A Nugget and a Doodle

Merry Christmas everyone!  I found out yesterday that there are really big milestones coming up at the house in the next couple weeks, so I wanted to get this update out before there are more important updates to share.  Plus the brick work is nearly done, and the wall texture was done Monday night!  I want to wait for the mortar to dry before I post pictures of the brick - it makes a huge difference. So, you might remember the nugget's wingback chair, which was my first attempt at reupholstering  anything more complex than a flat dining seat.  It went really well - maybe too well - and I think I went into this second project a bit too confident.  It was hard... much harder than I was expecting. I bought this antique settee (or my new favorite word, sofette!) at a local antique shop.  It's about 200 years old, and I got a great deal on it.  I got an estimate to have it professionally reupholstered, and the quote was $625, excluding fabric. ...

I'm not sure if it's because I traveled a couple weeks ago, or because I've been sick for a week now, or busy and preoccupied with the holidays or all the projects waiting for my time, but for one reason or another, I was completely shocked to walk in to a house full of finished sheetrock, fully taped and mudded!  It looks so much more like a home now and less like a bunch of sticks and wires! When we built our last house, the framing stage made the house feel small, and then we expected the blueboard to make it feel even smaller but it had the opposite effect.  This time the framing stage made the house feel big, and the sheetrock has made some rooms feel even bigger and others feel smaller.  The ceiling height is having a big impact on the overall feel too.  It's SOOOOO exciting to see it come together all around us in 3 dimensions, or 5 dimensions if you count the construction smells and the blaring mexican music playing on work days.  :)  They reall...

Per usual, we're delayed.  I'm not sure why, but 3 weeks ago we were "definitely on schedule" to have sheetrock start this week.  Well, now we're hoping insulation starts mid-week.  We haven't seen the sheetrock delivery yet.  Brick was supposed to start this week too, but haven't seen those deliveries either.  So we took matters into our own hands to force the "progress" issue. We went shopping! Mom and I have gone Black Friday shopping for as long as I can remember being old enough to last all day.  Last year was the exception.  We were a bit crazy planning our big cross country move, plus it was the first year with 2 babies in the house... we were tired.  :)  We aren't the type to run over an old lady to get a parking spot or the type to get in an altercation over the last doorbuster on the shelf.  It's usually about the hunt and the strategy and the tradition.  After Thanksgiving dinner, we spread out the old fashioned flyer...

It's going to be a couple more weeks before we have any juicy construction updates for you.  Currently there are a whole bunch of inspections lined up for this week, and the polyseal spray foam is going in, then insulation, but none of those are exciting photos.  So, I thought a little bragging might entertain you in the meantime. This chair is by no means perfect.  It was intended to be my "learning chair" but I fell in love with the shape, and then I fell in love with the fabric so I was hoping I could get it to turn out ok.  I bought it to go in Nugget's new big boy bedroom at the new house, and I'm so so happy with the outcome.  I did learn a lot and feel like I'll do even better on the next one, and believe me the projects are stacking up!  I've got at least 3 more upholstery projects lined up already, and then probably several more that I just haven't decided on. My biggest takeaway is that I'm not a seamstress and I will never be a seams...

This phase is a lot more exciting in person than the pictures convey, but this is the last update before our framing walk-through with our builder where we approve or request changes on all the stuff INSIDE the walls.  After that, the sheetrock is the next milestone!!  woohoo!  Pics after the jump.

Happy birthday to me -- Happy birthday to me -- Got a roof for my birthday  -- Happy birthday to me!! So it's not completely done, and they haven't even started mom and dad's roof, but ours is nearly done and I couldn't help myself from blogging immediately because I was really second guessing our roof shingles, but I love them now that they're up. I'm also marveling at how much more I can appreciate the shape of the house and the roofline now that the shingles are up!  The little french gnome house has taken shape! What a joy to pull up to our house on a VERY rainy day expecting to see nobody there working, and instead seeing that there's no place for us to conveniently park.  Lots of trucks for multiple trades all at once!  I'm so hopeful this is what our builder meant by "catching up" once the house is water tight.  We're still not water tight, but getting close.  The kitchen window went in today as well.  I haven't been inside...

We no longer go up to visit our lot on friday nights.  Now we go up to see our house! The exterior walls, interior walls, and roof are all completely framed.  Right now they're working on all the cornice which collectively refers to everything that encloses the house.  In our case, as our builder will very proudly tell you, that means 3 layers of energy efficient goodness.  There are 4 layers on the corners actually!  His focus on energy efficiency was one of the major reasons we chose him to build our house.  On top of the already superior sealing and energy work they include standard in all their homes, we opted for the additional Rolls Royce of energy efficiency packages, which should put our house in the top 1% of energy efficient homes in the country!  Yay for environmental responsibility!  Yay for our electric bills in the Texas summers!   There are 4 houses under construction in our community.  The other 3 are moving much ...

Our granite was the source of a lot of self-imposed drama (for me - as with everything else, Brent just rolls with the punches).  We need a lot of it ($) and the kitchen is part of an open plan that you see as you walk in the front door so we wanted to find something we love ($$)!  Of course, I tend to only love granite that's not like the granite in every other household in America.  ($$$) My original love   lust    stalker-obsession    favorite was called "Super White" or "White Fantasy" which are both kind of misnomers because the stone is gray with giant white splotches.  It's gorgeous, but it's quartz, and not the super strong kind, but rather a soft quartz that behaves more like marble.  It will etch, scratch and stain.  Some more consumer-friendly suppliers even place it in the marble department to avoid disappointing the homeowners who didn't do any research and wonder why their super durable "granite" counters are staini...

