Toothless luc

Fancy!

All the waiting for the fancy stove and my first meal is a grilled cheese sandwich.

Wait...what?

Ok, now the shutter saga is getting shadier, pun intended.

So, it appears that our builder feels bad about the window treatment order being messed up.  I don't think they can be held responsible for the one shade that arrived broken, but it also seems that they failed to order the shades we paid for on both back doors as well as the large window in the princess bathtub area.

To make things right, they have offered to upgrade the treatment on the door on the main floor to a shutter to match the other two windows (only one of which we have installed.)

This is a VERY pretty option and of course we said yes, but I'm still in awe of the earlier mishap where the windows were measured for the wrong type of treatment.

We will wait in anticipation of when these items will arrive, we have not yet heard a timeline, but I do know that one of the reasons these shutters are so expensive is that they make them custom to fit your exact window.  I don't imagine they have a warehouse of doors and window shutters just laying around.

These lovely things will not be in by Friday.  So, to use the master bathroom we will have to install a lesser temporary solution.  Jason says we should just tape a blanket to the window.  We have this extra one - classy?

Four sleeps until the house is ours.

 

Final kitchen

Stairs

So much for not popping over to look

I was 100% serious about not dropping over to the house to look at the progress, but that evil Jason made me go last night.

I'm so happy we did.

The detail work is happening now.  They are installing the closet and bathroom fixtures.  Our sod has been rolled out and the yards look amazing.  Our front yard is still extremely tiny, but now we could bury at least three people where as at the other house it was a single body yard.  The back yard is by no means expansive, but it is large enough for croquet and I love it.

There were workers in the kitchen installing our crown molding and the posts that will support the overhang on the island.  When selections of cabinetry and crown molding were done we did not have the benefit of having examples of all the other finish work that was standard to the house (posts, doors that sort of thing) and I think our selections look great!

There have been some drawers and pieces with our cabinets that have not been finished and last night we were told that some of the pieces arrived broken and had to be rebuilt.  We had ordered pull out cabinets in the island and in one of the cabinets flanking the stove.  It turns out pull outs were ordered for all the cabinets (which would be one extra) but one of the sets came broken.  The installer was in the kitchen mulling over how to custom build the pull outs and asked us what our preference was.  We made his day by saying we were happy with the one set that was already installed and that he didn't need to rebuild anything.

Making his day made all the workers happy and we got a high five.  Then I walked over to the fireplace to look at the paint job on the tiny and super wrong mantle and the lead wood worker called across the room to me and said "we're going to fix that, you'll love it."   I said "it was supposed to have an overhang right?"  He said something about the paperwork being confusing, but that he was still working on it.   I don't have many expectations as to what it will look like, but I'm hopeful that it will not look like a mistake and be reflective of the other amazing finishes in the house.  He said "trust me, you will love it."  All the other guys were all "he's the best, it will be great,"   I can live with that.

We get to do the formal walk thru tomorrow.  That leaves them with three official work days to finish it all up.  We sign our paperwork on the 20th or 21st.  Money transfers happen on the 21st and we close on the 22nd.

Lucy is holding it together pretty well.  We are being very lenient with attitude and making sure to focus our family time on playing with her.  She's ready for normalcy and I can't wait to give it to her.  She is a champion.  Leniency does not mean that I'm letting her get away with barking orders at me "Mom, I'm HUNGRY.  Juice, Toast!"  That is not how I roll.    She crossed the line this morning and we had a talk about it.  A calm, low toned talk.  Those are scary.

We are letting some rules slide because of the changing environment.  She gets to eat her breakfast in our room until we move, and I'm allowing her to watch the movie in the car on the way to school.  Once we move, our room will be a food free zone and the commute to school will be so short that we'll be back to no movies.  Right now, these are small accommodations and we've already talked about the new rules at the forever house.

Nine days

The Princess Tub

  Can you see it?  My favorite spot in the house will be this six fool long bathtub.  Yes, we had a tub in the old house, but this one is designed for a solo soak. 

It was hard to focus at work yesterday after seeing all the exciting changes in the house.  I stopped by after work and found that the carpets were fully installed, the mirrors in the bathrooms have been placed and all the shower doors are in place.

The under cabinet lighting seems to be working, and Jason's speakers were finally finished.  

We are getting right down to it and the time is going fast, and super slow at the same time.

We have our walk thru Friday, and I'm going to try and stay away until then, so that there are surprises when we do it.

