Post Thanksgiving Summary

I apologize to the few followers who have been wondering what happened to the updates. We're obviously still not in the house, but I do have a few things to show in the almost month since the last post. Please try to disregard any subtle or blatantly obvious cynicism. I can't express how relieved I am at the thought of never building another house.

The steps are finished except for the railing, the cypress columns are all up, though not yet stained, and the driveway is poured, though it is different colors. Oh, and the garage doors are mostly up, but they ordered the wrong ones. So the ones on now will come down once the correct ones arrive. Hopefully they came in today.

This is the upper deck they've been trying to get waterproofed for a couple months now. The decking you see stacked on the railing was 'finished' and installed...  until it rained again last night.

Upstairs hallway with our hardwood in place. They still lack the landings and stairs to the basement before they will be ready for sanding and finishing.

This is the vanity in one of the upstairs baths. Both are the same as far as materials and colors. They put the tops on yesterday.

They've been working on installing the kitchen cabinets for a couple weeks now. I think the only real holdup on finishing them is a corner cabinet change Amanda made. Not sure when the granite will be installed.

Half bath.  I've not seen it in person except in the dark as we have no permanent lighting in this room yet. This view is thanks to the camera flash.

Master bath. It won't be quite so yellow when they are finished.

The laundry/mudroom. Note here the first and only item we have actually moved from our current home in here. We had to do that so the Sears repairman could fix it. They put up the crown in this room today. It has a lower ceiling height, so the crown is different from most of downstairs. All this cabinetry will be the same color as the trim.

This is the other side of the laundry room. I couldn't get a wider shot because of the size of the room. We're happy with the cubbies though. The room should look great and be very functional.

The painters put poly on the guest closet this week. It looks nice, though the guys who built it forgot to put the clothes rod on the back wall.

We love this shower. They grouted it yesterday, so the doors can be mounted now. That and the fixtures are all it lacks.

View of the living room with walnut floor, built-ins and window seat. The built-ins will be white/trim color and the walls will all be the same color instead of the two tone we have going on now.

Just A Creepin'

Kind of like molasses in late December...  sums up our overall progress, though there is plenty to show and tell. The biggest goal this past week was to get the heat on so the hardwood could acclimate before installation. To save $500, I borrowed a friend's excavator, dug a rather large hole in the ground at 10 at night and lined up both the delivery of the in-ground LP tank and the propane separately, which proved to be rather challenging on short notice. It happened though, and we had the gas turned on by lunch Friday. Unfortunately the HVAC ball was dropped, and there is still no heat downstairs. They managed to get the upstairs furnace running, but that isn't helping the humidity problem downstairs where 90 percent of the hardwood will be.

They did install most of the stair treads and risers early in the week, and they look great even unfinished.

Friday's biggest masonry project was the front steps. Though we are way behind, this truthfully made my week. We are finally done having to walk up a plank to get in, carrying materials, kids, etc.

Looks like we are running a factory.

They set the furnace in place Friday afternoon, managing to lift the firebox door off it's hinges in the process, which in turn fell and broke several toes of the man on that end of it. That poor guy is also the best trim guy we had on the job and the one who did the interior stairs. Not sure when he will be able to return.

Upstairs heat. Since the temperature dropped Saturday night, there is a dramatic difference upstairs and downstairs now.

Colder Weather

This past Thursday was apparently the last of the summer weather, as the highs went from the 80s to the 60s and 50s beginning Friday. Northeast inspected the electrical last Monday and put us on the list for permanent power. Of course they are backed up and said it could be as much a week and a half, which would be this Wednesday at the latest... hopefully.

Once we have power they plan to get the HVAC installed and running asap. Our hardwood has to adjust for at least 48 hours before they can install it. We got the flooring last week along with most of the stair treads and risers.

Another delay has been that they ran out of stone, which postponed finishing the porch columns as well as the entry stairs to the porch. The stone arrived Friday in Tupelo, so hopefully it will be delivered today and they can get back to finishing the porch.

Our flooring and some stair treads

They started installing the stair trim on Friday.

They stained our front doors late last week. They actually match. The one on the right is just upside down.

We got our bathroom vanity cabinets on Friday, and all but the master were installed.

They've almost finished tiling the guest shower.

Chip installed the under-deck drainage system on Thursday, and it was tested on Friday, both from rain and from turning the hydrant on. It needs a little tweaking, but they should finally be able to move forward with finishing both the decking and porch ceiling soon.

The furnace room door is up. They only lack the basement door now.

They started applying the back porch ceiling with the above deck water tight (mostly) and lighting installed.

On to October

I knew it had been a while since I last updated the blog, but I didn't realize it had been almost a month. Though they've made a lot of progress with painting, stone and leveling the back yard, there is still plenty to do.

We have paint on the entire house now and I think the trim around the windows and doors is finished.

The stone is up for the most part too. There was a lot of stone. They will start the deck soon.

Paint!

Our interior doors are mostly done too. We lack three that they first chose to repair only to have the repair fail. We're now waiting on new doors.

Master closet. It is dark, but not as dark as it looks here.

Our mantels are up now as well as most of the stone on the fireplaces. Both this mantel and the porch one were cut from the same beam. The beam came out of a church that was built in 1868. We left them raw for that reason and just put lemon oil on them.

Upstairs looks mostly done other than lights and flooring.

Finally moving on the deck again.

Pantry

A Week's Work

I had not taken many photos from this angle, but it shows the only side of the house so far with the exterior paint on both floors.

A close-up view of our exterior paint and trim color.

The place looks very different with paint on it. They were holding off painting the first floor exterior until the concrete stain was applied.

One of the retaining walls we hadn't planned on needing. You won't be able to see so much of it once the deck goes up.

The second retaining wall. This one comes off the back (west) side of the house. It is hard to imagine what this area will look like once all the extra dirt is removed.

The travertine tile in the mud room turned out great. We had just enough to do this. There wasn't one full tile of either size leftover.

The stain went down on the porches on Friday. Cleaning it beforehand didn't hurt either, but the stain really shows of the texture stamp that we applied to the porch as well. 

They started on our closet in the master bedroom this week too.

Mater bath tile was installed on Thursday and Friday. They still have to grout, but this one is close to done. Some of the tile for the guest bathroom was backordered and won't be in for another week and a half.

Autumn Arrives With More Progress

The most noticeable changes to the front view of the house since the last update are the primer on the house and garage trim and the addition of the windows to the dormers on the garage.

A closer view of the garage shows the difference windows make. They have primed most of the trim here now.

The cypress ceiling on the porch has been the most anticipated addition for us. It looks great now and should really stand out once they get a coat of paint on the house.

Friday was a big day in that they dug and poured footings for retaining walls on both back sides of the house. Unfortunately neither was in the plans, i.e. budget. This is the one on the north side.

This retaining wall comes off the back of the house. The larger footing close to the house is for steps. The end of it shows about how far we will have a flat back yard.

With the exception of a few places, most of the crown molding is installed. This was another case of making adjustments while it was going up. It's big, but it looks nice on the 10-foot ceilings.

A detailed view of the crown at the foot of the stairs.

This is the new view from the front porch after I cleaned out the undergrowth in the woods on the left side. Before this, you couldn't see much, if any, of the field and driveway to the left of the excavator.

Another view of the area I cleaned out. I still plan to do more cleaning here, but it definitely looks a lot different than it did before the weekend.

The house was barely visible from this point on the road before they left an excavator sitting around over the weekend.