Last post before move in????

Whew! This week went by so fast, but lots of good new things. Just a few left to go until it's finally moving day! 

Monday the electric company came to start up our service, woohoo! That meant lights, appliances and garage doors working, and no more extension cords! The A/C guys didn't come back until Thursday to hook that up but it's all working and cooling perfectly now! So thankful for that too since we spent quite a bit of time there this weekend. More to come on all that!

Finally able to see in windowless rooms: media room, pantry, storage closet

The trim guys came back to finish up all the remaining baseboards and install the door hardware, which means we have our actual keys to the house now! No more temporary locks! We got the glass for the entry door too. It swings open on the inside too like a little window if we ever get a nice day. So cute!

The drywall crew came back to fix and re-texture any areas that had gotten messed up along the way. The painters will come back this week and finish all the final paint touch ups too now that the drywall's all fixed. The coolest part of the drywall fixes was seeing the pocket door between the utility/kitchen all finished. We had the trim guys arch the doorway and put the pocket door in it so that it matched the arched hallway on the other side. I was kind of unnecessarily freaking out about having one flat and one arched, so I LOVE how this turned out and was so glad they could make it happen. 

Our shower door was delivered and installed too and it swings out and in towards the shower if you look closely at the pics - kinda fun! (Ignore that one missing tile in the shower...it's getting fixed, hopefully...someday if we can find a way to cut a hole for the shower knobs without breaking 15 tiles...)

We also unpacked the fireplace logs and Rob converted it from natural gas to propane, not that we need them for a while. But...when we do, they'll look nice and pretty. Oh yeah, we got our propane tank installed this week too! Almost forgot about that since it's buried in the backyard...no pics of that haha.

Friday the guy came to grade the lot and clean up all of the trash leftover from the brick/stone. They brought in some fill dirt and cleaned up all those rocks we had brought in for the temporary driveway. It's all clean and we can even drive on the driveway now! We spent half of yesterday putting in about 20 plants and 15 bags of mulch...not nearly enough to fill the flowerbeds, but hopefully enough to make the inspector happy. :) That's what we're goin for. 

And last for this post is what we spent the last 2.5 days working on. The tile guys were swamped and couldn't make it back out until Wednesday this coming week to finish tiling our master tub, and we didn't feel like waiting on them, so we decided (Rob says I decided, eh same thing) that we could surely do a little tiling ourselves. It can't be THAT hard right? Of all the things Rob has done in his life building and fixing everything you could think of, I was surprised to learn he had never tiled before. So new adventure for both of us!

We spent Friday night (yep, wild times) cutting, spacing and laying out the tiles for the master tub, last night putting them on thinset (after spending the whole day landscaping), and then today grouting. We also had to put some backsplashes on all the vanities because the mirror guy said he couldn't install the mirrors without them! Oh the things you learn building a house yourself. Anyway, those backsplashes were surprisingly easy since we just did some individual 4x4 travertine tiles. The tub took a while though but it ended up pretty nice. Now the plumber can come back and install the drain and faucet for the tub so we can get our final inspection done! At this point, I think he's just about all we are waiting for. Everything else is DONE.

Yep, I said it. Everything else is DONE. Ok, so we have a few little touch ups and some cleaning to do. But really...it's done. We could move in right now and survive just fine. But again, I guess we'll follow the rules and get our final inspection and certificate of occupancy first. We also have to get an appraisal done for the bank before we move any of our stuff in. BUT...I hope this is my last post before moving day. Let's just pretend I'm not overly optimistic right now, but I really feel like it can happen. So everyone cross your fingers and hope this week all goes according to plan. This time next week I could be writing to you from our new home!!! And even if we're not moved in, I might just do it anyway because we're getting AT&T U-Verse installed Friday, haha. Priorities. :)

Can we move in yet?

So...another quick one here. Can you tell we are getting a little exhausted here towards the end? We can't wait to have our weekends back so we can actually enjoy this beautiful house! Lots of good stuff happened this week though, so let's get goin. 

Tuesday and Wednesday the stained concrete guy came to stain the floors in the utility and storage closet. They look awesome, but like the wood floors they tend to get a little dirty when you have tons of people walking through working in the house all day so hopefully they will stay a little cleaner once we're all moved in.

We also had an electrical and driveway inspection Wednesday, which we got another red tag for but he gave us the ok to turn on the power IF we got everything fixed for the final inspection. So the power company is coming out tomorrow to turn on the juice! Woohoo! And since we got the green for the driveway approach, they poured that on Friday. We can walk on it now but can't drive on it for another couple days. Yay no more muddy feet!

