hurry up and wait

Well, we obviously missed the move-in date of Nov 1st.  The bathroom vanity maker is the scapegoat -- but honestly, we've been running a few weeks behind all along.

This gives us time to get everything else done in the meantime.

So the past 2 weeks have been busy taking care of items like:

1.  Re-painting the inside of the entire house (first time around was pretty low quality)
2.  Finalizing kitchen cabinet installation
3.  Haggling over countertops
4.  Garage door installation (this baby is quiet!)
5.  HVAC roll-out (still not running, but we should be running our GeoThermal unit by mid-week)

So not a lot to show off, picture-wise.

We hope to be in by Thanksgiving, b/c if we are not, we'll be homeless!  Our rental is up on Dec 1st....

Front door -- tempered glass with a small transparent stripe for peeking out.

Our nice kitchen awaits countertops -- and then for the appliances to be installed.

The boys wait patiently for the house to get finished.....

and they wait...

and wait.

The wood along the covered deck is the Red Grandis that we've been waiting for.
It is a bit pink now, but will grey over time. 

More red grandis.

My favorite view of our house is this, from the backyard.

Within reach

It's now mid-October, and in theory we were going to be done by November 1

- but, it turns out we'll be delayed by a couple of weeks.  Given the rain this summer, and dearth of contractors, I suppose that's not too horrible.  Especially if all the finishing touches come off very well.

- but Nina and I are too aware of all of the unnecessary delays in the spring and early summer to chalk the delays up to OCD-type craftsmanship.

Nevertheless, there has been a lot of activity at the house the past two weeks.  Take a peek:

This is a sliding door ordered and paid for back in June.  It finally arrived on Tuesday, October 15th!
Minor detail: there is no hardware for it.
So the Marvin windows guys have definitely made the bottom 10 of our rank list!

Sod in the front and in the back.
Somehow, this one cosmetic detail has had a huge impact on the house -
now, somehow we are willing to believe we'll actually move in one day.

Painting w/accent walls was going on in earnest this week.  

The deck, a bamboo composite, was finally installed this week.
It looks pretty cool from up above (view from master BR).

Tile is all but done, and the plumber even installed a lot of the fixtures this week.

Little shelf inside the shower stall -- these are the cool details that we really love.

Bathtub - that we'll probably never use!

Let there be light - and plenty of it!
This isn't our disco room, but our kitchen.
The bulbs haven't yet been recessed into their respective cans.

You can see that down the "line" along the wall, the recessed lights are  in fact recessed.

Kitchen cabinets are being painstakingly installed.
Some day I'll post separately on the very very OCD installer who is carefully and
meticulously installing our kitchen SieMatic cabinets.
Off to the right, note our
freezer and refrigerator (separate units).  

Ceiling fans also installed!

So we have 3-4 weeks left, and a lot of ground to cover in that time.

Tasks I'm led to believe we'll cover in the next week:

1.  finish painting --> I think I was told this was actually called (no joke) the "final first pass" or something to that effect.

2.  garage door install

3.  downspout/gutter install

4.  finish landscaping

5.  measure and order countertop for kitchen

October moves quickly

It's the final countdown....

So much is going on -- especially in light of the fact that so much hasn't been done to date.

This week we are finishing the following:

1.  Tile -- upstairs is almost done.  Downstairs, the 48" x 48" tile is in, and the funky 3-D tile just got installed today. There's still a lot of grouting and sealing to go around.  But as of now, all the floors are in!

Sadly, one of these 4-footers broke so the tile installers had to be creative in other spaces.

2.  Painting -- after 2 false starts, guys got down to business this week touching up the drywall, sanding, re-priming, and then today actual painting.

3.  Deck installation -- it's going to be cool!

4.  Landscaping -- It's amazing what a difference not-mud makes!   All of a sudden, the back of the house seems nice.  We hired a crew from Allied Fence (they work w/Home Depot, apparently) to design and install a fence, which I think looks really nice.  Hopefully it's tall enough to deter deer from leaping into our yard!

Dudes are installing the back deck.
Bamboo theoretically should arrive to allow these guys to be done by Friday.  

It's like someone rolled out a thick green carpet out back.

Upcoming tasks:
1.  Kitchen installation -- that should start next Monday (there were some serious sparks regarding the start time for that!)
2.  Hardwood Floor stain/finishing -- samples.

I hadn't actually noticed that there were three choices here.
Thankfully someone else did!

