I frequent an online support group for others who are building homes, and a fellow member provided a link to this image about the emotional roller coaster of building. It's pretty funny, and probably pretty accurate for most builds.
After analyzing the graph, I decided it wasn't an accurate picture of our project. Ours looks more like this, with the last couple months showing up more like an EKG.
Through the middle of the project, as others start to get distraught, we were happy as clams as long as they were making progress. Though, as others start to experience the growing euphoria of seeing a house near completion, we've been on more of a daily roller coaster. For example, we're psyched to see a concrete truck show up finally but devastated to see the wrong tile being put in our shower (again) all in the same day! Thrilled to see light fixtures installed, but disappointed to see 1 of 3 pendants hanging at the right height and the other 2 still hanging more than a foot too high for over a week now over the same island. Also disappointed that in spite of painstakingly organizing and labeling light bulbs and PUTTING THEM IN THE ROOMS WHERE THEY BELONG, we still end up with some of mom's bulbs in my house, some of my bulbs in her house, and a whole bunch still missing. So excited the plumber finally showed up, and then disappointed to see they installed the wrong faucets in both houses! Seriously, not a single trade would even get a C grade on their first visit. I'd flunk them all. They get it done in the end, but we'd be living there already and everyone involved would have made a whole lot more profit if they didn't insist on doing everything two and three times! I could give a hundred more examples, but you get the idea.
I'll tease you with a couple more photos, but I'm primarily using this week's blog to bellyache, and also to hold ourselves accountable for progress on the million things left to do before we move. Everything not finished will be weighing on us during our time to move and get settled. Speaking of moving... here it is! I'm told they're pushing to have our preliminary walk-through at the end of March, I'd guess Friday March 28th, and then the final final walk-through happens a week later, so they're targeting April 4th. I've buffered that by 2 weeks, but we gave official notice to the landlord of the house we're in now for April 18th. HOORAY!!!!! The end is in sight. Are you doing the math? April 4th is less than a month from now!!
So here are some pics of progress from this week:
FLATWORK
FLOORS ARE SCRAPED AND STAINED!! (no poly yet - should be tomorrow!)
I'm a little nervous because the color of ours doesn't look right. I know the poly is going to change it, but I'm just concerned there's not enough pigment. We'll see I guess. They don't currently look like the sample, and I didn't think the sample swatch they did last week had any poly on it. Oy... another thing to worry about. They are really pretty as is, and they have that old barn vibe we wanted, but I'm afraid the yellow of the poly mixed with the pink of the red oak is going to get really orange over time. Or maybe they'll be perfect, but it would be so unlike me to worry about it. :)
I'll start with Mom and Dad's floors and get a load of this gorgeous kitchen! Not a bad retirement pad, eh? Note, they fixed the backsplash by the window and finished with grout! yay!
And here are our floors:
Again, no poly on these yet, and sorry - none of them are really true to color, but I think our floors are always going to be like that - chameleon-like and taking on different looks throughout the day. It was also a dreary rainy day when we took these.
CLOSEUPS OF OUR BACKSPLASH FINALLY FINISHED!
You can also finally get a look at our kitchen granite with the blue film off the windows, though it still has the protective covering. Lighting is pretty overexposed in the closeup - sorry! Also, the tiles still have the grout haze on them - it was still wet when I was taking pics.
This coming week is another big week. The house will be off limits until Wednesday to let the poly dry, but Wednesday the carpeting will go in the bedrooms. Thursday the tile should FINALLY be done in the shower, and the concrete guys should wrap up the rest of the driveway. They are also doing a trash pickup from our garage so it no longer looks like hoarders live there. Then Friday I believe the irrigation work might start on the yard!!! We approved our landscape plan and nightscaping plan officially about a week ago. Praying the HOA has some pep in their step and doesn't cause us further delays.
Personally, we've made some good progress too, though the list seems to be growing faster than I can check things off of it!
Our new master bedroom nightstands are complete. I don't have progress photos of these, but I do have an interesting story. I had been stalking these nightstands online for a while. When I happened to catch them on sale I snagged them! They arrived relatively fast, but I immediately knew something was wrong. Two boxes were left at our front steps. One of them was wide open on the bottom and had big gouges all over. The other one had a screw (presumably from it's partner nightstand) lodged in the side of the cardboard box, and had its own gouges, though not as bad as the first box. I opened the bad box and sure enough, it was trashed. I'm pretty sure they used the box for punting practice. That particular nightstand was damaged badly enough that I wouldn't have even considered buying it even off the "as is" clearance rack at Home Goods marked way way down. So I contacted the company and offered pictures of the damage to the boxes as well as the nightstand I inspected. They didn't even ask for the photos. Just immediately refunded my money and processed a claim with UPS. They asked that I keep the furniture in the condition they arrived for 10 business days to give UPS a chance to either come get them or come inspect them to validate the claim. After 10 business days I was instructed to "discard them."