Imagine the soups I will make on this cooktop!

New Photos

The progress last Friday was disappointing and Jason came home from the inspection deflated.  His faith that they would get everything done was diminished.

However, here we are just three and a half work days later and whamo!  It is starting to look sexy as heck in our new house.

I snuck in at 8:00 am this morning and snapped some pictures.   The top pictures shows the under-cabinet lighting and the progress on other electrical requirements such as plugs and switches.  The vent hood is in progress and the oven is ready to go.

The second picture is the nook next to the refrigerator cabinet.  This will be our coffee zone.  Cups up top, and coffee fixins in the drawers below.  

Looking across the room to our sink you can see how bright our kitchen will be even with the counter tops covered.  Jason assures me that he will install a dimmer for the under-cabinet lights so it won't always be as bright as an operating room, but we'll have the option if we want it.

coffee zone

bright kitchen

shutters

office

The last two pictures are the window treatments in the main living area, and then my office.  The Office picture has funky lighting because the walls look yellow when in fact they are grey.

I was thrilled to see that window treatments were mostly installed and that the carpet men were putting down the carpet pad and working on installation.

At a friend's urging we upgraded the carpet pad to the best they had to offer and I don't think we'll regret it.  The warmth, softness and durability will add to the longevity of the carpet (also an upgrade from the standard offering.)  We did learn from the builder grade carpet in the other house.  GO BIG because changing carpet is hard.

I imagine they will be done with the carpet by tomorrow.  I wasn't able to get upstairs because of the carpet install, so all my fun finds were on the main floor.

In addition to what you can see, they also installed the shower door on the main floor.  Because the tile goes all the way to the ceiling, the standard height shower door looks dwarfed but I think I will be able to get over that within about 4 minutes of moving in.

They haven't painted that bathroom the custom color yet, but they will.

I could see that the shutters in the princess bathtub area had been installed on the back side of the house. but not on the window facing the neighbors.  The blinds on all the main floor windows were in with the exception of the door to the deck and the second main living room window.

So...here's a story.  We really wanted the wood shutters on the windows in the main living area, they are beautiful, but super expensive - like $600 per window expensive.  So, we opted to do little shutters on the two windows flanking the fireplace and do the faux (fake) wood blinds on the large expensive windows.  Our logic was, we'd likely never have the little windows open, so the shutters would let in light but be very pretty.

We made our selections at the design center and months pass.  As I'm walking thru this morning I see that one of the two main windows has a shutter on it.  A SHUTTER.  The two little windows have faux wood blinds.  HOLY HECK!  Did the person that came and measured the windows mess up?  We are hoping so.  We won't know until Friday, but keep your fingers crossed.  This would be the first error that has worked in our favor.  The only downside of the shutters is that they can never really be open - we can tilt them, but a clear view of the back will not happen.  But, if you need a clear view of my trees in the back, put your shoes on and go stand on my giant deck!

Bouncing Girl

18 days

In drawer trash bins

My little carpenter

Fireplace!!!

We are getting right down to it.  The tile is installed in the kitchen and in most bathrooms.  Grouting still needs to be done and there is some finish work to be done in our master bathroom.

The fireplace tile does not look like I expected but after seeing it on the fireplace, I rather like it, which is good because it's too damn late to do anything about it now.  Once the purple spacers are removed and the grout is in it wont look so pink.  I wish the mantle was more ornate - or that it matched the crown molding that is in the kitchen.  I'm going with the flow on this item, because when the room is put together a traditional style mantle might not be the right thing.  We will see.  (I also think that with a checkbook, a topper could be added.)

Our hardwood floors are in, the cook-top is installed, but not connected, the stove and microwave are onsite ready for installation.

We have sinks, faucets and working toilets in all bathrooms, but they installed the wrong toilets so that has to be dealt with.  We paid extra for "comfort" height toilets and they installed their standard toilets.  Had they not charged us extra then it wouldn't be an issue, but they did and we want the right items.  $460 is nothing to sneeze at, or piss about.  ha ha.

We have been delayed a week, which is awful but not the end of the world.  We were able to quickly reschedule all of the deliveries and child care plans.  We were adamant that the toilet problem should NOT impact the delivery date - we will allow the plumber access to the house after we move in if that's when they need to swap out the toilets.  Delays at this point are costing us money and we're already living in a state of boxes, so no more delays!  Damn it.