First I want to thank everyone for the prayers - the neighborhood made it through that heinous first storm of the season unharmed, except for some sod that's floated away to Mexico. We will be certainly looking into an underground storm shelter for our yard very soon!
While there are a number of mistakes still left to be fixed, they have really made GREAT progress in the past week, and it gives me hope that this really will all be over soon. It's funny - I frequent an online forum for others building a home, and there's one particular thread where everyone updates on where they are in their build. At any given time there are newbies who just bought their land, or just got permits, or are starting to dig, framing, and all various points of finish work. There's this tangible excitement and giddiness the newbies have, that I, too, had in the beginning. I thought my builder was just the most adorable creature, flaws and all. At this point in our project, I just want us all to survive it. I'm sure you're probably all sick of my whining over the past month or so, but until you live it you'll never understand.
The latest word on the street is that we'll get our first walk-through with our builder on Tuesday. I'm not exactly sure what happens at the first walk-through, but generally speaking, that should mean our final walk through would be a week from Tuesday, and we could have our keys that day or the next day, so we really are getting very close!!
The shower is finally done!! 5 out of 5 issues are resolved! It only took like 2 months. All of those issues are now but a distant [though still irritating] memory and we move on. :)
Our very special vent hood was installed. Finally it's out of the garage at our rental! We spent a lot of time visualizing (both conceptually and using software) our dream hood. We thought we were getting this gigantic oversized statement piece, and what we didn't factor in is just the scale of the room. So I freaked a little bit once it was installed. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but I was picturing it having more of a presence. Since uploading the photo it's already growing on me more. lol In any case, the finish is beautiful and exactly what we wanted to tame some of the prissiness of the white kitchen. I'll post close-ups once the house is close-up ready.
Also in this last picture, you can see they stained the mantel. It looks nice in the photo, but after they sealed with poly it turned a little too amber for my liking and I'm already concocting the recipe for a color wash to tone it down once we move in. Can't get 'em all right on the first try! I thought I had pictures of the kids homework alley and the mudroom bench all stained, but I must have just taken them on my phone rather than the camera. Again - I'll post more photos than you care to look through once the house is ready.
I think I showed pictures of the cabinets with the holes drilled, but here's a photo of the hardware itself. It's really chunky and I like it a lot. We do have a bit of a snag in this corner that needs to be addressed else the hardware rubs the drawer on the adjacent wall. Oopsy!
Speaking of stain, get a load of this gorgeous front door!! This is after 2-3 coats of ebony stain! After 1 coat I freaked because we chose "ebony" and expected to see a nearly black door and it was like warm medium brown at best. But after another coat or two it's stunning!!
And moving outdoors... it looks nearly finished from the front! We've even got a mailbox!!!!!!
Our gutters were installed, along with the round downspouts on the front with the decorative collector boxes. They make such a big impact!! Love love love them! They finally stained our cedar header beams and shutters too. We suspect the neighborhood thought we would keep everything natural and brown (there's a lot of that out here) and were probably shocked to see color all of a sudden. I can't even tell you how excited I was to finally see the vision come to life. Our builder and his team had this sort of private joke about us choosing aqua for our shutters, but who's laughing now?! You can also see that the sod is down in the front and some of the side yard, and our plants and trees are in. Sort of. Still several issues to sort out with landscaping, but at least it LOOKS like a finished yard. They also installed the 7 uplights for our trees, which I have yet to see lit up at night yet but hope to very very soon! Ha - the plants are barely visible from the street because they're itty bitty, but they're spaced right to grow in nicely as they mature.
I'm not sure which round of trees this shows, but the moral of the story is there will be 5 crape myrtle trees lining our driveway with up-lights on them. They've replaced them once because they put in the wrong ones. Then they came today and replanted 5 more of the same ones they planted the first time. Truly puzzling. Nonetheless, I'm going to love pulling into our driveway when these beauties are in bloom!
That's it for now for pictures. The painters are wrapping up and I think the appliances are coming on Monday. They've been going through the series of inspections, the bathrooms had touchup grout work done and have been professionally cleaned! There are still a lot of things on our builder's lists on the kitchen counter that we love to check every time we visit, but it's mostly button up work at this point. On a personal note, I've been working away on projects, though it's probably approaching the time to at least think about packing. As soon as the dresser-turned-media cabinet is done...