Here's what the boxes looked like BEFORE I opened them. I took the photo as soon as I suspected trouble. :)
And here's some of the damage, though the photo doesn't really do the damage justice. There were broken pieces all over, and outer frame had separated from the inner frame body. Inside, several of the drawer guides had broken off.
So after 15 business days (I gave them an extra whole week) with no contact from UPS, I decided to make
lemonade out of these lemons and save them from a landfill. A lot of glue, clamps, and my trusty nailgun and they're as good as they'll ever be. Luckily the style is not meant to be pristine and shiny, but rather weathered and vintage. I didn't even bother filling the little holes from the nail gun. So I spray painted the hardware with a dark bronze, then gave a quick coat of sponge paint with silver to make them look galvanized. The wood ultimately got a very thinned out coat of homemade chalk paint in the same "Sweet pea" (mint green) paint as I used on the master bathroom chandelier. The gray paint shows through and it looks exactly how I wanted to with less effort than I thought. Gotta love when that happens. Gotta love two free nightstands!
Other progress this week...
I bought nearly all the hardware for window treatments throughout the whole house, and I bought fabric for window treatments in the living room. Originally I had bought the same window panels I had in the doodle's nursery back home because I absolutely loved them, but after many stages of grief, decided to let them go. They were not long enough to hang the way I want to hang them, and they were too formal for the cozy feel we want. All this is to say, it's not just the accomplishment of physically purchasing new fabric, but the hours of agonizing over what new direction to take, and then the traipsing all around Dallas in search of the perfect shade of seafoam in a fine quality linen. Truth be told, this wasn't supposed to be another project. I had already chosen a fabulous pair of window panels at Restoration Hardware. I had mentally spent the $400, gulp, on 2 panels. But when you go to a store to purchase drapes and the sales associate with a RIDICULOUSLY pretentious name in ridiculously pretentious dim lighting for a mall store looks down his nose at me when I ask why I have to pay for shipping when buying at the store, and for some reason it must cost more to ship curtains from RH than it does to ship curtains from any other store... it threw me wildly over the edge. So off we went to shop for fabric. It's a happy ending to this phase of the story. We found fabric, got 25% off, and instead of going home to think about it before committing as I often do, Mom saved the day and marched me back into the store to buy the exact fabric I had set out looking for that day. So I have it in my possession, and I even have the right thread. Now if someone could just loan me a few hours in the day!
Brent, my hero, also finished sanding all the boards from pallets we've been collecting from the construction site. We've had them disassembled for a long while now, but the kids don't love the noise from the power sander so we've had to pick and choose when we work on that. Those boards are going to become the feature wall serving as a headboard in our bedroom.
Today I sewed the window treatments for over the kitchen sink. Check!
Next up, we have to figure out what sort of stain/paint/aging treatment to give the pallet wood for our headboard. We also have to purchase the wood, and then build and paint the nugget's headboard for his big boy bed! I obviously have some sewing to do for the living room curtains, and I'll be making the tiebacks too once those supplies arrive in the mail. I have about a million pieces of furniture to paint, but I won't kid myself into thinking any painting will get done this week. At this point, I really need to pick and choose which projects should get done now and which will have to wait. Also, we need to start wrapping our heads around the idea that we're moving in a month. As in, pack up everything in boxes, shut off utilities, set up all new utilities, get rental trucks, bribe family with beer, and move!
Are these updates WAYYYYY to long? Sorry - I'd do shorter updates more often if I could find the time, but see to-do list above. :)
Until next time...
After analyzing the graph, I decided it wasn't an accurate picture of our project. Ours looks more like this, with the last couple months showing up more like an EKG.
Through the middle of the project, as others start to get distraught, we were happy as clams as long as they were making progress. Though, as others start to experience the growing euphoria of seeing a house near completion, we've been on more of a daily roller coaster. For example, we're psyched to see a concrete truck show up finally but devastated to see the wrong tile being put in our shower (again) all in the same day! Thrilled to see light fixtures installed, but disappointed to see 1 of 3 pendants hanging at the right height and the other 2 still hanging more than a foot too high for over a week now over the same island. Also disappointed that in spite of painstakingly organizing and labeling light bulbs and PUTTING THEM IN THE ROOMS WHERE THEY BELONG, we still end up with some of mom's bulbs in my house, some of my bulbs in her house, and a whole bunch still missing. So excited the plumber finally showed up, and then disappointed to see they installed the wrong faucets in both houses! Seriously, not a single trade would even get a C grade on their first visit. I'd flunk them all. They get it done in the end, but we'd be living there already and everyone involved would have made a whole lot more profit if they didn't insist on doing everything two and three times! I could give a hundred more examples, but you get the idea.
