DAY 453: Old-Timey Bathroom Progress

Today Brent worked on piecing together my old-timey bathroom.  It looks AWESOME and I love it.  It took longer than expected (everything does these days.....) to install a toilet, pedestal sink, mirror and light.  But LOOK!  I love it!

 I like to help, there are lots of things I can do at the house, but when it comes to installing toilets, sinks and lights, I'm not much help.  I'm the one who holds things steady, runs to Lowes or Home Depot for the missing part, the one who checks to see if things are centered, etc.  Today I will try to clean up the bathroom, run to get the right cords for the sink, hang the door and mark spots that need attention.

Hilario painted more over the weekend but we had a few spots like this:

The crackle effect on the white trim is not supposed to be there.  I will have to sand down those spots and repaint.  We have a couple of them in the house.  We still don't have our furnace going and I think the inside temp/thickness of the paint are affecting the finish.  But, as with everything else in the house, we will get it fixed!

That was our New Years Eve.  Brent and I made it home around 9pm.  The kidlettes had made crepes, we watched an episode of Sherlock (just me and Brent) and that was our party.  We are up again early in the morning to keep working. 

DAY 449: 89.3 Degrees

I just got home from our concrete home where it was a balmy 89.3.  Hilario cranked up our portable heat to propel the paint drying.  And it worked!

He finished our kitchen windows (love!)

 Today base cabinets started to appear...

Sha-bam!  Base cabinet in our bathroom....

And in the laundry....

Cute little mudroom bench got prepped for paint...

 Randy got hardibacker in the master shower....

 And someday my bedroom will be a place of peace and rest.  Right now it's just a chaotic staging ground. 

 And now...time for bed!

DAY 447: Yes, Really Did Work on Christmas Day

Merry Christmas Friends! 

Brent and Cole worked ALL DAY yesterday on the railings.  I stayed home with the girlies to get a Christmas Eve party together (it was great!).

We had a marvelous Christmas Day!  Good food, fun presents, and time with family.  After visiting my parents and enjoying a yummy Christmas Dinner we headed home around 4.  Brent headed over to the house to work again on the railings.  He has to take a load in tomorrow so that they can start the powder coating and baking.  I can't wait to see them done!

 I followed Brent over to the house around 5.  My job was to install hardware on the doors.  We now have many doors that closer in the basement!  Whoopie!

 The family room is prepped for painting the trim.  I just need to go buy (more) paint again in the morning. 

 Randy has finished the floor tile (still love it) and is working on the platform for the washer/dryer...

Randy has also started the master bath... 

  This is THE furnace we have been waiting for.  It's here!  Brent has been working on the wiring.  Somehow it's going to connect to those two black tubes coming up from the cement.  Those connect to our wells that we had drilled. 

 The recent good news is that we found and fixed the leak in Sierra's room.  Now we have to get all the drywall patched and fix the paint that was damaged with the water. 

 The grand question is always: when are you going to move in?  Brent and I just shrug our shoulders and say we don't know.  We hope it's soon.  But there are so many factors; how often Brent/Cole/and I can get over there to work, if the cabinets get installed this week/then we can get the template made for our counters, got to get the furnace up and running/then the wood can be delivered for the floor which has to sit in our house for a week to adjust, gotta find the electrical glitches, still have baseboards to install upstairs, still need rain gutters, need foundation plaster, and the list goes on a bit.  We had really hoped to be finished by December 31 for a tax credit, but that's not going to happen.  Oh well.  There is only so much we can do in the time that we have.  That's the story of building your own house!

DAY 433: Et La Lumiere Fut

This was the highlight for me this weekend.  I walked upstairs and voila!  The lights in the living room were on!  Brent has been working room by room finishing things up with the electrical.  He is still chasing a problem downstairs in the family room, but like everything else in this house, he will get it figured out!

 The kitchen is almost all tiled!  There are just edge pieces that need to be placed.  This picture does not show the fantastic texture of these tiles.  When Randy picked up the tiles someone commented that they looked like bamboo. 

DAY 428: Carpet, Too Many Choices

Carpet samples have invaded my living room.  Today I am leaning towards NOT doing a frieze.  Who came up with that word anyway?  It feels like a chapter in a Fancy Nancy book  "Frieze is a fancy way of saying shag carpet".  You can't tell me that it's not a shag carpet.  Anyway, I'm thinking maybe a low profile carpet and then throw some fluffy accent rugs around.  But that's today.

 I learned yesterday that they have carpet for the west coast and carpet for the east coast.  The east coast is more bold in color choices.  Out west we lean towards the desert/nature colors.  When I walk into a carpet shop it seems like the samples scream "Pick brown!  Which shade of brown do you like?"  I had no idea that the browns can look so different.

Yesterday I sat in a friend's living room on her new shag, I mean frieze, carpet and the first words out of my mouth were "Is this chestnut?" It was. I know the names of too many carpet samples.  I wish I could have said first "Your new carpet looks AWESOME!" (because it does).  Chestnut is actually one of the friezes I was considering.  We both have great taste (wink wink).

