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 29th 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!!

It's been so long!

Here's a picture of our house from the front...not looking too much different, is it? But a lot has been happening!

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!


The end.

Shingles on, Ready for more Concrete

Here are pictures from yesterday. The roofing is complete, and forms and rebar have been laid down so everything is ready for pouring the garage and a walkway around the side of the house. (My sources say that the concrete was poured today, but I haven't yet seen it.)

David points out where the concrete will be going in for the garage floor (above), and (below) you can see the forming for the walkway and steps along the side of the house.

I heard a rumor that tomorrow the furnace guys will be onsite to begin installing that important feature. I understand it's going to be a high efficiency model of at least 92% efficiency.

More Pictures by Andrew

Andrew visited our house today and took some pictures. First he took pictures of the front of very house on our street. To get an idea of what the exteriors look like. We're still in a quandry over our exterior colours.

Here's our house. Look, the windows are in! Andrew spoke with the framers. Apparently we will "never see them here again". Awright! And according to my mum, the heating and plumbing start going in next week.

Here is the south side of our house. Yes, that is a pair of pants hanging on the side. Odd.

Here you get a better shot of our front door area. From the street it really looks like the north front of the house is shoved right up against the neighbor's fence. But it's not really. And it's only the den and guest/play room on that side.


The view from the front door into the dining room. Though I believe there will eventually be a wall at the end of the hallway. On the right will be the doorway into the living room, on the left will be a doorway into the kitchen. But straight ahead should just be wall.

Here is our lovely stair case. The builders do gorgeous stairways. In fact, I'm going to go find some pictures... ah here we go. This is the stair case. Door to the left is the one down to the basement. I'm going to get a coat rack like this one. Love it. Not sure yet what we're going to do on the landing. Maybe a little reading nook? It's a lovely view from our window. Right into the forest. Very peaceful.

And here's a closer look at the spindles and caps (I forget what they call them, toe caps?) on the edges of the stairs. Great detailing!)

So here you can see our stair case again. The window and the landing. Nice, eh?

On Tuesday when I arrived at the house, there were two older men sitting on these lawn chairs in the driveway watching the others work. Turns out they'd increased the number of men working on our house and they were two of them. This is our living room. The bit of wall jutting out on the left is where the arch will go from the dining area into the living area. I suppose really you just call this a great room. That's the fireplace straight ahead.

This is our bedroom. What a mess! We plan on going to Langley tomorrow to do some sweeping and tidying. They tracked a lot of mess into the house with all the wet weather.

This is Davey's room.

And the main bath. It has no windows, but a huge skylight.

The patio and covered deck.

That'll be nice. I look forward to morning coffee out there!

A better view of the back of the house.

And the basement. I'm going to put all the kids outdoor toys in here over the winter so they have somewhere dry to play. Also planning on having an arts/craft niche for them. The cement floor will be perfect for that!

There's another room behind the stair case.

View out of Master Bedroom:

Overlooking the pond/park from the Master Bedroom:

And our backyard. The cedars mark the edge of our backyard. Immediately to the left of them is the covenant area. It's off limits for now to protect it from building debris. Then to the left of that is beginning of the yard we're allowed to play in. Though we don't really go out there right now because it's a bit dangerous.

And roof stuff. I can't comment on it. Except that it looks intricate...