I'll tease you with a couple more photos, but I'm primarily using this week's blog to bellyache, and also to hold ourselves accountable for progress on the million things left to do before we move. Everything not finished will be weighing on us during our time to move and get settled. Speaking of moving... here it is! I'm told they're pushing to have our preliminary walk-through at the end of March, I'd guess Friday March 28th, and then the final final walk-through happens a week later, so they're targeting April 4th. I've buffered that by 2 weeks, but we gave official notice to the landlord of the house we're in now for April 18th. HOORAY!!!!! The end is in sight. Are you doing the math? April 4th is less than a month from now!!
So here are some pics of progress from this week:
FLATWORK
 |
| You can kind of see that the front lead walk is done and half the driveway. They have to re-do the culvert area (for a third time) so they couldn't finish pouring on Friday. |
 |
| My little thug rockin' his rain boots one pant leg up and one down. :) |
 |
| Back walkways and a new pad for our grill |
 |
| Here's a closeup of the exposed aggregate concrete. I'm guessing when the concrete fully dries it's going to look more brown as the concrete moves from gray to white, but a girl can hope! Loving this greige blend! :) |
I'm a little nervous because the color of ours doesn't look right. I know the poly is going to change it, but I'm just concerned there's not enough pigment. We'll see I guess. They don't currently look like the sample, and I didn't think the sample swatch they did last week had any poly on it. Oy... another thing to worry about. They are really pretty as is, and they have that old barn vibe we wanted, but I'm afraid the yellow of the poly mixed with the pink of the red oak is going to get really orange over time. Or maybe they'll be perfect, but it would be so unlike me to worry about it. :)
I'll start with Mom and Dad's floors and get a load of this gorgeous kitchen! Not a bad retirement pad, eh? Note, they fixed the backsplash by the window and finished with grout! yay!
 |
| These have been scraped with the grain and stained with DuraSeal "Chestnut" but not yet poly'd. They are going with high gloss poly for the more traditional look. |
And here are our floors:
Again, no poly on these yet, and sorry - none of them are really true to color, but I think our floors are always going to be like that - chameleon-like and taking on different looks throughout the day. It was also a dreary rainy day when we took these.
 |
| This one is probably the most accurate color. |
CLOSEUPS OF OUR BACKSPLASH FINALLY FINISHED!
You can also finally get a look at our kitchen granite with the blue film off the windows, though it still has the protective covering. Lighting is pretty overexposed in the closeup - sorry! Also, the tiles still have the grout haze on them - it was still wet when I was taking pics.
This coming week is another big week. The house will be off limits until Wednesday to let the poly dry, but Wednesday the carpeting will go in the bedrooms. Thursday the tile should FINALLY be done in the shower, and the concrete guys should wrap up the rest of the driveway. They are also doing a trash pickup from our garage so it no longer looks like hoarders live there. Then Friday I believe the irrigation work might start on the yard!!! We approved our landscape plan and nightscaping plan officially about a week ago. Praying the HOA has some pep in their step and doesn't cause us further delays.
Personally, we've made some good progress too, though the list seems to be growing faster than I can check things off of it!
Our new master bedroom nightstands are complete. I don't have progress photos of these, but I do have an interesting story. I had been stalking these nightstands online for a while. When I happened to catch them on sale I snagged them! They arrived relatively fast, but I immediately knew something was wrong. Two boxes were left at our front steps. One of them was wide open on the bottom and had big gouges all over. The other one had a screw (presumably from it's partner nightstand) lodged in the side of the cardboard box, and had its own gouges, though not as bad as the first box. I opened the bad box and sure enough, it was trashed. I'm pretty sure they used the box for punting practice. That particular nightstand was damaged badly enough that I wouldn't have even considered buying it even off the "as is" clearance rack at Home Goods marked way way down. So I contacted the company and offered pictures of the damage to the boxes as well as the nightstand I inspected. They didn't even ask for the photos. Just immediately refunded my money and processed a claim with UPS. They asked that I keep the furniture in the condition they arrived for 10 business days to give UPS a chance to either come get them or come inspect them to validate the claim. After 10 business days I was instructed to "discard them."
