2 months from today!

Well, this week has been a crazy one and I anticipate that next week will be no different. We were running around to meet with the fabricator, going to the granite place (again!) and the back to the flooring store. And we still aren't done! We have one final appointment at the granite place tomorrow (just our 5th time there) to see our slabs pulled out from the rest. If you have never been to a granite "yard" it is quite overwhelming. Some slabs you can see just little bits of and others you can see the whole thing real close up (like 2 inches from your nose) if you step in between slabs. I'm pretty confident in our decisions but seeing them pulled out from the bundle will solidify that. I'll see what I can get for photos tomorrow. So anyway, we upped our weekly visit to closer to 1:00pm so we could meet the Elstad's at our new abode. They were in town for Sally's cousin's wedding and we had a wedding to go to Saturday night too so unfortunately our visit was kept to a quick tour around our house. The good thing is that the entire place is now drywalled so they could get a real good feel for the place. I loved John's comment about our kitchen pantry "this is bigger than our condo in Chicago!" :) Maybe they should think about moving to Iowa!

Here's a few photos from today...

This is the entry way from the front door.

We have a garage door! Not a very pretty one and not the permanent one but at least that means the place is getting closed up.

The family room on the main floor.

The basement

Master bedroom!

The landing view - straight ahead is a linen closet and then doors to 2 bedrooms.

One of the bathrooms 

From the family room, looking in to the kitchen. 

We are planning on closing 2 months from today and we know that these next 2 months are going to fly by! We are so excited to watch the finishing touches come together and finally live in our new home! So much to do so little time...good thing we don't have to do any of the real work!
Take care - XOXO - j

Back to visual progress

Our weekly Sunday visits to the house continued this week with some added visitors. My parents were in town to go to the state fair so we took them along to see the progress. They hadn't seen the place since it was a concrete poured hole in the ground back at the beginning of July. It was quite a change for them! Last week I mentioned that it was a bit of an underwhelming visit as there wasn't much visible progress from the week prior. This week there was NO mistaking what the contractors were there to do. The entire place is insulated, all of the ceiling dry wall is up and they have started drywalling other areas too. Like REAL walls, people! It is really starting to take shape and we can get a baring for where everything is going to go and space we are working with. LOVE!

Here are a few photos from our adventures today...

Insulated garage...this is the door into the house.

Brian is standing about where our kitchen table will go. The slider door is in. Notice the ceiling is finished and outfitted with can lights.

This it our upstairs living room - the tv will go in the middle of those windows where those outlets are in the drywall.  Looks like they haven't cut the window out of the drywall just yet! 

This is a view from the top of the stairs looking down at the landing that leads to the main floor.

Straight ahead is the front door - so this is the entry way view standing in the living room. Messy, messy floors.

And in case you were wondering, the wires from last week got organized and our electrical box is up. Hazard averted! 

Mom just got to be the lucky one that was standing in front of me...this is the master bedroom. You can kind of see the tray ceiling and lots of windows! 

And finally, here we are with our "in progress" house. Soon enough there will be a driveway and I'm sure you'll get a Christmas card with a photo similar to this one once everything is complete.

Thanks to our amazing builder and his lovely wife, we were able to tour their home again on Friday. We are in the midst of picking out the finishes so this was such a nice gesture. We have only been to their house the one time in probably March or April when we initially saw (and fell in love with) their house. Yep, just one time and we instantly knew it was the house for us. Being back in there helped solidify our choices and made me, personally, feel so much better about everything we have been discussing with Bill of late. While we were there we went through the hardware on the cabinets, the paint colors and light fixtures. We made decisions on what we wanted to keep and what we wanted to pick out of our own - some decisions were made for us...they have this funky ceiling fan I would have loved but it's discontinued. Bummer but I'm sure we can find something else suitable. The toilet paper handles and the towel bars are a decision I consider complete! Check that one off the list. We have to take a step back to finalize flooring decisions and get in touch with the fabricator that cuts the granite this week to see about getting a remnant for the bar area and we will then be on to the finishing touches...outside paint color, light fixtures and interior paint colors. We are just about 2 months out from our close date...it will be here before we know it! YEE - HAW!  Hope ya'll had a good weekend! XOXO - j

The "unseen" progress

Have you ever really thought about what is inside your walls? What makes your house "run"? Or how every time you flip a light switch, that trusty light bulb lights up the entire room? Didn't think so...and neither had I...until we went to our house today and saw this: 

 and this....

