Final Walk Through!

Well we are T-minus 3 days away from closing!

We had our final walk through today with our project manager! 

We learned the ins-and-outs of the house and I cannot wait to move in already!  I am so blessed and couldn't help but look around and want to start crying, just thinking "this is mine"!  The house is so beautiful and is perfect!  Looking back I would not have done a single thing different!

Lately, I have been having folks ask if I will continue to blog after this process is over.  I have not decided just yet, as I am unsure what I would even blog about.  I am already thinking of DIY restoring oldies into goodies, or maybe something about baking and sharing recips!  We will see after how the move in process goes, and then maybe, just maybe I will rejoin the blogging world!  Until then, each week I enjoyed sharing the progress, and welcoming all of your feedback!  I am not signing out just yet, so stay tuned to hear how the closing process goes!!!

The finishing touches

Our building process has reached the finishing touches!!!

The other day the painter was there doing all of the touch up work and our countertops have been installed, along with the fixtures and toilets!  Our carpet will be the last thing that goes in before closing.

I couldn't be happier with how the santa cecilia looks with our cabinets!  We stuck with black appliances and I just think it will look wonderful!

Our half bathroom downstairs!  Everything about this room is adorable!  The sink, the mirror and fixture... I love it all!

Our bathroom with the Uba Tuba granite!  The granite ties in with our listello perfectly!

Today we spent the day purchasing our appliances.  This shopping process was very stressful and deffinately struck tension.  Luckily, our last stop, which was Sears, happened to be having their Friends & Family event with an additional 15% your appliance purchase!  We got the fridge we wanted at the best deal possible!!!



Almost done....!!!!

I hope everyone has a great holiday season and are ready to kick-off the New Year!!!

Since last time, once again, the crew has been busy at it.  These blogs should be two seperate postings with all of the work they have gotten done, but it just means more photos, and well, those are the best part anyways!

Our cabinets have been birthed out of their boxes and look amazing all drilled in!!!

Here is a few views of our kitchen

Next, is a photo of our guest bathroom upstairs

You probably notice there is a counter top here, that is because we stuck with standard fermica.  To have granite for this bathroom was about $300  and we knew we could shop it and get it cheaper through a handy man. 

Next is our master bathroom, where we extended the cherry cabinets

This will be topped with the uba tuba granite and his and hers sinks!

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All of the above was done one day.... here is what has happened since then......

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We are under lock and key, finally!  Yay!

Now we are tying in all the odds and ends.  All the little things that bring a smile! 

We have door knobs!!! This is quite commical to me, you would never think door knobs would be so exciting, but if you have built a house I guess you understand, lol.

My beloved banister!!!!  Since it has been installed I just can't get over how much I love it.  I am kind of wishing I had this done upstairs instead of the solid wall, but I guess it is something that can be done later down the road if I really wanted it.

We have shower heads and faucets!!!!  I will probably swap these out over the year.  I really want a rain shower head for the master bathroom and something more antique looking for the bathtub.

Master bathroom lighting

The infamous foyer light.  This fixture really is HUGE, the photo does not do it justice.

Small porch light.  I think this is just adorable!

Our sprinkler system all installed and ready for the sod!

And lastly, our driveway!!!!!!

So you are probably thinking the same things as me.  YOUR ALMOST DONE!!!!! It has been such an exciting road.  I feel so blessed to have had the privelege to build our first home.  We have received our closing dates and they are as follows. 

Completion of house: January 19th

Final walk through: January 23rd

Closing: January 26th

Then we start moving in!!!!!!!



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....!!!

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!



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!

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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!

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!