10 - Brick, Spackle, and Meetings

We've officially picked out everything on our house now. Last Friday we had our cabinetry and millwork meeting, and we got to decide on how we wanted all the woodwork to look in our house. A lot was standard, but we picked out how we wanted our mantle to look, the kitchen cabinetry design, and also the layout of the master closet. I'm so excited about that. I can't wait to show you all!

Then, on Saturday, we went to Lifestyles Lighting up in Edmond and picked out all our lighting. Again, most were standard stuff. Boob lights for the majority of the flush mount ceiling lights, bathroom vanity lights, etc. We splurged on our two pendant lights above the kitchen breakfast bar, and also the entry way lights once you walk in to the house. The five-light chandelier we picked that will go above the dining room table is nice, but nothing super extravagant since our little dining room (really it's called a breakfast room, and we don't have a dedicated dining room) is only 10' x 10'. The only other major light choice we picked were the coach lights that will be on our garage.

Hopefully it all comes together well. I think the hardest part is visualizing how all the lights will look together since we didn't really pick them from the same collection. I saved pictures of all the lights, but I won't show you until they're installed. That way they'll be a surprise, and you can't judge us for our choices because it'll be too late :) Now we just wait and watch them finish our home.

It's been raining on and off each week, so I guess it's put a halt on a lot of the outdoor work since everything is so wet. The back side of our house is partially bricked, and then the part of the front. The whole north side of the home is bricked though, so you can see the color brick we went with. It's got a mix of reds and grays of various shades in it, mainly on the lighter side. We also have a garage door that been in the raised position thus far.

With all the rain, progress has really been made on the inside. I had took a bunch of pictures when they started the drywalling process, thinking I'd write a post then. But of course my lazy self, I missed that opportunity, and a couple days later, they had everything speckled and all our tile installed.  Here's our kitchen. You'll notice they took the wood bar frame off. They built it two feet too long, which ate in to the dining room space. So they tore it down, and they're just going to build it during the cabinetry process now. The tile looks great. All the tile work in our house is complete now, except for the master shower design inlay.

I don't know if you can tell, but the tiles are large rectangular tiles. I don't remember the dimensions exactly, but we really liked the change up from the typically square tiles. I guess the next step is painting and all the woodwork. Our garage is full of all our crown molding and baseboards. I should have taken a picture of our interior door stack. You don't realize how many doors are in a house until you see them all stacked up next to each other. I think we had 14 or 15 doors.

We have a boat club membership meeting this Thursday, so we'll probably swing by beforehand. Hopefully I'll get a bunch of pictures, and do a post that evening. I need to catch up because I'm missing steps! Aaack!

Have a great night everyone!

9 - Pre-Insulation Walkthrough & Upgrades

Short post this week. Not a lot has physically happened to the house since the last post. We met with Cody, who is overseeing our build, for our pre-insulation walkthrough yesterday. All in all, everything has gone pretty well. It's neat seeing the house slowly come together. In the upcoming days, it will even be more exciting. If weather permits, Cody said they've got bricking scheduled for Friday! I can't wait to come back and see an actual, completed exterior on the house. Hopefully we like our brick choice! I'll be up in that area for work next Tuesday, so I'll stop by and take some pictures. Maybe there will be insulation in there too.

All the little mishaps that have been mentioned in the past few posts have, or will be, corrected. We're getting our garage side access door. Which, for some reason, I didn't think they would be able to do, and would just have to compensate us for not noticing it on the plans. Yay for not having to open the garage, or walk all the way around the house, to take out trash! It's the little things right?! Did I mention how lazy I am?

The electrical and cable has been ran throughout the house as well, so we double checked all the placement of those. One of the places we needed to correct was in the cabinet above the microwave. Apparently this idea was really hard to grasp for them when we were trying to ask that they lower where the electrical and cable boxes were installed currently.