 
Yesterday the painters came back. They finished staining/painting the office now that we finally picked a color. And they put a fresh coat of paint on all the baseboards they put in the week before and some exterior pieces on the back that were put in after they were done on their last trip. Looks much more 'finished' now. They still have a few touch-ups left to do but looking great!

Annnd finally, the plumber came and installed almost all of our fixtures yesterday! The tub still needs to be tiled, but Rob cut a hole for it to make sure it would all fit good. Looks good to me! And check out the size of this tub....that's what we get for not seeing in person before ordering. Wow...I had no idea how big it was going to look! He turned on the water too, so they even work. :) Nice to be able to wash our hands out there in a real sink...and go to the bathroom once we get some seats (and toilet paper) haha. We tested out the shower a little and it's pretty crazy with all the knobs and everything. I'm sure we'll get used to it...Rob was VERY excited about it.

Oh I almost forgot, as part of our final inspection we know we had to have all the vents/pipes coming out of the roof painted so someone got out a can of spray paint today after he finished converting the range top from natural gas to propane, and fitting the vent hood area for the hood liner we got. Busy busy!!

You can't even see them now! It's like magic.

 It's all starting to come together. Only a few more things left! Yesss.

Getting closer!

I'll make this a quick one...you only want to see pics anyway, right? Well, I have JUST the thing for you then!

Monday the masons finished up the stone chimney on the back patio and removed all the supports they had on the front arches. And they made us a cute little mailbox on the street. Did anyone mail us anything yet? We need to see if it works! Rob also put on our front sconces. So pretty!

Tuesday the electric company came out to inspect Rob's beautiful trench and I guess they approved! This here is our electrical line that runs out to the transformer. Still no service yet, but we'll get that after our inspection - coming soon!
 

The wood floor guys came out and finished up the floors with their last coat of polyurethane on Tuesday. Of course we had to stay off of them until Thursday so no work all day Wednesday. It's worth it though because they turned out fantastic. We would highly recommend this place if you're in the market for super old wood floors! :)

After we let that dry, the trim guys came back Friday to put up all the doors, finish door casings and baseboards. Some of them still need to be painted but we'll get to that later. Also, check out how dirty these floors got in a day. Can't wait to get to clean those all the time...

Saturday, the same guy that did our foundation came back to lay forms for our driveway. This one hurt the ol' checkbook...having 125ish ft of concrete driveway plus a turnaround. Ouch. But it was surprisingly not much more than asphalt and way less maintenance. And my little car wasn't going to make it up into the garage without something...so alas, we bit the bullet. It'll look great though and last for years...so there's that, right? They still need to do the re-bar and get an inspection before they can pour concrete but hopefully by the end of the week we can get that in.

Oh yeah, and as you can see there, the HVAC guys came back and hooked up our A/C system. Of course, we can't use it until we have electricity but it's ready when we do!

And last for today, I'll leave you with our fluffy new carpet - freshly installed today! We got there a little late today so the lighting is weird, but trust me it looks lovely and it's nice and soft. :) And it's hard to tell but the media room on the left is a totally different color. We wanted it nice and dark in there. The other two bedrooms are the same and I must have missed getting a pic of the master closet...but it's the same too.

Not too bad for having all that done in a holiday week! Next up - install door hardware, install plumbing fixtures (toilets, faucets, water heater), tile around the master tub once it is installed, pour driveway/sidewalk, stained concrete floors, electrical inspection and starting up the A/C! Whew. Let's go.

ALL THE THINGS! (Part 2)

Alright, here we go on part 2...what else could have possibly been done the last 2 weeks? Well, hold on to your hat. Get this: Lights, Appliances, NEW STONE delivered and almost finished, Master tile floor and shower, kitchen backsplash, wood floors installed AND stained. Wait, what?? All of that? Yep. It's all here!

Where to begin...so last Sunday, I flew out to California for work through Wednesday (part of the reason for the blogging delay)...so I had to rely on Rob's phone pics to give me the play by play.
 
So Monday, the electrician came to install all of the lighting and wire all the switch plates and put in the double ovens and microwave in the kitchen. They are based out of Arlington, so they stayed until after 10:00 that night so they could just make the one trip. They even brought out a special extension cord that they could hook up to the electrical panel to check all the lights and outlets...so we got to see what it would look like with the lights on for the first time ever! Of course they can't run everything off that little cord, so they only powered up a few things at a time. Still really neat to see! 

