Thursday, December 22, 2011

All in two days work!

Hello future homeowners, family and friends! 
What an exciting two days it has been, so much has happened, so little time to blog!

So let's recap real quick..... In my last post we got our stucco painted and all of the doors installed.  Since then you would not believe how busy the crew has been.  Check it out...!!!

The painter has come in and painted all of the walls....
(here is our master bedroom with our upgrade tray ceiling!  I have never loved the smell of fresh paint until now!)

All of our baseboards have been completed



Our garage got a nice fresh coat of paint
(This was actually new for me.  I have always owned homes in Florida where they leave the cinder block bare.  I must say, I am happy they painted!  It looks much cleaner!)

All of the above happened yesterday......

Now for today's work.......

When we pulled up, the first thing we noticed was the beautiful frame work for the side walk!

Once this is done we should expect our brick pavers to be delivered and then the drive way will start!  I am so excited for a brick paver driveway, I really feel like they take your house to another class!

Moving forward, we see Santa forgot to wrap our boxes......

Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, those are indeed our kitchen cabinets!!  Our over sized 42" cherry kitchen cabinets!!!!

But... as we all know... you can't install kitchen cabinets until the tile work is done.....
We chose a darker tile so it wont display wear and tear.  I grew up with lighter tile, and have memories of my mother on her knees scrubbing the grout... clearly I didn't want that! We also upgraded and have our tile layed on a diagonal.  This elongates the room and just looks nicer, in my opinion!

While the tile guys were hard at work, it only makes sense they would move upstairs and do the bathrooms while they are at it!
This is our guest bathroom shower.  We chose to go with a tan wall tile to offset the white wall.  Also selected, "Hersey bar" tile to break up the wall and have some contrast!  I am going to have to address this because the design center said these would be 6ft up, clearly, that is not 6ft!

Our master bathroom was next.....
The front of the bathtub with listello....

The rear of the bathtub with listello

Our shower also has the same tile and listello.  We extended the cherry cabinets into our bathroom and have Uba Tuba granite, this combination will really pull the listello and compliment each other!

I hope you enjoyed the updates as much as I did! 

Stay tuned....!!!

Monday, December 19, 2011

It's coming together!

So what did I say, the boys had their work cut out for them today, and they certainly didn't disappoint!  I wasn't going to drive out to the house until Wednesday, and my hubby got off work and teased me with a photo after driving by the house!

Immediately when this popped up on my screen I said, "oh god" and my office buddy turned around and said "oh, it's pink!"... well, I didn't pick piink!!!  Not that there is anything wrong with painting your house pink, we just don't live in the 80's anymore. 

Here is the color scheme I picked out.....

So, after I got off of work I drove out to the house immediately.  This is how the house photographed after the sun went down.

It looks a lot more like the color scheme I chose.  I am hoping it was a mixture of the sunlight, and my husbands camera, that is the reason it looked the way it did in the first photo.  Either way, it is just paint, and can be redone in the future, if needed!

Regardless, I cannot express enough how exciting this was to see the house painted!  Each day I get more and more happy, and fall more and more in love with our decisions!  Here are some photos of what they got done inside......




Baseboards, Yippie!  There were a few rooms not quite complete, so I should expect to see that done tomorrow.

Our banister getting the stain work done to dry over nite.  We picked a darker stain to compliment the cabinets in the kitchen!  Can't wait until this is installed, it is really going to make our waterfall staircase look very grand!


Lastly, all of the doors got installed.  Here is a view of our study with our french door upgrade!  The windows will be clear, don't worry, it won't look like we are snowed in!

Stay tuned everyone, it only gets better from here!


Sunday, December 18, 2011

Stucc-OH!!!!!!

Today was a glorious day in the world of house building! 
We are stucco'd finally!

I was so excited to see they got this part of the process done!  I can't wait until they paint all the detail work and door!  If you look closely in the garage you can see the team has their work cut out for them tomorrow!

