Almost there

The railing and stairs got installed today.  

The curb cut was made, and the driveway and approach were poured yesterday.  (We didn't take a picture of the finished driveway- we must be getting tired or something.)

The fire marshall came to inspect the fire sprinklers, and they passed.  Monday the city inspector is coming and if everything passes, we can start moving stuff in.  We still need to finish a little tile work and paint the trim and the doors, but we're just about ready to move.  Hopefully by monday night we'll at least be able to start moving boxes over to the new garage and my parents will be able to park in their garage again.

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.

Progress Inside and Outside

Outside, the cement work is moving along.  The front steps got framed up today.  Hopefully that means a cement truck will come tomorrow.  Kyle put light boxes and conduit into the cement for the raised beds on the sides of the steps, it's going to look really nice.  

The cultured marble place came out and did the master bath shower (it's two sided, so this is half the shower) and all the windowsills.  (There's the trim piece on the floor that hadn't been installed yet when I took this picture.)

The Floor Saver pan that I ordered came, so I stuck it in place.  It sits under the dishwasher and directs any water to the front, so that leaks are discovered immediately.  

The window over the tub has two sills.  The big one and the little one right around the window.  They look really good.  I highly recommend cultured marble window sills.  So much easier to clean than wood, and they just look so good.

This is where the cement pad for our camper will be.  I was really pleased to see this tube attached to the down spout.  We hadn't talked about doing that, but it makes so much more sense when you're pouring cement to channel the water underground instead of having it run across the top of your driveway or whatever.

More Electrical Work

We didn't get pictures of everything today, but Kyle solved a few wiring issues, finished up the fans in the bathrooms, and most of the rest of the lights.  I put faceplates on.  I've done all the ones that are low enough for me to reach so there's just a few high ones in the house, and the ones in the garage that aren't done yet.  Kyle also wired the back porch lights, the fan on the back porch, and about half of the lights inside the garage.  He also did the front porch and garage door lights (which I did get pictures of).

New lights at the garage doors.

Front door.

Close up of the front door lights.  The garage lights are the same, but bigger.

That's me on the porch.  

Almost the last of the wall painting...

Kyle finished the second coat of green paint in the laundry room today, so the walls are done upstairs. Except for our bedroom, but I think we're going to wait until next year when maybe painting sounds like fun again.  White will do for awhile.

When I came in to help, he was just finishing that up so I got started downstairs with the gray in CP's room.  It wasn't intentional, but his room looks like a University of Utah themed room, it will look even more that way when we pull the tape off and there are white stripes on both sides of the red.  Hopefully he can covert- I think he might still be a BYU fan.

Then we headed to A's room to put the last coat on the black and yellow.  When we were done we pulled the tape off...  (These are Miami Heat colors)

Then we headed to J's room to finish the final coat of all three colors in his room.  Jazz themed.  I hope they appreciate how much work that was.  They turned out pretty cool though.

Now we *just* have to paint the ceiling in the laundry room, the second coat of gray in CP's room, all the trim, the doors, and touch up the ceiling in all the places where we oops-ed.  Then we'll be ready for carpet.  :)

I didn't get a picture, but yesterday the siding guys came back and installed the rain gutters.  It's chugging along.

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.

Even More Siding, Vent hood and other Inside Work...

Kyle worked all day yesterday and got a lot of work done.  Our mechanical room didn't get drywall for some reason, so we bought some wall panelling and he cut that and installed it.  We'll need one more panel to finish it off.  Then that room will be ready for the water heater and softener.  (If you have a water softener that you love, let me know because I've never had one before and have no idea what to look for.)

This is just to show the wall board, but that mess of stuff is for the fire sprinklers.

The most exciting thing Kyle did yesterday was work on the vent hood for over our cooktop.  We looked at our options, which were limited since we have an island cooktop.  The vent hood would be one of the first things you saw when you came through the front door, so we didn't want it to draw a of attention.  We debated a downdraft vent, but they don't very good reviews.  Some of the fancier vent hoods that might have looked good were prohibitively expensive.  We finally decided to buy an oversized, overpowered (for the size of our cooktop) insert, which we'd install as high toward the ceiling as we could, and Kyle would build a surround to put it in.

The frame.

We used the same trim that heads the doors.

Test fitting the unit.

Finally, he installed it, and trimmed around the top with the same hardwood sheeting that he used for wrapping the cooling chimney beams.  Now all that's left is to fill nail holes, sand, and paint.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and even more pleased that we didn't have to go buy more trim to finish it off. 

 The siding guys were here  and finished up the south side of the house.

Including the gray that we deliberated over so much.  I kind of wish we had gone even darker than we did (we picked the darker of the two options we were looking at) but we were worried that it would be too close to the roof shingle color.  As it is, I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out.  Also, the above picture was taken this morning, but the below picture was yesterday- wasn't it a beautiful day?

Kyle also got more of the solar tubes put together- he finished the ones in our closet and bathroom, but was short material for the one in the hall bathroom, so it will have to wait for the extension piece to finish up.  He also got the wiring done for the motor on the window in the cooling chimney.  This was tricky because it didn't come with parts that he could just hook up to the wiring he put in for it.  It was kind of ridiculous, the wire was barely long enough to install the switch (do they not think about how high the windows are that people are buying electric openers for?).  I got to help pull a piece of metal through a small hole we made in the drywall in the bathroom, so Kyle could tape the wire to it and pull it back up.  That was fun- peeking through a tiny hole trying to grab a piece of metal with pliers.

More Siding, and inside work coming along.

The siding guys were back today.  They finished the back porch, and around the kitchen and dining area windows.  

This is the base for one of the porch lights. 

Last night Kyle spent several hours trimming around the new window.  It was decided that it was easier to trim around it than it would be to fix the drywall.  

He's also covering the 2x4's with plywood, then he'll fill the holes, caulk the cracks and paint it with the rest of the trim.  

This is the solar tube in our closet.  We have one in our bathroom and one in the hall bathroom as well.  He just has to finish installing the tubing and then attaching the bottom piece to finish it off.

I noticed that at some point (maybe the first day they were here) the siding guys put the ceiling of the porch up.  I can't wait to see the green siding with the rock on the front porch.

Whoops and Siding

The fire sprinker people installed this head too low, so they came back to raise it, and left us with this nice repair job in the dry wall.  They said we could just "patch it up".  Thanks.

Siding going up.  

Rock and Stuff

It doesn't seem like anything major is happening right now, but the little things continue to move along.  Here's what's going on right now...

Kyle is still working on the electrical.  It's taking a long time, but he's plugging away at it.  I'm sure he'll be even happier when it's done than I will be.  

The support for the fireplace is in.  Kyle also framed inside of it, it will be a  second small closet of sorts for A, since his room has the smallest closet.  The support will have a slab poured over it.  Then we'll wait until we sell our old house to actually put the fireplace in.  That will be really nice.

I love my front door...

The gas lines are all run.  We have a gas water heater and dryer and this gas line for the cooktop, and a gas line run to the patio for the BBQ grill.

The rock is getting close to being done. 

Close up of the rock- this is the east side of the house.  

Kyle put some supports down through the floor into the joists so that when he builds the stair railings, they're sturdy.

The trench for the water line got filled in, so we're waiting for one more utility to come and lay their line, then we'll be ready for the driveway (although I think we have to get the drywall delivered before we can pour the driveway, and we need to get the electrical done and have the 4-way inspection, and the insulation done before the drywall can come, so hopefully all that stuff happens soon while we have such nice weather.