scheduled to be installed on December 30th. Right now it feels like we are going to be moving in earlier then expected.

Not much to see today.
Close up of what our granite will look like.

Bricks and more

Yesterday, the masons laid out everything so that today they could begin laying the brick. You can see in the picture that they didn't get much brick laid today but at least it is progress. We also got one of the shutters built and is in the garage waiting to be installed. The low voltage guys came back today and moved the cable/comm lines to the correct locations. The electric meter was installed on Monday so now we have permanent power to the house. We are still waiting on water and gas to be installed.

Siding is complete

Friday a few trades came by and got some work done on the house. The biggest thing was the siders finished up back side of the house which completed the siding. The low voltage guys decided to install cable, cat5 and phone even though we hadn't even told them where to install them. So once again they get to come back and reinstall the cables to our liking. The plumbers installed the 2 showers and even put in the valves for our master shower. Not sure we like it at this time.
This week it should be clear and dry which means the masons will start on the brick work. I can't wait to see the brick up on the front of the house. The material has been sitting in the front yard for a week now. Lisa and I still have interior items to decide on. Mainly the flooring and tile needs to be roughly picked out by the end of the week.

Back side of the house finished.
Jack n Jill bath shower installed.
Master shower with the two valves installed. Main shower head is directly in the center of the shower with an additional hand held shower to the right. Not what we envisioned but I think it will work out well.

Interior selections

Today Lisa and I meet with with our builders interior designer to pick out a few interior items. Some of things we selected were: baseboard, door casing, interior doors, stair balusters, top hand rail and newell posts. We also made our final selection on the cabinets. The book cases are now going to happen but we are trying to decide if we want them painted or stained.
After the meeting we stopped by the house to see if any work had been done since Sunday. It was no surprise to see that nothing had been done due to the fact that we recently got 2-3" of rain. I am hoping by tomorrow the yard will be dry enough that the siders can finish up and the masons can start. If anything does happen I will be sure to post new pictures.

Over the weekend

Friday we didn't stop by the house because we took the kids over to Exploration Place to check out the new castle right after I got off work. Saturday we stopped by to find the siders working so we left them alone and didn't take any pictures. We even stopped by Sunday after we dropped Winter off at a friends house to see what got done and low and behold the siders were there again. I didn't make it over to the house today since it was raining hard all day. It is also suppose to rain all day tomorrow so we will have to wait and see what got, done if anything. Hard to imagine anything got done since we haven't signed off on the plumbing or electrical selection sheets. I am in no rush at this point so we will just wait on Nies.

Weston playing around in our future kitchen. The red and blue pipes you see are the new water lines for the kitchen sink in the island. The yellow wire on the floor is electrical lines for the dishwasher, garbage disposal and outlets in the island.
This is our new plumbing manifold. This is one thing that I was super excited about getting. I know it isn't anything special but man it makes it easy to shut one water souce off if you ever have to fix something. The missing lines are marked for the items in the basement. I need to do is run a couple of lines over to the basement bath and bar and the whole house will be plumbed.
Nothing like buying a new shower/tub enclosure to have it delivered to the house looking like this. I am sure it will be fine but if it isn't I will have a picture to show what it looked like before being installed. This happens to be one of those items I really don't care much about since most people will not see it. This one is actually going in the basement bathroom. The Jack n Jill bath will have a matching shower/tub installed. This is one thing we didn't think about until after framing but if we decide to build another house we will buy the taller and wider unit.

Slow down

The electrician started today before we even signed off on the change order/location sheet. We had a few changes so now they can fix them tomorrow at there own cost. On a good note the south side of the house looks to be fully sided. The brick was delivered so hopefully they can start laying some brick on the front of the house tomorrow.

I ended up sending Lisa the lighting suppliers website this afternoon which might not have been a good idea but she did an amazing job of finding all of the lights we needed for our house in less then an hour. Even better was she stuck to our original budget for this house. Now we just need to see if we can see them in person and get them ordered.

Bricks delivered to the house. South side of the house sided.

Just a random shot of the recessed can lights in the kitchen.

Rain

Rain rain and more rain. We had our electrical walk through today so now we have the lights, switches and outlets laid out where we think we want them. It takes some imagining to walk a house at this stage to find the best spot for everything. The electricians plan to start tomorrow so hopefully we will see some wire ran by the end of the week. The plumbers came back today to run the water line from the house to the curb. We are still working on the cabinet company to finish up a correct layout and pricing sheet so that we can get things ordered for the kitchen. Everything is starting to come together!

Siding and Brick

More siding was installed today along with a small portion of brick. The siding guy worked all day alone but it looks like he finished all the tedious work today. If the weather holds we may see the house completely by tomorrow. The masons decided to throw up some left over brick from the last house they were working on. Doing this is not a huge deal since the front porch will be poured in concrete and it will cover up all the brick work they did today.

Tomorrow, Lisa and I are having our electrical walk through with the superintendent and the electrician. Not sure yet what we want to do for telephone and cable outlets for this house. We haven't had a home phone in years so I would like to just have 1 telephone line ran into the data box in the basement. That way if a new owner wants telephone they can install the main phone there and run remote cordless units throughout the rest of the home. Another big thing might be home network using cat5 cable. It might be nice to just have each TV outlet paired with a cat5 cable which would all lead to the data box. That way if we wanted to run a hard line to each media device we could. Something to ponder over the next few days.

This is all that was done since they are still waiting on our brick to arrive before they start.
South side of the house with a few rows of siding installed.
Back of the house.
A picture of the siding glass door that will lead to the covered deck.