Well the framing was delayed a bit, but the crew of 11+ has made MAJOR progress in just 3 days - enough for a mid-week blog post!  In fact, they started on the roof this afternoon!  I love that our house is so "BAM" as you turn onto the street, and it's all you see in the rear view mirror as you drive away.   This cul de sac is all about us.  :)

I'm traveling this week, which is a good thing because I'd probably want to drive up every day to check on progress.  :)  I'm told the lumber will be delivered on Monday, and the framing will start on Tuesday.  There's no rain in the forecast all week, so even if they are delayed a couple days there should be SOMETHING to see on our usual Friday evening trip up there. Here's all the little bits I haven't updated on individually...as I think I left off with the rough plumbing. After that the concrete guys started on the post tension engineered slab.   In a post tension slab system, steel cables are criss-crossed throughout the foundation area before the concrete is poured.  Then after the concrete is poured and begins to cure, the cables are tightened to add tension and strengthen the slab, making it even more solid than it would normally be.   While traditional re-bar helps hold the foundation together to minimize cracks, the cable tension grid provides...

Finally!!!  I'm so happy to debut these chairs.  I put a lot of time into them - more than it may seem just by looking at them since dining chairs are the easiest re-upholstery project there is, and it's easy to slap on some paint, right?  Read on friends.  NOTE:  If you don't care about all the drama or the who, what, where, why, and how... just scroll to the bottom for the chair reveal.  :) We bought an inexpensive dining room set in our last house for our formal dining room.  It was very pretty, but it wasn't good quality and the chairs never felt solid.  We didn't use it much though.  In our future house, we have a "casual" dining room which is open to the kitchen and living room, so it will be used regularly.  Maybe you've seen the table I refinished in my " Restoration Hardware Who ?" post... the table is solid solid solid.  I wanted some really high quality chairs to make an eclectic set...something frenchy with curves...a ...

So I posted pictures of the refinishing process for our dining table that was my parents table originally.  It makes sense that we'd want to hang on to that table because it's beautiful and it was theirs.  But my new found fascination for old or pre-owned things doesn't stop there.  When we built our first house and picked out furniture, if a piece had a wood grain out of place it was tainted to me.  Now I can't seem to get enough of the vintage, antique pieces that have long outlived me. I found this buffet on Craiglist, and it was the absolute exact size and style I wanted and I knew I could make her pretty again.  When we went to pick it up, we met the sellers, who were a bi-racial couple who said they purchased this buffet in an antique store in the 60s (in Dallas) not long after they got married.  Now tell me that family and that buffet doesn't have some stories to tell! BEFORE

So my last post was two weeks ago, and if you remember I said if all went well I'd be posting an update about our rough plumbing one week later (one week ago).  Well, you see where I'm going with this.  Another week delay, but alas, we have rough plumbing.  I'm sure it doesn't look like much fun in pictures, but it was a lot of fun to walk through the "house" and recognize what purpose each pipe will serve.  Please try to ignore the nearly completely framed house on our rear neighbor's lot (yes, they started the same day as us.)  Our builder and project manager are quick to point out that it's not a race and that they'll continue choose quality over speed everyday, which we value.  But a LITTLE speed would be nice once in a while.  :)   Here are some updated pics: The giant plywood box on the left with 1450 on it is a temporary dumpster.  Classy right?  Our subs don't just leave trash on the ground - they build a box around it! ...

So there's all this anticipation about "breaking ground" to get started.  And then you sit and wait.  A lot. Last time you saw some dirt moved around.  We made some decisions about how to grade the lot.  Those decisions were completely disregarded for engineering reasons (we think).  What this means is our backyard is going to slope down steadily with a difference of about 5 feet from the back of our house to the back of our property line.  :(  More to come on that as we look for solutions.   This was two weeks in with more dirt moved around. Although the kids had fun playing at this visit, I left feeling uneasy about the level of the grade and the slow progress.  You can tell how excited we all were for our weekly visits based on us all having knee high rubber boots.  Are we cute or obnoxious?

It's going to be a while before I have any more construction updates to share aside from more pictures of dirt.  Evidently, there are dueling engineers fighting over soil, so they're going to run more tests on it, and those results will take 3 days, so we've hurried and now we wait.  So in the meantime, I thought I might tantalize you with my latest project.  I'm rather proud of this one! When we moved, mom and dad were going to sell their dining room table and the matching buffet.  It's a very large, very solid oak farmhouse style table.  it's 6' long without the extensions, and that was how I was used to seeing it.  It was also a very orange honey oak color that lends itself to country decor, and while that finish isn't our style, the table itself is a winner.  So we asked them to lug this beast from Boston out to Dallas for us with the intent of refinishing it for use in our new house! Here she WAS in her petite form without the extensions in al...

Well, it's day 1, or what our builder calls "movin' dirt!"  That's right, Day 1, and we're over budget already.  Like the title of this post, "and so it begins..."  Whatever, at least we're finally getting started.  It seems like it's taken us forever to get to this point, so even just to see a little dirt moved around was exciting for us! Here are some photos of the lot pre-construction - This was taken on a yucky, record-setting cold day last October.  I have lots of sunny day pics but can't find them at the moment!