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.

Flashback

I stumbled upon this picture while skimming though my photo library. It is from May 2008 on a day we were out putting up stakes and trying to figure out if houseplans we liked at the time would fit on the site. Kaitlyn isn't yet two here, and Evan is vaguely visible back there in Amanda's tummy. My signature white oak is behind/above the Gator for reference. Oh, how time flies...

September is Here

September means they have less than two months before we're scheduled to move in. Though we were reassured again Friday, there is plenty left to do. Amanda and I went (to a secret location) Friday and picked up our cypress beams for the porch columns as well as the boards for the porch ceiling. 

View of the house with the boards I unloaded on the porch for the ceiling. Unfortunately the main bale was too heavy for the tractor, so I had to unload it by hand and haul it up over two trips.  At least that should make it easier for the men doing the work because I divided up where it put it as well.

Just a closeup of the cypress boards for the porch ceiling.

A before photo so there will be something to compare it to after they are up.

They've also started putting the crown molding up downstairs. They have the baseboards already installed both up and down. 

Though we've had to reorder three of our downstairs interior doors that had some defects, they are all hung and we are very pleased with how nice they look.

Doors for the master closet and bath with trim, crown and base boards also installed.

Kaitlyn's closet doors. Since upstairs is all kids and doors are very expensive, we chose not to go with the solid wood upstairs. We're happy with how these turned out though, and we chose a pattern to compliment the downstairs.

View of the living room with the triple French doors to the back porch now installed.

An outside view of the doors to the back porch. They couldn't install them until the concrete was poured. We made a last minute decision to go with the 2/3 glass and like that look on the eight-foot doors. It should also be safer with all the kids and dogs.