Okay, I know I haven't updated this blog in a long, long, LONG time. My apologies. We keep forgetting to bring our camera to mum's. But lots has been happening. I did remember to bring the camera last Saturday. The house doesn't look anything like this anymore, but Saturday is a good place to start...
Here's the south side of the house. As you can see, the forms have been removed from around the stairs. More or less.
And, there are doors on the outside. These are temporary doors because apparently they get pretty banged up during construction. But they're helping to keep the elements, raccoons and unsavory characters out.
See. Two such unsavory characters lurking out back that very day. Good thing there were doors on the building!
Look at all the wires in the garage!
And our fireplace (in the
great room) is all boxed in.
The front door from the inside.
And the all-important master bathroom. Nice tub!
So that was Saturday. There was a man there who was sanding our balcony and then blasting it with this fire machine. Once he'd prepped the wood, he applied this wonderful glue product (sniffing those fumes did wonders for my headache!) and then put down the vinyl decking material. So now that's done.
On Tuesday a crew were applying the black building wrap. They managed to finish that job on Tuesday and by Wednesday the insulation was all in as well. The building inspector came by on Wednesday to check all of the insulation work and we passed that inspection.
Which meant that today there were TWO teams of people working on putting up all the drywall boards. They were 90 % finished the two top levels today and are expected to finish the basement tomorrow and have the taping and
mudding done by the 29
th or so. The painters are already scheduled for two - two and a half weeks from now and the kitchen is going to start being installed in a month. WOW. With all that activity I feel like this house building is really taking off!
Yesterday we also finally managed to catch the cabinet guy. Our builder wanted us to finalize plans for the master
ensuite so Bert (the cabinet guy) told us to drop by his shop on the way home from work last night. We thought we were going to talk about doors and the bathrooms, but he stressed that there was some urgency to finalizing all of our cabinets. So we ended up spending about 40 minutes with him, then took samples of cabinet colours and counter tops home with us.
Originally we had planned to have shaker style cabinets in white. I quite like white cabinets and I want a very modern look to our house. But I have read in several places that off white is actually better because then the different whites go together better. And when we compared the antique white and the frosty white, we found that we actually did prefer the off-white. AND I've had samples of counter tops that I've liked since we started this whole process, but last night I did two sweeps of all of Bert's samples and picked the same two samples twice (I must have liked them!) So we brought those home and put all of our tile, flooring, cabinet material and paint swatches together and managed to decide on everything all at once. PHEW!
After that flurry of activity and decision making I really couldn't sleep last night. I woke up every half hour and when I was actually asleep, I had crazy dreams about trying to talk to our builder about the house and not being able to get through (maybe because the garden hose I was trying to call him on wasn't turned on at the time!)...It's a good thing we'll be living in the new house in two months!!
And the kitchen. Can't wait to see this one is all done :)
They've prepared the stairs to pour the rest of the cement and the driveway. Today there was someone there spraying the ceilings. Andrew asked for the kitchen to be flat, the rest of the house will be that speckley stuff. The painters come on Friday to start. I'm SO excited!
And that's a picture of Kathi and Cody's house...you know, behind the web.
This is our living room, viewed from the dining room (though really it's all one big great room but that's what I'm calling it). I love how they've done the arches.
And from the living room through to the kitchen:
This is awesome: There's a closet off the living room. Which is awesome enough. But because the closet is under the stairs, they also built a little room which is just big enough for the kids to hide in. They could fit some books or toys and blankets - even a bean bag chair or two - and hide out in there. AND it has a little window so they can watch the raccoons or the ducks playing outside during our long rainy winters.
The view from our living room down to the front door.
This is the den.
The guest bedroom. It's the second nicest bedroom in the house.
A view to the other direction:
This will probably be Elisabeth's room:
And this one is Davey's.
And this one is ours.
The bathroom:
And a couple pictures of the basement. Lookin' good!
And, there are doors on the outside. These are temporary doors because apparently they get pretty banged up during construction. But they're helping to keep the elements, raccoons and unsavory characters out.
See. Two such unsavory characters lurking out back that very day. Good thing there were doors on the building!
Look at all the wires in the garage!
And our fireplace (in the great room) is all boxed in.
The front door from the inside.
And the all-important master bathroom. Nice tub!
Like, see here our floor has been poured for the garage (and then covered in plastic in case you're wondering why it's black with green stripes).
And here are our exterior stairs.
Take a closer look under the tent!
And through this door way you can see some duct work is going in.
They've begun constructing our fireplace (in the main living room). They put the insulation in first, then build out the frame.
Oh and you can see they've already begun roughing in the return air vents (look at how dirty the floors are! GRRRR)
Here in the basement you can see some of the ducting and plumbing work that has been accomplished.
oop! This is another return air duct. And more construction debris!!
This is our ensuite. That little black circle in the top right corner is our toilet. The geometrical framing is our walk-in closet. And then of course, there's more garbage.
Lots more mess. And heating ducts.
More insulation going in.
This is in the ensuite with the insulation and one of the kids' rooms on the left.
And THIS is the furnace! A very important piece of equipment!!
Excellent.
Enjoy.
Oh, and the stairs come around the corner of the outside. How nice.
There you get a better idea of where they are.
And this is the den. They'll be doing the fireplace here soon too.
Just inside the front door. MORE MESS. The builder says they'll clean it up on Monday. If not Andrea will be there yelling at them all to clean up after themselves and making them sing the clean up song!