Above is the kitchen of the model home. Ours will look similar to it. Our sink extension will be an L shape, and we went with shaker style doors instead of the traditional doors. Anyway, so you see where the microwave is, right? The cabinet above it... we wanted plugs so that we can put a TV in there. The electrical people installed them in the cabinet above the cabinet above the microwave (where the glass doors are in the picture). Cody even read the plans of how it was written, and it said, "cabinet above microwave cabinet". We were like, yeah... above the microwave cabinet. So the cabinet that is currently housing the microwave... we want the plugs in the one above it. Maybe it was harder than it sounded, but he said they could drop it thankfully. I know, I know... first world problems...

Trying to think of anything else as far as our walkthrough went, but not much comes to mind. There were a few little things here and there that he noted need to be corrected. We're happy with how everything looks. The next part is "designing" the cabinets and master closet. That's where the upgrades come in... yikes! I was a little shocked at the sticker price of what some of our requests were, but after an email back with the designer, I was more comfortable with what they were saying.

Overall, we liked the look of the model home kitchen. Ours will look almost similar to it, except we won't have the wine storage above the fridge, or the 45 degree sink extension. The cabinet pantry, that's not visible, to the right of the picture, we asked to make counter depth. It's slightly recessed right now by a few inches, and since we won't have a true pantry closet, we wanted to try and get as much space as we could... that was free. That's the kicker, free.

The closet on the other hand, those upgrades are a pretty penny. Before I go in to that though, one of the other "upgrades" we inquired about were two tile corner ledges in the master shower to put our soap and shampoo bottles. $60 a piece! So for two ledges, basically one piece of tile cut at the diagonal, edges mitered, and then grouted in to the rest of the small shower design... $120! Surely they could have just charged the $60 since it cutting that one tile will make our two ledges that we requested? We haven't decided if we're going with this or not. I'd like to not store my shower stuff on the floor, but is it worth $120?!

What we did say yes to were the closet fees. Mainly because it would be nice for the closet to match the rest of the house, we'll have the storage we want without having to build it later with a closet system, and we have the money to do it. We're having two chests of drawers built. One for me, and one for Vernon. The closet will have seasonal racks, which are basically shelves/rods that run really close to the ceiling. That way we can store any items that don't necessarily need to be in arms reach, or are out of season. Then we'll have shelves throughout for folded items, and other random junk that accumulates in the closet. Hopefully I can get the drawing of it when they plan it out for the cabinet maker.

The only other things we asked for was a bench where the jetted tub would have been in the master bathroom, and for the two linen cabinets in the house to be built all the way up to the ceiling. Currently they're about six inches shy of touching the ceiling. I'd rather not deal with dust, so they said that should be easy and won't come at a cost. If they'll do something for free... I'm all about it! We're still waiting to hear back from the builder's designer on how much we'll get credited for not having that jetted tub in the master bath. Hoping it will cover most of the upgrade costs. If so, then maybe we'll go for those pricey shower shelves.

I guess my short post turned in to a long one. I yammer too much. Hopefully next time I post, you'll get to see a brick house! For now, here's the first frost on our roof :) Dang you cold weather! I hope the weather cooperates. I don't want this build delayed!

Have a good night. Stay warm!

8 - Roof

It's sad to say that my laziness doesn't bring me up to the lot as often as I'd like. I'm still trying to go once a week, but if we go anytime before 5, there's always construction crew men there. I don't want to look like a creeper and take pictures while they're doing their thing, let alone get in their way. I also don't like driving up that far (in decent traffic, it's about a 35 minute drive) unless I'm there for other reasons. With that, last Thursday was the monthly membership meeting at our boat club, which so happens to be about five minutes south of our future home. 

Since I last posted. We now have a completely covered roof and windows. I don't know if it was completed in the timeframe that Vernon predicted, but it was definitely done within the week that we hadn't gone up to check out the house.

Here's the exterior with zip board sheathing (seams not taped yet), and the shingled roof. Our house address is spray painted in various parts of the exterior, so I blacked them out. I know most of the people reading will eventually know where we live, but in the event someone we don't know reads the blog, I'd like to keep a little anonymity.

