All You Create

The two gaping holes in our soon-to-be living room are no more — we now have two sets of French doors installed, and they are lovely.

The transoms above the doors are yet to be installed, but I can tell already that they’re going to look great and bring added light to the house. The kitchen door is also installed, to the right of the doors. Here’s a look from the inside out:

Let the sun shine in!

On another note, we went to Bell Mirror and Glass to choose the glass for our kitchen cabinets (clear beveled glass) and the doors for the showers and tubs. That was an easy task! We are getting satin nickel handles on glass doors. Done and done.

We also ordered two large inset medicine cabinets with a satin nickel finish for the master bath, and they arrived yesterday. Can’t wait to begin to fill those suckers with our toiletries and such.

SK

Some things are worth waiting for.

And one of those things is a set of brand-spanking-new garage doors. Not like they’d put old, used, banged-up doors on a new house, but you get my drift. We’re having some hardware added, such as groovy handles and possibly some decorative hinges, but those will go on at a later date. Now, without further ado:

Amarr Northampton garage doors

Don’t mind the shingle siding on the left side of the house; those are the wrong style (and color) of shingles. The crew will be replacing them — again, at a later date.

Another fun exterior project that’s begun is the stone. We chose tumbled Cottonwood with matching mortar, and they’ve started putting that on the house. And if I do say so myself, it looks fabulous:

Tumbled Cottonwood stone, with two removable accents

And to round out the trifecta of cool stuff happening to our new pad, here is a photo that includes what we think are our final flooring choices: Pinnacle wood flooring in Avril, Shaw (I think) dark brown carpet with a name that’s good enough to eat (can’t remember exactly, but it’s something like Chocolate or Espresso or Fudge or something equally yummy) and brick. The brick will be laid in a “rug” pattern (brick guts with a brick border) in our main entryway and back hall:

Flooring x 3

My goodness, but this house is going up quickly.

SK

We went over to the new house a few days ago and my husband spent a good portion outside in the wind, talking to the man who’s putting in our two wells. One will supply water for the geothermal heat pump and the other is the disposal well that will also supply water for irrigation.

Yeah, right. Like I knew all that. My husband had to supply the info; all I did was type.

Anyway, here’s a photo of what it takes to put in one of those suckers; the truck and pump thingamajig are on the right:

Digging the well

Here’s a recent shot of the back of the house. Still waiting for the two sets of French doors and single back door to be delivered and installed, but I love all the glass — should let a ton of light in for a bright, sun-filled home:

Back of the house — early March 2012

Next up: exterior stone!

SK

We’re at the stage in this house-building thing where we’re starting to acquire some of the more-fun items (as opposed to the insulation, geothermal yadda yadda, cement and such). First up: the kitchen faucet! We decided to go with a satin nickel finish to complement all the stainless steel that’s going to be in the kitchen (e.g., stove/range, refrigerator, microwave sink). And we found a pull-down model by Delta that has a magnet in the pull-down part, so it won’t dangle after a year or two from constant tugging. We think that’s a pretty groovy feature. We plan on mounting it without the supporting plate.

Delta Savile

Next on the agenda: a French-door stainless refrigerator. We are debating whether to get a counter-depth fridge or a full-size fridge. Seems a bit crazy to give up all that extra space for the sake of it standing flush with the counter. Plus, if we get the counter version, the water filter is in a crazy position — high in the right corner of the top shelf. To change it, we (really, my husband) will have to move whatever’s on the top shelf to get to it. Again — crazy. So we need to see just how far it will stick out into the room. Because there is an amount that’s “too much.” We just aren’t sure what that amount is.

Anyway, here’s what we are looking at: a Samsung beauty with ice/water in the door and LED lighting — and, of course, it’s ENERGY STAR rated:

Samsung French-door refrigerator

And to round out the crazy weekend of buying, we chose more Samsung products: our new washer and dryer. These babies will be stacked in the laundry room and I’m excited to use them:

Thing 1 and Thing 2

It’s starting to come together, yes?

SK

The weekend’s visit to the new homestead was fruitful. We now have windows! Correction: We now have most of the windows! Very exciting, to say the least, since “windows” was the first thing to cross off on the builder’s checklist.

Here’s the front of the house (the upper window — my hubby’s office window — has yet to be installed, but all other windows are in) and the roof has a weatherproof covering on it. The shingles should be installed shortly:

Here’s a view of the kitchen windows, all ready for fingerprints and such:

And here’s a rather dark photo of the installed fireplace. It’s a see-thru indoor/outdoor gas fireplace — should be lovely on a cool fall evening out on the deck:

We’re still in the process of choosing certain items, such as wood flooring, carpet, island pendant lighting and faucets. Perhaps we can knock some of those off the list this weekend.

SK

Our new house has become engulfed in Tyvek, the DuPont-brand weatherization wrap that keeps water from seeping through walls. And at this point, the construction is now authentically looking like a house. Yay! And I must add that it looks especially nice and cozy — or potentially so, at least — on this cold, wet day:

And now for a side view; the lone window is in what will be the Jack-n-Jill part of the girls’ bathroom (which, who are we kidding? is really the Jane-n-Jill bathroom):

We’ve also determined our handles for the bathrooms and kitchen. Here’s a sample of the master bathroom handles, in satin nickel:

Satin nickel for the bathrooms, oil-rubbed bronze for the kitchen

Next up for review: island pendant lights. That decision is coming a bit harder, folks.

SK

I can hardly believe it, but choosing stone for the front of our house has been one of the easiest, quickest things we’ve done so far. I explained the look we are going for to our builder, who suggested looking at Cottonwood tumbled stone. We took a look, we liked what we saw and ta-da! We have our stone chosen.

Uniform color and matching mortar give this Cottonwood tumbled stone the look we're after

We’re going with a matching white mortar so that everything blends together. Done.

SK

It’s going well! Fast! Fun!

For starters, here’s the front of the house, with Molly standing on the “driveway” and Abby waving from Molly’s room (on the left):

Here’s a shot of the master bedroom; in theory, we can place the bed between the two windows or under the transom, depending on our mood:

And a parting shot of me and the girly-girls in the space that will soon hold our kitchen table, with a great view of the water:

Like I’ve said, super-fun.

SK

Don’t plan on blinking much when you get a chance to build a house.

We now have part of the front structure up (that’s Abby playing a mean guitar at the edge of what will be the driveway):

And to coordinate with the lovely front structure, we have a back wall going up, with window, door and fireplace cutouts, to boot:

We’re happy campers so far in this building gig.

SK

Since my husband and I switched our morning routines, which includes taking our two daughters to two different schools, I don’t have the opportunity to drive by our new lot as often as I’d like. What this means for the blog is that I’ll be receiving some photos from my husband. It also means that the photos may not be taken from the exact spot each time, which would allow for a fun timeline-type video on down the road. I had thought about it, going so far as to scribble a lovely Sharpie ‘X’ on the curb opposite where our front door will be, but there’s a problem — a big problem: Trucks tend to park right smack in between that lovely X and the future front door.

Ech.

So — here we go with some of the hubby’s photos! Photo No. 1 is a view of the guys readying our basement floor:

Next up — basement walls:

Holy fast build, Batman! This thing’s going up mighty quick.

SK