The top picture is in the basement where all of these wires will run to our electrical box. Does that look like a hazard or what? The second picture is on the 2nd floor looking up into the attic area. Again, looking a little hazardous and amazing all at the same time. Can you believe all those wires run through this place to every light switch and every outlet and will actual make them work? How they do this and keep all of these wires straight is beyond my capabilities but somehow they manage on every house and every building that ever stood. Amazing! 

Other than that there isn't as much structural, noticeable progress to our house. The roof is shingled and the siding is mostly on (yet to be painted). 

Here's an up close view of the siding on the side of the house.

Since you always get the view of the house from the front, thought I would change it up and show you a few pics from the back. Seems unreal that just a few months ago, I was standing in this very same spot taking pictures of a weed infested plot of land.

And for your viewing pleasure, Brian joined this picture. Loving those big windows in the basement! And speaking of the basement...we heard back from the builder this week. They have found a way to get rid of the bulkhead. I can't talk details on this one but my previous post about the bulkhead...please disregard.

So, there's your house update. Looks like plumbing and HVAC work need to get finished before they put on the garage door and close this place up. The the real work can begin! Drywalling should start in the next 2 weeks! Stay tuned...

XOXO - j

The flooring project

So this week we got the pleasure of spending an hour or two at the flooring place to pick out all of the tile, wood, vinyl in our house. It felt all too familiar when I walked in there to look at samples as we just replaced all of the flooring in our house in Altoona not too long ago. With that fresh on our brains, ironically we went with some similar choices. We absolutely loved our carpet and vinyl that we put down in the Altoona house so it only seems fitting that we started there. And we had Bill's house to go off of so we did pick the same hardwood and tile as him. This trip wasn't so bad but still overwhelming nonetheless.

So here's the run down on what we decided:

Main floor
-Hardwoods in entry and kitchen
-Tile in garage entry, 1/2 bath
-Carpet in living room (I cannot convince Brian to do hardwood throughout, so count that as a win for him)

2nd floor
-Same carpet up the steps and bedrooms
-vinyl in laundry and other baths
-tile (heated!) in the master bath

Basement
-Same carpet
-this crazy tile that looks like faux wood for around the bar and spare bath.

We spent majority of the time heming and hawing at the selection for around the bar area. Our plan is to go a little more "fun" and darker in the man cave.  There were so many contemporary and modern styles that came in the darker colors and we just couldn't commit. In fact, we almost went with this natural stone tile but the color variations are so wild it scared me. Now, I don't want to totally play it safe - this isn't a model home, it's our home so now is our chance to get what we like and spice it up. But let's not get TOO crazy!

Here's a quick snap shot of the samples I have so far. I'm still not 100% sold on the vinyl so that might be one I end up changing after a second visit to the showroom.

The tile is in the upper left hand corner and is kind of an interesting size. They are going to stagger the install it will give it some interest. This will also be the tile that is used for the shower in our master bath. We are going with the same tile accent in the shower that Bill used in his house. It looks really cool up close - it is a glass tile with some metallics to it...here's a photo from Bill's place that kind of shows the tiling.

Our shower will be a little different as we are having it tiled in. Long story short, we each like our privacy while in the shower and all that glass doesn't do it for us...'nuff said.

I don't have the carpet sample or the sample of the "crazy tiley/wood" stuff yet but they are going to order me mini samples. This is all subject to change depending on the granite slabs we choose. Which leads me to my next selection...I'm hoping to get the granite place on Saturday morning to narrow it down to a few slabs...after our adventure today Brian asked to be left at home on the first shopping trip and just wants to see the final choice for approval. Oye! If anyone is interested, you are welcome to join me Saturday morning in the granite yard. I'm sure I will need opinions! 

We got to get out to the house this weekend and find out what is going on over there! Been too busy picking out the stuff that is going to make it pretty. More to come on our decisions. 