I used to laugh at that port-o-potty sitting in front of our house. I appreciate it, because hopefully it means the crew won't use our toilets and plumbing by the time they get installed. I thought it was there for the builds going on along the street, but Vernon found a satellite image of the area when nothing was developed, and only the land had been graded/flattened. So in a sea of red clay, there sat the port-o-potty... same spot and all. Made me laugh, but we can't find it anymore or I'd post it. That big plywood box is like a temporary wood scraps/trash box.

Below is a better picture of that weird step in the garage that I mentioned in the last post. You know, the thing the builders called a tire stop. I still don't believe that, and there's still no solution to how it can be resolved. I'm trusting they'll do something once the garage gets cleaned up, and they can possibly pour more concrete to extend it out to the hot water heater closet.

Oh, our garage also has a huge pile of duct scraps, and our storm shelter hole looks like garbage pit. As I was walking through the house, a small part of it just wanted to pick things up and throw the obvious trash away. Then I realized that would be pointless, and also might seem weird when the people come back the next day and stuff was clean. So maybe not. I just hope they pick up after themselves prior to drywalling the place. I've read stories of how people will sometimes find cups and bottles and crap between their walls when they take one down for whatever reason. Not that it would be a big issue since I would never see it, or know about it, but it's the principle right?

All the windows are in, and we have a temporary front door. I thought it was weird they put in a door even though there's no garage on the house. Wasn't sure what purpose it served since they'll be removing it to put the door we picked out in the end. Anyway, here is a view of the windows in the dining nook and the living room.

So the far left is the dining nook, adjacent to the kitchen. We went for a picture window because we thought it'd look nicer not having any obstructions there. The three windows on the right are the living room windows. Those are workable, and they all look in to our backyard. The very far right one has a huge crack on the top pane. We're not pointing that out because it's pretty obvious, and I'm assuming should be fixed before we move in. There's no screens in yet for the windows that can be opened. I'm guessing that part comes later, but we were assured we get screens. Down below is our temporary front door. You can also see that the arches for hallways are in. I love arches entries!

The L-shaped peninsula to our kitchen was framed as well. It's exciting seeing it all come together. We didn't realize that bringing the peninsula to an L shape (the original plans were for a 45 degree angle type extension) would make the dining nook a tad smaller. Sooo... we might have to invest in a smaller/narrower table at some point. No worries though, since we rarely, if ever, use it.

The fireplace was also installed. I can't tell where the top part of the mantle will go, but I hope it's where they blocked it off. If so, it will be tall! If I remember correctly, it's about at shoulder height. My shoulder height. I really liked the large mantle that was in the model home. I was thinking we were going to get a little baby fireplace since they said the large sized one in the model home was an upgrade. I'd be okay with a tall and narrow mantle. We'll see what happens, but I've got my fingers crossed!

Lastly, they fixed a lot of our plumbing issues that were mentioned in my previous blog. Yay! So the master closet wall was moved out, and it's now as wide as I am tall. The second bathroom sink is no longer in one of the spare bedrooms. And the backyard water spigot wasn't in the dining area. They're all now within the walls. Thank goodness! And we also got our tub in the second bath. It's a shallow one, which is probably a standard builder grade tub, but we don't imagine it will ever be used except to give our little pup a bath... or the occasional regatta guest. I wish it wasn't in yet though, if only for the reason that it's white, and I'm afraid all the dirt will stain it and make it look dirty :( I guess I should go cover it better next time I'm up there.

That's all for now. We got an email from the designer last Friday regarding the prices for some of the upgrades we requested. Some were ridiculously overpriced in our opinion, so I had to ask about it. It just seemed outrageous, and although I know they're there to make a profit and nickel and dime us for anything not standard... some of it was crazy. I'm waiting to hear back from her with some answers to our questions. I'll share with you in another post, another day. Until then... have a good night!