I'm more than a little frozen with all the final choices.  This is the part that everyone sees.  No one will care that we carefully stacked the ICF blocks and made (pretty) straight walls.  Of course they would noticed if we didn't do that.  But you see wall color, carpet, tile, all those final choices.

Tired.

Joyeux Jour de Saint Nicolas!  The kidlettes all found chocolate santas in the morning. Yummy Lindt chocolate which they will probably slather in peanut butter to eat. We love December 6th!

(Hey!  Is that a frieze I see on our floor?)

DAY 425: Railings, Stone, Siding, and Tile

Brent took another day off of work on Friday.  We decided that would help until we finish.  He gets so much done when he has the two back-to-back days.  It's been the weekend of the railings...

The deck railing is taking shape.  I am tickled that no other neighbor will have a railing like ours since it's Brent's original work.

 Cole spent his entire Saturday welding.  Putting together the two side banisters on the side porch took some time.  I love watching Cole weld.  He does an awesome job, he stays focused and he's good.  Once they are all welded next step is to take them down, get them powder coated and baked.  Flat black, gonna' be gorgeous!

Ben came Saturday and worked on the newell posts and handrail.  We needed help with this job.  The tile is inching closer to the wood.  Love it!

 

This is my tile!  I love it!  It's from Contempo Tile, a series called "Lines".  The color does not come through in the photo at all.  It's a tan beige and I'm happy with is.  The squares are 20x20 which looked HUGE on the wall but just right in our kitchen space. 

 Our neighbor Randy is laying all the tile.  It was a job that we anticipated doing ourselves, but had to give it up.  Randy is doing lovely work.  4600 pounds of tile.  That's a lot of tile. 

My living room is a dumping ground right now...

We have the beginnings of a shower!

 And the beginnings of a drain pan for the washer/dryer.

  Look!  It's coming together!  More stone and the foam is 90% hidden.  Just that little patch up in the front right. 

Ugh, still a few old issues and some new issues to deal with.  We turned the water on to the house so we could run the hose.  A couple of hours later my friend Annette came over for a tour of the house.  It was fun to show her, her daughter and her mother-in-law our handiwork.  We had not been in the basement at all Saturday and no plans to work down there.  When we got into Sierra's room there was water on the floor.  Water was coming through the ceiling and dripping from the closet door jamb.  Her room just happens to be a hub for many of the water lines and the plumbing.  Randy was there.  He shut off and drained the water.

I hate think what type of damage we could have had if left unnoticed over the weekend.  It was a real blessing that Annette came for a tour.  But now we need to discover the source of the leak.  I personally suspect a drywall screw.

The inspector came today to look at the shower bladder.  I quizzed him about the railings.  We know what to do now.  But as he was measuring he took a measurement to the stairs.  Our front stairs are not to code.  UUUUGgggggHhHhHhHh.  Not sure what our concrete guy was doing...the treads are all different.  There can only be a 3/8 of an inch variance and our top step is off 1 inch.  Bleck.  It's kindof funny that we have built a concrete home and concrete has been our hugest challenge on all levels. 

I might make an "I Spy" book of our house.  Just to highlight the goof ups and the fixes.  I think that it's likely normal for any house build but since it's our first (and last) house, it feels like a ton.

DAY 420: Here Comes the Stone! Tile Preps!

 The last two days have been busy at our concrete home.  We have someone tiling, someone doing finish work, and our siding crew.  Brent and I haven't been working inside the house as much as we want just because there is no space right now.  It's taking shape.

We chose Harristone, Chief Joseph, Summit color for our stone.  I think that Brent was expecting not to have so many big pieces of stone (the squares and rectangles) but more of the long thin stones.  So was I.  It's so hard to tell from a sample panel at a store.  We probably should have gone to visit a few houses.  However, I still think that it's going to be beautiful!

The stone mason is Noah and he does beautiful work!

 This shot was taken Monday just after they finished the gable.  The foam on the porch is now officially the ONLY exposed foam left on the entire house!  Big milestone for us! 

 This is the last view of our window repair from months and months ago...

 We are using our neighbor Randy as our tile setter.  For the past three days he has laid and stapled wire mesh, floated the cement to prep the floor and picked up half of our 4,000+ pounds of tile. We chose a Contempo tile called "Lines".  It's a large 20x20 tile and I'm excited to see the results.  The tile is beautiful, modern, and I haven't seen it in other homes.  Contempo has beautiful tile but they do not budge on prices.  DalTile was going to give us a sweet deal on a similar tile, I just didn't like it as much.  I went in this morning to barter a bit to try to get the price down.  I told my story and the clerk just looked at me and said with an attitude "Go to DalTile".  Unfortunately for me, it was the Contempo tile that  really loved so we bought the tile. 