XOXO - j

Bulky, bulkhead :(

While I'm blogging this morning, I thought I should give you a less than exciting update on the house progress. We were at the house twice already this week to look at some "issues" and also for something a little more fun - our electrical walk through. The first visit was Thursday morning to look at ceiling in the basement...we found out earlier this week, to our dismay, that they cannot deliver on the 9ft ceilings throughout our basement that we agreed on in the specs. This is something that we took an obscene amount of time to figure out how to do in the planning stage so we were disappointed to find out they couldn't deliver on this. The problem is that there is a load bearing beam where the return air duct (heating/cooling) needs to run which means that the return air duct needs to drop down below that beam...creating a bulkhead. I tried to Wiki "bulkhead" because I'm finding not everyone is up on the new house building lingo...trust me, I wasn't either until about 3 months ago. Since Wiki didn't work out for me, in my own words a bulkhead is where they have to drop the ceiling down and dry wall around the vent work. You probably don't really even notice bulkheads in many basements but this is one of Brian's pet peeves and one of the main things he really, really, really wanted. I can't blame him...but at this point, it doesn't look like we have many options. Our project manager is working with the engineer next week to see about other options but clearly we don't want to have to sacrifice air flow just to not have a bulkhead and we certainly don't want the house to crash in because the load bearing beam isn't where it needs to be! I probably shouldn't even be telling you about this because if there is a bulkhead in our basement, I don't want it to be what you are looking for the first time you walk in our basement. And point of advice - DO NOT mention it to Brian! Hopefully the 10 ft tray ceiling with crown molding and rope lights in the basement will draw your attention away from the ugly bulkhead.

The second issue was that they didn't have a way to get the air to the 2nd story where the bedrooms are...so they had to run it through the office room. This is already not a real big space and now is taking up room that would have been our built in shelving. This isn't that big of deal because it's in the corner and they are going to make it look decorative. Regardless, still a change from the original plan.

BUT...if these are the biggest struggles we have, I'll take it. I guess you always run the risk of this kind of stuff when you are doing a custom home.

Our second visit on Friday afternoon was much more fun! We got to go through the house with the builder and electrician to talk about outlet placement. Yes, mom, there is an outlet on our mantel and yes, mother in law, there is an outlet on the landing. :) I feel good that we will have what we need but I can't help but be afraid of what we are going to forget. Sometimes after the fact, things seem so obvious.

I didn't get any photos while we were out but you can trust me that things seem to be moving quickly. They were working on the roof, had some of the tin ran for the HVAC unit and all of the outlets and where the lights will be were in place. They told us that they are on schedule to be finished and closed up by end of October!!! We couldn't be more excited about that date which will give us the whole month of November to get out of here...like we will take that long! It's also an away Iowa game weekend which means we don't have to miss another game since there are only a few games we are going to make it to this year. :) So mark your calendars, we might be all set up for a housewarming/holiday party in December.

Sorry no pictures...I'll snap a few this next week. XOXO- j

Our house might be new...

but (some of) our furniture will be old. People always talk about how new homes lack character (and charm) that old historic homes have. While I don't disagree, there is something really functional about new homes over old homes (ie: BIG closets!). So, we are bringing our own character and charm into our new house by using some old furniture pieces. Obviously our new house will be quite a bit larger than our old house so rather than going out and purchasing a bunch of new furniture, I have vowed to be a little greener (and cheaper) and use what we have. We have so many great, solid wood furniture pieces that have a story and history that I would love to use rather than store in our basement. So...on to my next project. I recently finished these four chairs...

Before look - they were a dark wood stain that was pretty banged up and a white vinyl fabric that has quite a few stains.

AFTER! Painted a semi-gloss black and damask, durable fabric for the seat cushion.

These chairs came from a dining set that Brian inherited when his grandma Day passed. They sat in our basement in Altoona and actually I used the table as my gift wrapping station. I'm not real sure where we are going to put this set but I'm leaning towards the basement as kind of a game room table. I still need to finish the table so more to come on how the whole set looks together. For now, I'm thrilled with how these bad boys turned out.

Before we move, I have a few more projects to finish up - another dresser, headboard and footboard... and maybe the very desk I am sitting at right now if Brian lets me get my hands (and paint) on it. Then I'll be looking for some garage sale finds I can turn into treasures! XOXO - j