Stuff.

With Kyle being gone the last two weeks, a lot of the house progress felt a bit on standstill.  A little work was done on the cement out front (as you'll see later in this post), but not a lot.  However, he's back now and things seem to be coming together (fingers crossed).

I heard from the carpet guy that he'd be here on Wed (today), yesterday, so last night I went out to mop and sweep and vacuum and get the place cleaned up so we wouldn't trash our brand new carpet quite so fast.  I also bought door mats.  

Several friends came over and helped- I am so sore today, I hope everyone else faired better.  Thanks to great friends for helping out, especially the kids who got busy and did some great work.  P vacuumed up all the dirt piles, and L climbed in the tiny space under the stairs to sweep it out.  They were great.

Now on to the photos.

Back door.  I'm going to call this my Mom door, so "Welcome" mom (and dad).  I'm hoping my mom (and dad) use it regularly since it's a fairly straight shot from their backyard to ours.  I did sweep most of the back porch off, although it still has a lot of construction stuff and cardboard boxes that need to be disposed of before I can really sweep it all.

Front porch mat.  I also swept and cleaned up most of the construction debris from the front porch.  It's huge, so we'll have to find some nice chairs to sit in while we watch the neighbor's chickens run around.

The plumbers came today:  Hall bath toilet.

Hall bath shower.

Master shower.  The toilet is also installed in this bathroom too, but it looks the same as the other one.  We went with the Toto Eco Drake.  Toto toilets are great, and rarely plug.  Great for our four boys.  :)

Front porch steps and planters.  We need some window wells of some sort around the vents to the under porch storage room, and they need to put in a cement wall between the two levels so the dirt can fill in to the tops of the beds, but it's getting close. The little holes in the cement are boxes connected by conduit for Kyle to run wires so we have lighted steps.  That might be awhile coming, but it's going to be really neat.

This picture is from last week, I just forgot to take a new picture today.  

Here's one going the other direction, you can see how the edge of the driveway will curve around.  We've already decided we're only putting grass in the backyard, so I'm already picturing how we'll fill this in with plants and mulch.  Give me ten years and it will be beautiful.

Back inside- here's the kid's tub/shower and toilet.

Here are the plumbers installing the water heater.

Today we also went to the city building and signed the paperwork to get our water connected, and our garbage and recycling cans delivered.  The carpet pads got delivered today, but there was a problem with getting the carpet to the house today, so the carpet guy decided to cut it at the store and then bring it back tomorrow, early (fingers crossed, again).  

The countertops are also supposed to come tomorrow, then the plumbers can finish installing all the fixtures.  We're still missing one cabinet in the master bath, but apparently they can put the counter in first.  (This doesn't make sense to me, but I'm going to let someone else worry about it.)

Hopefully tomorrow I have another exciting update.  We're getting so close.

The tile is all down!

Kyle finished the last little tile around the stairs and up to the front door today.  He came in for dinner, and went back out.  You can see the tile saw out on the front porch (to all neighbors who had to listen to the tile saw until 10pm last night, I'm so sorry, it's over now!). Tonight he's grouting.  

A few nights ago we determined that we had plenty of tile, so we went ahead and tiled the tub/vanity part of our bathroom.  Since there isn't a door from our room into it, I decided it would look better to have the same floor.

More of the same.

Last night Kyle got one more bucket of thin set worth of tile down.  The least dusty stretch of tile is the new stuff.  

We also sanded the railing, and he put another coat of paint on.

Kyle also found some scrap wood and put some trim around the bookcase where it goes against the wall.  Now he has to primer and paint it too (the bookcase still needs another coat of paint anyway).  He also needs to primer and paint a small stretch of handrail downstairs since it got missed the first time around.  We're getting close to being done with the handrail.

More paint and tile.

Last night I took all the kids to J and A's soccer games (it was freezing) while Kyle worked on the house and went to the youth activity at church.  Before his activity, he worked on painting the railing a bit.  He got home around 8 and did another section of tile.  You can kind of see the three different shades of dusty, the least dusty section that goes to the corner is what he did last night.

He also finished the first coat of paint on the railing.  It looks really good (which is a relief since the primer was not going on well).

Living Room Tile

Yesterday we didn't get as much done as we were hoping to, because we spent the morning picking up the bees and getting them installed in the hive.

We did get more of the railing primed- Kyle started that on Friday, it's taking forever.

Kyle got a good chunk of tile down in the living room.  He actually got a little more done before we called it a night, but we didn't take another picture.

More Master Bath Tile, and Bedroom Tile started

This morning Kyle finished up the tile around the tub (the front/side has to wait until the cabinet is in).  There will be a ledge that hangs over the window sill, so that's why the trim piece doesn't continue under the window.

Then he started on our bedroom.  This is the tile that will go through our kitchen and great room too.

Master Bathroom Work

We got the solid surface/cultured marble bid for the window sills and the shower, but for them to do the shower, we had to dig out the gypcrete that wasn't supposed to be inside the shower.  Kyle siad it came up pretty easily.  

Last night (until past midnight), Kyle worked on tile in the master bathroom.  We used the same tile as in the hall bath, but Kyle wanted to add a border around it to make it look a little fancier.  He dry fit everything before laying it, and it really turned out nicely.

He also got started on the tub surround.  

I really like the chair rail type tile.

Hall Bathroom Tile

Tonight's project was the hall bathroom (it also connects to E's room (which will later be our office/guest room)).  It was Kyle's first time using this type of tile, and it went together really well.  

The Last of the Siding

The siding is finished!  It's actually been done since Wednesday, I've just been slow about posting updates.  When the icicles melt they'll come back and put up the rain gutters.

Since the last update, Kyle has been working on getting the inside cleaned up and windows and other things masked off for painting.  He has the primer done in the bathrooms and the laundry room, and a couple of his brothers came today and they tiled the laundry room.  Tonight he's putting primer in as much of the rest of the house as he can get to before he gets too tired.  When our house is done, he's going to have to take some long naps in the sunshine coming in our south facing windows.  

More picture updates tomorrow hopefully.

Tile

We were at the Arizona Tile store to look at their brand new- amazing line of wood-look floor tiles, and I didn't like the new amazing line.  It was cool looking, but not what we were going for.  While we were there we found a few other things we liked.  They had this tile (Eclipse Beige) in a wall display, and I loved it, so I think we're going to do this for our master shower.  It will have a line of accent tiles around it too, (that we haven't picked out yet) but we're thinking we'll have them match the decorative tiles in the floor.

We're thinking this one (Skylights Cafe Melange) as the backsplash in the kitchen, but we're not sure yet, since we didn't have a sample of the granite to see if it looks too busy.  We may end up going with something simpler.

The floor tile for the kitchen and living room (and maybe the master bedroom) is from Daltile (Timber Glen Espresso).  The website had a picture of it installed on the floor, but a really light grout was used and it looked terrible.  If you're going to install tile that is supposed to look like wood, don't use a light grout.  

We still need to pick tile for the bathroom floor and accents, and the laundry room and maybe our bedroom. but it's starting to feel like things are coming together.  I'm deating wether to go with something like this (Marazzi Montagna Belluno) for the shower and floor accent tiles (except these are 6x6 and I think that would be too big for the floor- it would work for the shower...)

Or, do I go with something more stone looking with more color.  Too many decisions...