Here's what the boxes looked like BEFORE I opened them. I took the photo as soon as I suspected trouble. :)
And here's some of the damage, though the photo doesn't really do the damage justice. There were broken pieces all over, and outer frame had separated from the inner frame body. Inside, several of the drawer guides had broken off.
So after 15 business days (I gave them an extra whole week) with no contact from UPS, I decided to make
lemonade out of these lemons and save them from a landfill. A lot of glue, clamps, and my trusty nailgun and they're as good as they'll ever be. Luckily the style is not meant to be pristine and shiny, but rather weathered and vintage. I didn't even bother filling the little holes from the nail gun. So I spray painted the hardware with a dark bronze, then gave a quick coat of sponge paint with silver to make them look galvanized. The wood ultimately got a very thinned out coat of homemade chalk paint in the same "Sweet pea" (mint green) paint as I used on the master bathroom chandelier. The gray paint shows through and it looks exactly how I wanted to with less effort than I thought. Gotta love when that happens. Gotta love two free nightstands!
Other progress this week...
I bought nearly all the hardware for window treatments throughout the whole house, and I bought fabric for window treatments in the living room. Originally I had bought the same window panels I had in the doodle's nursery back home because I absolutely loved them, but after many stages of grief, decided to let them go. They were not long enough to hang the way I want to hang them, and they were too formal for the cozy feel we want. All this is to say, it's not just the accomplishment of physically purchasing new fabric, but the hours of agonizing over what new direction to take, and then the traipsing all around Dallas in search of the perfect shade of seafoam in a fine quality linen. Truth be told, this wasn't supposed to be another project. I had already chosen a fabulous pair of window panels at Restoration Hardware. I had mentally spent the $400, gulp, on 2 panels. But when you go to a store to purchase drapes and the sales associate with a RIDICULOUSLY pretentious name in ridiculously pretentious dim lighting for a mall store looks down his nose at me when I ask why I have to pay for shipping when buying at the store, and for some reason it must cost more to ship curtains from RH than it does to ship curtains from any other store... it threw me wildly over the edge. So off we went to shop for fabric. It's a happy ending to this phase of the story. We found fabric, got 25% off, and instead of going home to think about it before committing as I often do, Mom saved the day and marched me back into the store to buy the exact fabric I had set out looking for that day. So I have it in my possession, and I even have the right thread. Now if someone could just loan me a few hours in the day!
Brent, my hero, also finished sanding all the boards from pallets we've been collecting from the construction site. We've had them disassembled for a long while now, but the kids don't love the noise from the power sander so we've had to pick and choose when we work on that. Those boards are going to become the feature wall serving as a headboard in our bedroom.
Today I sewed the window treatments for over the kitchen sink. Check!
Next up, we have to figure out what sort of stain/paint/aging treatment to give the pallet wood for our headboard. We also have to purchase the wood, and then build and paint the nugget's headboard for his big boy bed! I obviously have some sewing to do for the living room curtains, and I'll be making the tiebacks too once those supplies arrive in the mail. I have about a million pieces of furniture to paint, but I won't kid myself into thinking any painting will get done this week. At this point, I really need to pick and choose which projects should get done now and which will have to wait. Also, we need to start wrapping our heads around the idea that we're moving in a month. As in, pack up everything in boxes, shut off utilities, set up all new utilities, get rental trucks, bribe family with beer, and move!
Are these updates WAYYYYY to long? Sorry - I'd do shorter updates more often if I could find the time, but see to-do list above. :)
Until next time...
So happy for you and all the progress. It's definitely a one step forward, two steps back progress but stil progress none the less. It's all beautiful and I'm setting on edge waiting for the finished product!!!!! Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE the graph and didn't even know there were "support groups" for people building homes"!!! We are in the "Painting" phase and see a light at the end of the tunnel!!
ReplyDeleteI have a question about your Duraseal chestnut floors ... first of all, I LOVE them. We picked the same stain for our red oak floors. I'm wondering, now that you've been in the home, how has the poly changed it? Do they look more yellow? red? I have the same concern that you had so would love to know how they turned out after the poly. One thing I love about them is the brown ... I don't want yellow or red tones. What do you think?
Hi Sheila. Sorry for the delayed response. I saw your comment while out and about from my phone and forgot to "moderate" it when I got home.
ReplyDeleteNeither the chestnut floors nor our custom weathered stain has changed in color or yellowed, but we've only been in the house(s) just over 6 months. it may happen over a long period of time, but at this point we're over the selection process, and it would probably happen so slowly that we don't notice it living here anyhow. enjoy your new floors!