Stone

We selected our stone for the front of the house.  We've seen it on several homes in town and love it.  Can't wait to see it up!

Details

There are not a lot of photos to post this week, but that's not because there has been an absence of activity.  

We met with Jeff from Old Mill Hardwood Floors last Saturday.  We've seen a few samples with a great new stain.  We've narrowed down the wood species and plank size, but will keep thinking about the stain colors.  

On Tuesday, we made final decisions for the cement fiber board siding, which I understand will be installed within the next few weeks.  

On Wednesday, we met with the guys from Homewood Electric for the electrical walk through.   Between Homewood and Randy, we didn't need to think about too much.  They've got it all covered!  Even in-floor heating in the Master Bath! 

Yesterday, Sonja from Cabinet Works brought by the finalized plans for the kitchen and bathrooms for me to sign off on prior to her placing the cabinet orders.  Everything looks great.  We did change the guest bathroom vanity top, but everything else remained the same.  I think everything will look great, especially the custom cabinetry in the Master Bath!  She let me hold on to the cabinet samples while we play with wall and flooring colors.

Speaking of colors, we've selected our interior and exterior colors, though we will want to test them on our walls before final determination.  Another busy week behind us!

Back at the house, they're working on plumbing and duct work.  Our photo of the week is the front door.  This is not actually our front door, but a temporary one. 

The deck

The deck is in!  We selected Trex over wood so that we could enjoy the deck and not spend a lot of time maintaining it (or worrying about maintaining it).  Even dusted with snow, it looks gorgeous. 

My favorite part is how close the deck is to the trees.  It feels like a tree house up here! By the way, if you come to visit, the guest room is just a few steps from here.  This will be your view when you wake up in the morning.

Tile and carpet

Over half of our flooring will be wood, but today we met with Tim Macrander at Randy's Carpet and Interiors to pick out the rest of the flooring plus the kitchen back splash and fireplace surround.  Our job is made infinitely easier due to the fact that we're basing our home off of an existing home and we've already seen (and liked) those finishes.  Tim had pulled all of the carpet and tile that went into that home and we used it as a starting point.  Paint wheel in hand, we compared tile to our proposed interior color and cabinetry and counter tops.  Tim knew exactly where we were going and offered some fabulous choices.  I'm so eager to see this all put together.  

Here's a sneak peek:

KITCHEN

MASTER BATHROOM

KIDS BATHROOM

A lovely kitchen

We got a call from Sonja at Cabinet Works advising us that after taking actual measurements of our stove wall, she discovered that the actual wall was a couple of inches shorter than anticipated.  This meant changing the plan a bit.  She came to our home with her fancy design software and showed us an updated plan with a new  line of cabinetry so that we could make some decisions.  There's nothing to change.  It looks gorgeous!

Appliances!

Our kitchen is the heart of our home.  Notwithstanding our busy schedules, we spend a lot of time in there.  Our current kitchen is nice.  The one we're building now is awesome. This morning I visited the Slager Appliance showroom to pick out appliances.  Blaine Thomas already had an idea of what I was looking for and had a list ready to go.  It was amazing!  I think I just discovered the best reason to include our home in this summer's Parade of Homes.  We got an unbelievable deal on an extraordinary GE Cafe appliance package for our kitchen as well as a washer and dryer to take us out of last century.  Although we did not get the Bosch dishwasher we had dreamed about, we couldn't be happier.  

Just a little blowing snow

I took my son by the house this afternoon after preschool.  He's a vehicle and machinery fan, so he's usually pleased to see all the goings-on and has been happy to make this trip a part of his routine.  Today, however, he told me that nothing was happening at the house because no one should be working in this weather.  Needless to say, we were pretty impressed to see the guys working on our deck as we drove up.  We can't wait to see the Trex decking up close (maybe when the snow stops blowing and it warms up). 

The windows are in!

We found windows on the house today.  They look great!  My son is worried that we don't have a front door.  I imagine we'll be seeing it before too long.

Inside, the framing for interior walls is mostly done.   We already can envision our spaces. 

Roof!

The roof is up and the black paper is going on. You can't see it from this photo, but one guy is working on his sun tan.  In Iowa.  On January 11.  

Cabinets and more

Over the weekend, we met with Sonja at Cabinet Works in Wellman and selected cabinets and counter tops.   That was my favorite task to date!  Sonja liked an inspiration photo I found online and I think we will have some surprises in the Master Bathroom for the parade.  In the last couple of days, we've picked out our siding material, exterior paint color, deck color and roof color.  We've also picked out bathroom and kitchen fixtures as well as a shower and tub from Studio H2O with help from LeAnn.  What a cool showroom!  The highlight: the touch activated kitchen faucet. 

In the meantime, the house is progressing nicely.  It looks like the second floor is done and maybe we'll see the roof trusses go up tomorrow.

Everything seems to be moving so fast! It is hard to believe that we broke ground less than a month ago.  It looks like we'll get 1 to 3 inches of snow starting tomorrow.  Hopefully that won't disrupt the build too much.

Looking like a house

Framing started on Wednesday.  I'm not sure how we lucked out with the weather.  It's January 6 and it was 54 degrees and sunny out today.  I'm afraid we'll be paying for this beautiful weather in the months to come, but I am so happy that the weather has been cooperative for the initial part of our build.  With some of the walls in place, the house is really taking shape. 

Progress

We were out of town for the holidays and missed seeing the progress on the house.  Upon our return, we've discovered basement floors and walls!!

We were also happy to see our cold storage/tornado shelter.   This should make my Dad happy.

 
We're grateful for the warm weather in the past few weeks as well as for the warm forecast ahead.