Why yes, that is an outlet INSIDE the vanity drawer! No more hair appliances on the counter!

The new stone also showed up Monday! Looks SO much better than the last batch. So Tuesday the masons came back to put all of that up on the inside fireplace and the patio fireplace and started on the front too. They're almost all done now, all they have left is the verrrry top of the chimney and they have to build us a little mailbox out by the street. And they need to get their stuff out of the way so I can take better pics. :)

The tile guys also worked all week to get the master bathroom finished and put in the backsplash in the kitchen. It's awesome! 

The master floor tile we found at Floor and Decor, they have an awesome selection and finally after visiting probably 4 or 5 times, we found some we REALLY liked. Their little displays help to visualize it too. We found it in 2 different sizes and the installer put it in a pattern mixing them. It has a light stone look to it.

The master shower took quite some time to get right. Rob had a vision from a while ago of this shower we found on Houzz. It had what looked like mountains carved from stone on the bottom half and a lighter tile on the top. But we used tile for the bottom half though since we weren't sure how stones would hold up, but it still has the same effect.  The instructions were for it to look like it was carved out of a cave haha.The installer had Rob draw out a line of the "mountains" he wanted cut out of the dark tiles and said he could cut the tile along that line. They also put some small mosaic tiles on the floor and in the storage niche and travertine tiles on the ceiling and lining the outside. It was pretty intense...the guy spent A LOT of time in here and it turned out great!

Some guys want a man-cave, Rob wanted a shower cave.

So in order to get electricity (which is one of the last few steps before the certificate of occupancy), the power company told us they would provide everything EXCEPT the trench from the transformer to the house. (Even though they dug the trench from the back of the property up to the transformer and have the equipment and are fully capable). The trench has to be 3 ft deep and a min of 6" wide and the transformer is about 120-ish ft from the house. Home Depot said they had a machine that would do it so of course Rob will take any reason to rent big hole digging machinery. Last Sunday he got a trencher and went to work, but after several hours with that thing, it ended up not quite 3 ft deep and couldn't get close enough to the house and the transformer. Lame. So this weekend, he rented a backhoe to finish up that job. Now the power company can come hook us up any day! Keep in mind, everything that has been done so far has been with extension cords running from our temporary power pole...crazy!

And of course, I've saved the best news for last! Now that we have the stone fireplace in, the wood floor installers we were ready to get started!! They started Friday morning and had the whole thing floored by the end of the day! They came back yesterday and stained it all, then put a coat of polyurethane on it a few hours later. We are currently barricaded so we can't walk on it to get more/better pics of the office and the hallway but I have no doubts it's just as beautiful as the living room and master bedroom. I really want to put a million pics up of these floors...so consider this narrowed down. :) You just really need to see it from all the angles to get the character of this reclaimed wood. 

Annd another panorama comparison so you can see the difference a week makes!

 

So with the holiday tomorrow, and another coat of polyurethane going on the floors Tuesday, we won't be able to get anyone else in there until Thursday this week. But we're trying to get the security/low voltage guy in Thursday, HVAC sometime this week, and the trim guys and painters back to finish up all the trim and touch ups now that the wood floors are in. Getting so close now!

ALL THE THINGS! (Part 1)

So yeah, it's been 2 weeks now, oops! Don't worry, things are happening, lots and lots of great things! We've just been super busy, so I broke this up into 2 posts because there's just too much! This post: Granite - check. Paint - check. Tile floors - check. Exterior final paint - check. Let me just catch you up on the how's and when this all went down. (Or just scroll and check out the awesome pics.)

The granite guys came first thing Monday after the last post (5/13) and were there until after 7 working on squeezing in the kitchen apron sink to fit just right. They installed all the other sinks too and did such a fantastic job, with just a little setback. When they came to make the templates/take measurements, the cabinets had JUST been installed and the little decorative pieces on the pull out spice racks weren't on yet. So when they brought the pieces that go next to the range top, it didn't fit over those. Ooops. No worries though, they were back on Thursday with new pieces cut perfectly for them and it's all great now!

Giallo Ornamental granite - looks great on both the dark and white cabinets in the master bath, closet and utility room.

Kitchen island and Jack/Jill bath

The painters also finished up painting all the rooms (except the office). If you know me and my decision making skills (or lack of), these tile/paint decision making weeks have been a nightmare. Pinterest/Houzz narrowed it down quite a bit...still wondering how people built houses before those sites, and internet in general...but anyway, our painter uses Sherwin Williams paint so we just started searching, and searching, and pinning, and searching. Pretty sure I ended up with 50 paint chips, and finally settled on a few we liked enough to buy the small samples cans. 