All of our doors and door frame work


Our french doors for the study and the frame work for those doors

Our base boards and rods for our banister.  I am really excited to see the banister when it is installed and finished!

**********

And now for a few additional photos of the inside,
my favorite part!

This is the view from the front door.  Our coat closet to the right, staircase and our 3-door sliders wide open.  The breeze that comes through is amazing!  I can't wait to open up the doors during the beautiful Spring weather!  From this entrance if you look to the left, you will enter our study through our french doors.  Then to the right is our formal dining room.


In this photo I am standing in the back corner of our dinnette.  Our kitchen island to the left, and looking into our family room!  If you look closely you can see something sticking up from the ground, that is our custom floor outlet addition!  Don't worry... it WILL be flush to the ground, I made sure to ask!


Some detail work in the stucco.  The color schemes will offset and highlight this detail work.

This week  we should expect to get painted and see the installation of all the doors, and garage!  Can't wait!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Speckle stuff, black paper and exterior framing.....

Okay, just a quick blog.... Sorry for those visual readers, not very many pictures....  I have been getting out of work so late that the sun is set and pictures are just worthless. 

Hopefully this weekend I will drive out and have exciting photos to post!  In the meantime, you will have to try and visualize what everything looks like!

So the processes this week has been spackling up the drywall.  It turns out they do two coats of this spackle.  The first as a general cover up, and the second is really shaping the corners of walls and windows.  Last night it looks like they sprayed our walls with this white speckle spray.  I am not sure if this is primer for the paint, or texture for the walls, maybe both?  Either way a fresh coat of paint over it will do the job!

Because we are building a two story home they couldn't start stucco work until the drywall was up on both floors.  If they put the stucco on before drywall, it would get knocked off because of the vibrations.  So, the house is all prepped and wrapped with this black paper on the second floor and all of the framing on the extrior is finished for the design work in the stucco.


I am excited from here because soon we will be under lock and key!  I know I have been saying that for about two weeks now... but it is just exciting knowing that point is coming and I can finally see all my cabinets and granite-galor!

Thursday, December 8, 2011

What a pleasant SURPRISE!!!

Okay, so I couldn't ask for a better end-of-semester gift!!!!  We had our walk through with our PM on Monday morning and he informed us that we would drywall Friday and Saturday.  Well.... our neighbors Kathy and James posted that we had a surprise for us!!!!!  Check it out!!!!!
We have drywall!!!!!!!!


Master bedroom, tray ceiling (LOVE it!!!! probably one of my FAVE upgrades of the house!)


Master bathroom, pre tile and listello... another big LOVE upgrade! Can't wait to soak in the spa tub with jets!


view from the master bedroom down the hall to the bonus room... check out that arch!


view from the corner family room, looking into the kitchen and dinette.... LOVE my island!!!!


Annndddd, my waterfall staircase.... we will have a banister on the left hand side, which I can't wait for!!!

We should expect to get all sealed up and then stucco this weekend.  Before you know it, you will see my granite and countertops!!!! Yay!!!  What a great end of semester SURPRISE!!!!

Monday, December 5, 2011

Quick update!

Happy Monday
&
Happy Birthday to Mr. Walt Disney!

This morning we had our meeting with our project manager to do a final walk through of the house before they start dry wall and stucco.  This was our opportunity to ask questions, express concerns, and take photos for the future.  I would have to say all-in-all it went really well!  No big concerns or questions, and any we did have they were already on top of it. 

We have our inspection today of the electrical work.  As soon as that all passes, word on the street is that drywall will start hopefully this Friday, and the team works through into Saturday.  We found out with two story homes the stucco has to wait until the drywall is in.  Since the second floor is wood, the vibrations would knock off the stucco... makes sense!

After these processes are complete, we will know our closing date! YAY!!  From there we will be in our final 30 days and will get to lock in our interest rate and get ready to sign our lives away!

No photos for today :( everything looks the same except for wires everywhere.  Stay tuned, the exciting stuff will be happening shortly!