3.  Actually finish the house.

turning the corner

We are now beginning to see the structure turn into a house (won't say home yet).  Inside doors were installed last week, and this week tile has been installed upstairs.  Hardwood flooring arrived and has begun upstairs.  This time, they are using the glue on the hardwood ;)

Crawlspace encapsulation and insulation also happened -- that made me happy, as now our home should be a sealed-tight structure.  Except for the fact that we still lack our front door.  That should arrive Wednesday of next week, however.  For now we have a temporary plywood door.

Yeah for crawlspaces!  We'll probably not hang out down here very much....

Master bathroom limestone tile

Boys bathroom.
The skylights were installed last week, and they really brighten up the 3 rooms.

Hardwood in the upstairs hallway -- this was a nice surprise.
We had been told that the hardwood was still in Virginia and that it might take another week or so to get it down here.
Also note the pocket doors -- those are for the laundry room.

Also, our geothermal unit is completely in and is operational -- we only lack electricity to run it.  I think that we can look forward to a conditioned house in a week or so.

*** So we are told (still) that we are on track for November 1st or thereabouts.  Man, there is so much work to be done, it's hard to imagine....

*** One of our project supervisors quit this week to start his own business.  Wyatt, best of luck to you!

*** Next week begins the landscaping and the fence for the back yard.  Ideally our back deck will also begin.  The red grandis arrived this week for the porch area.  Cara tells us this is going to be a beautiful wood that will age and mature nicely outside. Just reading about it -- this wood is pretty cool!  Check out the link above....

updates for the past 3 weeks

For every photo capturing precious progress, there are hours of conversations, meetings, and decisions (!!!) that preceded said progress.  

I mention that to justify, in part, the naked fact that little has occurred over the past 3 weeks inside the house -- despite the fact that November 1 is only 6 weeks away.  Amazingly, there was not a single shred of progress within the house last week.  Want to talk about uncertainty?

At any rate, some progress was made outside the house:

View from the garage out to the freshly-poured driveway.

So if the house never gets finished we have a nice flat surface upon which to pitch tent!

Despite the lack of in-house progress, the was in fact activity.  That exercise involved delivery of hardwood for 1st level flooring, installing a portion of it, and then deciding that, after all, this was low-quality wood being installed incorrectly.  Ooops.

So a brief tutorial for anyone out there considering wide-plank hardwood.  

We decided that we liked the look of the wide-planks.  In our case, we decided to go with a 5" wide white oak.  Typically, hardwood floors are 2.5-3" wide.  The wider planks are more expensive, but have a less-busy appearance to them.  Wider planks can "cup" however, where the plank would pop up off of the flooring below them.   Hence, the planks should be glued down.  Narrow planks don't have this issue -- wider planks do.  We had seen TaC's previous clients' floor going in.  For them, 12" walnut was being installed, and the glue was laid down similar to tile adhesive, with a grooved trowel, etc.  

Our builder has never had this experience, and they trusted the sub-contractor who said nails alone are fine.  So after installing a bit of the downstairs, our project manager, Fernando, had the good sense to stop the crew and ask for a meeting so that everyone could weigh in.  A second opinion -- your classic eastern-European tradesman -- also came.  It was immediately clear that the install was incorrect. 

Also, we were getting stuck with a bunch of shorties -- short pieces of wood, that is.  So all that nice hardwood is going back to the store, and we're awaiting shipment of new hardwood, and the Romanian guy is now in charge.....

Here's how the front looks, now that the limestone, metal and stucco are complete:

I felt very happy today when a potential client of TaC, after visiting the site, told me "My god, how small!"

and some walls go up....

drywall is quick to hang, slow to mud and sand.

Drywall, etc

Well, the outer shell is nearly done -- that was a month!

View from the backyard.  

Most of the stucco went up during rain.  It has been a wet summer, to say the least.

Watching the stucco go up from the stairwell windows.

Drywall -- about 200 sheets -- arrived last Wednesday.
By Monday at 5pm, nearly the entire place is hung with drywall.

Joint work and mudding will come soon (tomorrow?)

Limestone just began today.  These are 48" and ~ 2" thick.
Apparently each piece weighs > 200lbs.
Note the small crane below used to lift the pieces.

You can see the red crane used to hang the limestone.  

So we have zinc panels above and on the garage roof.

We have 3/4" stucco pretty much everywhere.

The 2" limestone panels are being carefully placed on the large front wall this week (and next).

Inside, it took the drywall crew all of 2.5 days to hang essentially all of the drywall.  I guess the next week will be mudding/sanding.

Coming up after that:

1.  Finish front site work
2.  Driveway
3.  Paint inside of house
....then flooring.....

We are being told that we are still "on track " for November 1.