Wow, what a week. We got cabinets installed, interior doors, trim, stairway posts, our first light fixtures, our stone wall and porch posts. It’s amazing seeing it come together and start to look like a house. The trim is just beautiful and really brings it all together. The cabinets are magnificent and the stone wall is just breathtaking! The kitchen/dining room is really coming together with the terra cotta walls, dark cabinets and stone archway. I think you will all like the paint color a little more now.

We have a few light fixtures in the house now and hopefully the rest will be in by week end. I never realized how great electricity is! The porch posts have been installed and they are working on the balcony. Dad’s working on the AC, so hopefully that will be running upstairs this weekend.

We’ll have to get ourselves back to painting the last couple of rooms and then start working on the trim. If anyone would like to volunteer to help, be our guest! TTFN

We have been having a lot of fun painting this past week. I suppose it was fun, as long as you consider painting for 10 hours a day and sweating in a 90 degree house fun.

But all in all it has been going very well. We have some bold terra cotta color going on in the dining room and kitchen.  The office is a sweet olive green. I had to get my beloved green in there somewhere and what better place than the office. Hopefully by Sunday night most of the upstairs will be done. We probably won’t get the two spare rooms done but that’s ok.

Also, the wood floor was delivered two days ago. It looks cool. I like to say it is “peppered with distinction”. But by peppered I mean, “full of nail holes.” It should look amazing once it gets installed. The wood is an antique reclaimed wood from authenticpinefloors.com. They told me that the antique reclaimed wood is from pine trees that were around 100 years old and cut down to build mills, distilleries, factories etc. Those buildings are now around 100 years old themselves and are abandoned and being torn down. The wood is being reclaimed, milled, and turned into flooring. So the wood that will be on the floor in house will be already around 200 years old. Amazing!

I promise there will be pictures coming soon.

The drywallers finished taping and sanding this week, so the house was all ready to be primed. Joe and Carrie came Friday night with the craft center and taped off the doors and windows and prep for priming. And they were there at 8:30 Saturday morning to begin priming. Thank God for siblings and talented ones at that.

The paint sprayer worked amazing well and I guess it helped that Joe knew what he was doing. We sprayed the primer on everything and then rolled behind for a nice even coverage. We did the bathroom and some smaller areas by hand, but most of it was sprayed. Everyone seemed to underestimate the number of gallons of primer we would need. So after 14 gallons and the upstairs not even finished, we went back to Home Depot for another round. All in all, we used 27 gallons of primer. That’s crazy. It’s not even that thick, but it came out really nice. And we will never paint the ceilings, so that’s one thing we’re done with. They look really good.

We’re just left with a little issue of how to reach the ceiling in the stairway, so we’ll need to work that out quickly and then we’ll be ready to paint! New albums in the Photo Gallery. Check em out.

Wow, a day and half and drywall is up in the entire house. These people don’t mess around. They’ll be working on the taping and finishing. We met with Dan last night to decide on how we’re going to finish the ceilings and walls. We’re going with a Spanish trowel ceiling and possibly a skip trowel for the kitchen/dining walls. It will look really nice.

Don has been busy working on getting the septic in and grading the yard. It’s looks beautiful. He’s quite an artist when it comes to moving dirt.

We picked the stone for the stone archway between the kitchen and dining room and the balcony rail. Hopefully we’ll be finishing our floor selections this weekend and then on to electrical fixtures. Always something. And then - on to priming and painting.

The house is really coming along nicely. We have all the siding up, the brick is done, the plumbing and electrical rough ins are inspected, and the hvac is just about ready for inspection.  That hvac was a pain, let me tell you. It was probably more of a pain for Theresa’s dad, but still, T and I spent 6 hours finishing up the duct insulation and the last couple pieces of flex duct last Saturday and boy was it tedious.  It’s nice to be done though and I can say I learned a new trade skill. Though I hope I never have to do that again.

After the drywall gets done our next big task will be priming and painting.

In the meantime we have just about finalized our hardwood selection. It’s an antique pine that is hundreds of years old, reclaimed from old mills, factories and distilleries that are being torn down. It has a lot of character. It’s really cool and best of all it’s recycled. We are also close to finalizing our other flooring too.

It’s getting closer and closer to finished. Scary, huh?

Time flies when the weather cooperates. The house is completely sided! They started working on the brick this week and are almost done with the turret. Click on Photo Gallery to see the pictures. Next week they will start working on the insulation when the HVAC and Electrical are done. TTFN.

Well, the house is completely framed with shingles, garage door and skylights. The plumbing is completed and we’re working to finish up the HVAC and electrical. They also poured the cement in the basement, garage and porch. There are a couple of new albums on the Photo Gallery page.

Well, the framing is finally complete. The doors and windows were installed last week and the roof was finished. They also installed the tubs and showers upstairs and made our beautiful achways and niches. They’re working on the shingles and plumbing this week. Dad’s going to be starting on the HVAC at the end of the week also. I posted new pictures on the Photo Gallaries page.

What a difference a week makes. The entire house was framed and they’ve started on the roof in a matter of days. See the pictures we took on the 11th in the Photo Gallery. Next week they’ll finish the roof and start on the shingles. We’re moving now. Check back often because it’s going to change quickly. TTFN

I’ve got more pictures to come, I just need to get them all uploaded. As you can see the framing is going quickly. The entire first floor was finished in two days. Nice! Stay tuned for the rest of the photos.