Recently in House Category

The new house is getting close to done, and everything is looking great.  But we still have over a month to wait before we can close on it and move in.

They'll be doing a lot of finishing work during that time.  Review, fix, review, fix.  I guess it's a bit like the QA cycle in software development.

All the appliances are in now, so Serene got to see her new gorgeous 36" range and double-oven setup.  (She's 7 months.)

They have the garage door, and it's opener in place.  They've also put in the irrigation system in the front along with all the trees and shrubberies.  (Nee!)  But they haven't been able to put the sod in because it's been too wet.  I guess soggy sod doesn't sit so soundly.

Now that the outer shell of the house is pretty much nailed down, they're been focusing on the innards.  The cabinets are all in, their respective countertops placed, and they got all the tile work done this past week.

Seeing the patterns we worked out so many months ago with our designer finally come to life is so cool.  Sure, it seems neato bandito scrawled out on a piece of paper like this:

But that's just nothing like seeing this:

And in the kitchen:

Here's our beautiful master bedroom bay window:

And they laid the driveway, too:

Now it's getting hard to wait for the move-in date!

The stone and brickwork has been finished.  It's so beautiful!  Pics:
I took another shot of the left side to better show the graduated stonework over the foundation. To recap: There's a rule in the Circle C HOA that there can't be more than some number of inches of concrete foundation exposed, so we get some extra brick work down over part of the foundation, making the whole house look taller.

And here's what the back of the house looks like with all that brick and masonry slapped on it:

They've also put in all the cabinets in the bathrooms and kitchen, and added most of the inside doors, along with the door and window trims and baseboards.  It's starting to look a bit like a house in there.

They've managed to squeeze in some masonry and brick-laying in between all the bouts of rain we've been getting these past few weeks.  Between that, getting a round of inspections done for the wiring and piping, and getting all the sheetrock up throughout the house, they've been busy, busy bees.

We stopped by a few times during the week this week to get the masonry and brick work stages in action, since those are so visible and fun.  Here's them working on the masonry along the bottom.

Here's the masonry done, and them working on the bricks.

I haven't shown any shots from the left side of the house yet. They were working on the bricks on that side when we were there, so I took one. Looking at the picture, it looks like a much larger house than it is. They had to build up the foundation quite a bit on that side because the ground sloped downward.

The back is built up as well. The back porch is around 3 feet from the ground at the back. It seems there's a rule in the Circle C HOA that there can't be more than some number of inches of concrete foundation exposed, so we get some extra brick work down over part of the foundation, making the whole house look taller. Of course, there's a stack of bricks in the way of all that in this picture, so it's hard to tell.

And here's a quick shot of our living room all walled in. Just because.

They got most of the roof in place pretty quickly after that last update.  We went and visited it during a little bout of rain and found it nice and dry inside.  Almost cozy.  I was thinking a picnic might be nice.

The big changes to the house since the last update have been internal.  They got all the wiring and piping all wired and piped.  They even wired up all the doors and windows with sensors.  My home automation fantasies are feasting on that.
The white on the roof of the right-hand shot is ice. 

They'll be doing the brick and masonry work on the outside soon.  You can see the bricks in the foreground of the angled (left) shot above.  So the next update should be exciting.  (grin)

The house is coming together so quickly.  This week they got the roof planks on and the outside walls lined.  They were just finishing putting the windows in when we stopped by.
I love how the front is coming out.  That high vaulted entryway really makes the house look grand.

Wow!  One week between the foundation being poured and the house being fully framed.  It's so cool seeing it starting to take shape.  It's tough to remember that we're still four months away from move-in.

And look at this gorgeous woman.  You can hardly tell she's almost 5 months pregnant.

They poured the foundation this past week.  They filled in the foundation framing with a gritty sand, then dug trenches in what they had just filled in using a trench digger, then laid the main piping down, then poured the concrete over the whole thing, like frosting on a cake.

It's pretty exciting (and amazing) to see everything coming together; the house and the whole neighborhood.  I know that tons of planning and hard work has gone into getting this together, but when a house springs up in the new neighborhood, it just feels like somebody planted a little house seed and started watering it.

They broke ground on our house this week.  Yeee!

They gave us these sexy little hardhats so we can visit the site while it's being built.

Our new house is a new build.  Which means we get to pick and choose all the decoration options for it.  The kitchen countertops, the flooring, the cabinet wood, the paint colors, etc.  So many choices!

Some choices cost money, like hardwood floors, others come with the base price of the house, like carpeted floors.  It's a bit like a strategy game juggling around the things that cost money, but are important to you, with the things that don't or aren't.

Anyhow, here are a few of the things we've come up with for our forthcoming home.

The whole house basics:
In the water areas, like the kitchen, bathrooms and entryway, we have a dark slate tile with charcoal and brown tones, called Imperial Slate.

For the family and dining rooms, we went with a wide slat blond hardwood called Honey Spice.

In the bedrooms and closets, we'll have a generic tan carpet called Thornwood.

And the paint selection is Autumn Tan on the walls and ceiling, and Mistaya (near-white) on the trim.  Apparently it costs extra to have the ceilings as white now-a-days.  What a world, what a world.

In the kitchen:
The counters will be this wonderful dark variegated granite with an equally wonderful name, Ubatuba.

We'll have a blond oak for the cabinets, with dark metal hammered pulls.

The backsplash will be these tan 6" tiles called Pacific Noce, laid diagonally, with accents of Ubatuba tile worked in.

For the bathrooms:
We'll go with the default (i.e. FREE) white cultured marble countertops.

We decided to put darker cabinets in there, to contrast with the white countertops.  Hopefully the dark floor tiles and dark cabinets won't make the bathrooms feel too confining. 

On the bath and shower surrounds, we have a larger 12" tan tile called Arctic Bay laid straight with variegated mosaic inserts called Pietra Crystal in intervals at eye level.  Like in that diagram above.

And, of course, those same wonderful floor tiles.

Exciting!  Exciting!