Sneek peek at the stair case that Ben is working on.  The photo was taken when it was a wee bit dark.  Brent is making the banister/railings that he will start to place on Saturday.  It's gonna' be a cute staircase.  Should have taken a picture: the wood lines both sides of the stairs, the carpet will look like a runner.  Now we have to choose a stain that will match all the other wood that we have going on in other places....

All of the choices and decisions are a bit overwhelming.  There are SO many choices, luckily a budget limits some of the choices.  I hope that everything will go together right, from carpet to paint to tile to lights to cupboards to wood stains to everything.  Ugh.  But happy ugh!! 

DAY 416: Crazy Saturday

Today I felt this house as if it were a living breathing organism pushing up and rising from the dust.  It has been a very memorable experience to watch (I mean work to make) our ideas become three dimensional, tangible, real. 

I had intended to stay home for the morning, work with the girlies and place a little organization into our current home.  Things were moving along when Brent called to see if I could come over.  In a matter of a few moments the stone mason, three siding workers, the painter, finish work Ben, and our tile worker all arrived with questions.  The place was a beehive today and I was grateful for the help.  

Things are moving quickly right now.  So, I don't know where we will celebrate Christmas.  It could happen...

DAY 415: Brent's Deck

In case you were wondering...yes...we worked on Thanksgiving Day.  We worked the day before Thanksgiving and we worked today.  I will always be grateful for hands that work.  For hands that can work.  For hands that like to work.  It's a blessing!

The kidlettes and I worked on filling all the finish work holes in the basement.  It took us many hours but all the finish work holes are FINISHED!  (Imagine all of us doing the happy dance).

This weeks highlight: the deck.  Brent has been working hard on this project.  Before we even excavated he had started the banister.  I love it and Brent has done a wonderful job on making it look sleek, stylish and completely awesome.  I also love that Cole is learning how to weld.  He enjoys welding as a result of our family project. Tonight Brent said that he makes beautiful welds.  Doesn't surprise me, he is a meticulous kid when it comes to projects and making stuff. 

Brent and Cole will weld the entire banister, take it down, and send it off to be powder coated and baked.  It will be a gorgeous matte black.  As I type Brent and Cole are welding in the dark finishing off the north side of the deck.  We are enjoying a fun phase of the house--watching all the parts come together.  Some are even better than we EVER imagined that they would be.  For example, I love the paint choices.  I agonized over the right combination but I think we nailed it.  

 NEW BLACK WIDOW TALLY: 12

Yesterday I drenched three fine specimens in a juicy spider poison cocktail.  This menacing fella (or sista?) crawled back into his web and gave up.  I buried him.  What is up with all the black widows at our house?  Maybe we have one of those creepy mother of all spiders like the Harry Potter movie and she is sending out all of her babies to scare us off.  Eeeeewwwww, I do not like spiders.

DAY 412: Problem Solving

It's a day of problem solving.The posts on the side and front of the house have vexed us from the beginning.  We have a framer over there right now working to make sense of it all.  Somewhere between the architect's drawing, the engineer's math, the framer's construction and the cement work we have posts that don't match up with the porch.  Once again, I'm learning that building a house is an organic, living, breathing process and not an exact art.  I imagine that it's more of an exact art for those who have built their own house before but we're learning as we are working.  And then we go and throw the ICF walls into the mix and we have a formula for a challenge. 

We have some posts on the side of the house now.  Nate, siding guru, will make sure that they look good, get covered with stone, etc.

So the posts were supposed to land clean and neat on the corners of the porch....

But voici, le probleme. There was NO possible way to fit in a concrete porch next to that window well.  The measurements were all off.  So, this post will work, Nate will wrap it some fancy way and it will look great.

 The other side is a little funky, it partially lands on the steps. 

Now to most people driving by or visiting, they will never notice the posts.  They will just see two posts.  If you decide to build a house brace yourself for the hic-ups.  There are plenty. 

But just take a look at that hardi board!!!  I can't wait to get it painted Hampshire Gray (more green than gray).  Actually, that's what Brent and I will be working on tomorrow and half day on Thanksgiving (THANKS to my Mom and Dad for having us over for dinner--the kidlettes will feel like it's a holiday). 

 Shot of the front at noon today...

If you enlarge the photo below you can see lots of numbers on the foam.  There are also some letters, specifically a BB that is kindof in a box.  This represents the STRONGEST point of the ICF webbing.  Siding can be nailed and screwed into these points.  If it's any other place it will pull out because it's just going into foam. 

 I can't remember what happened here, whacked the corner with a backhoe or something.  We had to rebuild this corner as best as possible.  I just wanted to document the awesomeness of this corner.  It's going to disappear today or tomorrow...

I'm also working on the basement tub.  I want a surround instead of tile (for cost, and because I don't want to scrub more grout than I have to).  We have another framing goof we are working through.  We didn't notice it at the right time so now we have a gap between the tub and the wall.  The rep from White Water Tubs thinks that they can place a trim down there if it clears the faucet. 

 Ta-Dah

 This was outside our window Sunday.  Maya took a picture.  It was so vivid, so beautiful.

Happy Thanksgiving!