Hang with us - almost there!
While there are a number of mistakes still left to be fixed, they have really made GREAT progress in the past week, and it gives me hope that this really will all be over soon. It's funny - I frequent an online forum for others building a home, and there's one particular thread where everyone updates on where they are in their build. At any given time there are newbies who just bought their land, or just got permits, or are starting to dig, framing, and all various points of finish work. There's this tangible excitement and giddiness the newbies have, that I, too, had in the beginning. I thought my builder was just the most adorable creature, flaws and all. At this point in our project, I just want us all to survive it. I'm sure you're probably all sick of my whining over the past month or so, but until you live it you'll never understand.
The latest word on the street is that we'll get our first walk-through with our builder on Tuesday. I'm not exactly sure what happens at the first walk-through, but generally speaking, that should mean our final walk through would be a week from Tuesday, and we could have our keys that day or the next day, so we really are getting very close!!
The shower is finally done!! 5 out of 5 issues are resolved! It only took like 2 months. All of those issues are now but a distant [though still irritating] memory and we move on. :)
Our very special vent hood was installed. Finally it's out of the garage at our rental! We spent a lot of time visualizing (both conceptually and using software) our dream hood. We thought we were getting this gigantic oversized statement piece, and what we didn't factor in is just the scale of the room. So I freaked a little bit once it was installed. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but I was picturing it having more of a presence. Since uploading the photo it's already growing on me more. lol In any case, the finish is beautiful and exactly what we wanted to tame some of the prissiness of the white kitchen. I'll post close-ups once the house is close-up ready.
Also in this last picture, you can see they stained the mantel. It looks nice in the photo, but after they sealed with poly it turned a little too amber for my liking and I'm already concocting the recipe for a color wash to tone it down once we move in. Can't get 'em all right on the first try! I thought I had pictures of the kids homework alley and the mudroom bench all stained, but I must have just taken them on my phone rather than the camera. Again - I'll post more photos than you care to look through once the house is ready.
I think I showed pictures of the cabinets with the holes drilled, but here's a photo of the hardware itself. It's really chunky and I like it a lot. We do have a bit of a snag in this corner that needs to be addressed else the hardware rubs the drawer on the adjacent wall. Oopsy!
Speaking of stain, get a load of this gorgeous front door!! This is after 2-3 coats of ebony stain! After 1 coat I freaked because we chose "ebony" and expected to see a nearly black door and it was like warm medium brown at best. But after another coat or two it's stunning!!
And moving outdoors... it looks nearly finished from the front! We've even got a mailbox!!!!!!
Our gutters were installed, along with the round downspouts on the front with the decorative collector boxes. They make such a big impact!! Love love love them! They finally stained our cedar header beams and shutters too. We suspect the neighborhood thought we would keep everything natural and brown (there's a lot of that out here) and were probably shocked to see color all of a sudden. I can't even tell you how excited I was to finally see the vision come to life. Our builder and his team had this sort of private joke about us choosing aqua for our shutters, but who's laughing now?! You can also see that the sod is down in the front and some of the side yard, and our plants and trees are in. Sort of. Still several issues to sort out with landscaping, but at least it LOOKS like a finished yard. They also installed the 7 uplights for our trees, which I have yet to see lit up at night yet but hope to very very soon! Ha - the plants are barely visible from the street because they're itty bitty, but they're spaced right to grow in nicely as they mature.
I'm not sure which round of trees this shows, but the moral of the story is there will be 5 crape myrtle trees lining our driveway with up-lights on them. They've replaced them once because they put in the wrong ones. Then they came today and replanted 5 more of the same ones they planted the first time. Truly puzzling. Nonetheless, I'm going to love pulling into our driveway when these beauties are in bloom!
That's it for now for pictures. The painters are wrapping up and I think the appliances are coming on Monday. They've been going through the series of inspections, the bathrooms had touchup grout work done and have been professionally cleaned! There are still a lot of things on our builder's lists on the kitchen counter that we love to check every time we visit, but it's mostly button up work at this point. On a personal note, I've been working away on projects, though it's probably approaching the time to at least think about packing. As soon as the dresser-turned-media cabinet is done...
Hang with us - almost there!
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