Few = umm...10. But 2 of them were blues that we were looking at for the Jack/Jill bath and master closet. One of them was a darker gray that's in the utility, master bedroom and half bath. And the other 7 were "main area" beige colors. Yes, that's right. 7 beiges. So we put them all up on the walls and compared them with the tile color and the dark stain we picked for the cabinets. Also, I have to thank Mrs. Cole for convincing me we needed to do a few areas with a darker color on the ceilings because her house looks fantastic with it! All of the trim is extra white, except the stain grade trim in the office. Super fancy. Also, to remind you what the floor plan looks like too - here's all the paints and their rooms. 

Loggia and Sandbar look close to the same color here but Sandbar is in the Jack/Jill rooms and hallway, Loggia is everywhere else. Rob still needs to decide on the office color too, but we're leaning towards a gray color.

I posted the Jack/Jill bedrooms and bathroom and media room last week. So...ta da, here's what the rest of the paint looks like in the other rooms!

Master bedroom & bathroom

Silver Sage in the Master Closet - perfect.

They also finished the final coat of exterior paint, including garage doors and stained all the cedar and under the patio ceiling. 

Once the painters were done, it was time for tile! For the Jack and Jill bath, we found a really pretty (and great priced) tile at Seconds and Surplus a few weeks ago so we snagged that up. It looks awesome with the white cabinets, granite and paint color...couldn't be happier about this bathroom!

The kitchen tile stumped us. Nothing really called out to us except some travertine we saw with rough edges in varying sizes laid in a pattern, BUT it was so far out of budget it just wasn't going to happen. The rough edges and pattern make the installation price go up quite a bit, so we set out in search of some tile we liked just as much. Everything we looked at just didn't compare to the travertine, so we settled on a single size 18x18 travertine without rough edges so that the installation price would be the same and the material price would be just a little bit more than what we had budgeted. The tile is still really pretty and and there are so many other focal points in this space (have I mentioned the amazing cabinets??), that I don't think we are losing much by taking out the pattern and rough edges. 

We'll get to the master bath tile fun in the next post...and TONS more updates to come. Really good stuff. Check back in a bit for Part 2...maybe tomorrow. We'll see. It takes a while to get through the hundreds of pictures I take each week, but I love having it all documented. :)

Remember that last panorama shot??

And now this! Woohoo!

Priming, painting, and a new door!

It literally feels like every day is Christmas around here, there is always something new showing up or being delivered or installed. It's pretty awesome to see it all coming together! Surprisingly a lot of the list was accomplished this week. Let's start wiiiiithh....

Brick! Almost all the brick was finished. All that's left is what goes around the front door when they finish that out with the stone...someday. 

We also had them brick the wall of the dining room. It's amazing.

We got our septic tank installed on Tuesday. We don't really need to talk about what that's for but uhh yeah, there it is. We have to have the aerobic (sprinkler) system, so our little sprinklers are wayyy out towards the back of the property. I would not recommend running through them on a hot summer day.

The trim is finished too, with the exception of baseboards/door casings that will need to be installed after the wood floors go in. They finished the cedar beams in the living room and put the mantle up, and made the giant window seat for the master bedroom! Yay storage! They also had to make the window casings stick out far enough for the brick wall in the dining room. They turned out great!

The painters got all the trim, doors, and the cabinets painted white (except the ones they stained last week), and all the exterior trim primed. They will still put another coat on outside to finish it out. Since they have still been spraying all over the place, the tile installer wanted to stay out of there. But they got almost every room primed annnd they painted the media room, jack/jill rooms and bathroom! Finally some paint color to show, woohoo!
 

Exterior painted

Cabinets & trim painted white; Media Room in Sherwin Williams Tiki Hut

Utility/mud room

Jack/Jill Bath - in LOVE with this SW color match of Restoration Hardware's Silver Sage

Guest Bedrooms - painted in Sherwin Williams Sandbar

 And the finale this week...our gorgeous custom made front door came in and since our trim guys were already finished, Rob had to install it yesterday. It's beautiful.  

This week's plans - Granite is getting installed tomorrow!! Which means sinks too and I can't wait to see the apron sink in the kitchen! The tile will start and the rest of the walls should get painted, woohoo! The painters will also stain the cedar beams/mantle and patio cedar/ceiling. Whew. Still waiting for our new stone too, we'll see if it comes this week so we can keep this train movin.

This should look way different next week!