No Photos But Lots of Progress

To my dismay we forgot the camera again!! Our house painting which was scheduled to take 2 days only took one! They will need to do some touch up but we have a painted house. The rock veneer is done on the chimney and started on the column out front. All the countertops are in, two sinks and two toilets are functional. I forgot to check the shower. The tilers are almost done--I think they just have to grout around the fireplace and maybe some cleanup. The driveway is scheduled for Dec. 12, though that may be the day they form it up rather than the day they pour it. We just hope the inspector we get will allow us to move in before we pour the drive. The interior should be finished enough for the final inspection by late on Monday but there is still alot to finish outside. We still have half the north slope to rip rap; the south slope needs more dirt and then to have it compacted. Then we will have to put some type of rock on it too. And there is a slope out back that may require some work. In this county we have to have an accessible entrance with no change of level. Ours is from the driveway, through the front door, and into the house. We are going to use brick pavers for the entryway. So we have to slope then from front door to the level we think the drive will end up at. And hope this will not be an issue for the inspector! We will try dagain tomorrow for photos but perhaps no commentary--too much work to do!!!!

Working Off the Pie!

We had a lovely Thanksgiving but ate too much. So we are atoning for it by lots of physical labor. Friday we finally got the prep work done and started the actual rip rapping. Carrying rocks and placing them on a slope is not as easy as it sounds and we all 3 came home, took showers and crashed. Saturday our son went home (the smart one!), & Dave supervised a full day of grading. We had 3 workers and several pieces of equipment going all day. One long section of rip rap is done, drainpipe is buried, and the slopes are compacted. Maybe 4 more hours of grading are left. Meanwhile I washed the tile floors and the inside of most of the windows. Mainly trying to cut the dust and find out where all the stickers are I have to get off. When the wind picked up and started blowing all the loose dirt around I knew my efforts were not going to be very successful. The list of things to finish before the final is currently two pages long so we will continue to be very busy. As the photos show, our tile man was also busy. He finished the entire backsplash today and cut the travertine in prep for the next thing he has to do.

More of the same. 

Kitchen backsplash with very expensive deco tiles. 

Happy Thanksgiving To All

No work today. Things are moving right along for which we are very thankful. We hope all of you get a day of rest and fun with family and friends.

Walk in closet in master suite. Otherwise known as the "wow, Blue room". Yes Anna I do do some of the work--this was all Dad and me. 

Guest bathroom, toilet set in place(plumbing is not completely connected). 

Carpet is in. This is the guest bedroom. 

Front(south) porch. They drove the cement mixer right along the front of the house to reach it. 

Word Verification

This is a side note. My mother in law asked and I thought there might be others of you out there wondering what this is too. To prevent comment spam, which I did get, Blogspot added word verification. Comment spam was like ads dressed up to look like comments but computer generated. With word verification you have to type in matching letters to those which appear at the bottom of the screen when you leave a comment. They are jumbled letters that apparently a real person has to type in, they can't be computer generated (not yet anyway). So when you love my pictures or just want to say something to me, click on the "comment" under my post, then enter your comment in the box, add your id-blogger, anonymous, etc., then scroll down and type in the weird letters you see, and finally hit the publish button. You might have to do this twice(especially if you preview your comment first). Then it should allow your comment through to my site.

I do have more photos, BUT my college son is home and I hear the sound of a computer game playing in the next room. Usually the photos go on that computer and then come to me via email. Maybe tomorrow...

New Pictures

So here are the pictures I've been waiting to get all week. If you will double click on the pictures you will get an enlarged version. You will probably need that to see what I point out in the captions. We are really moving along now. Almost everything has been ordered and much has arrived. 12 tons of rip rap, stone for covering slopes, will be delivered on Monday. My youngest son will be here next week and has agreed to help us with the task of doing the rip rapping. There are going to be some sore muscles around here next week. Pie takes care of sore muscles, right?? Our painter has this neat kit that allows her to test whether or not the stucco has cured enough for painting. We did not pass, so we won't paint the exterior until after Thanksgiving. We think we will get our carpeting in this weekend(we'll see). And the bathroom countertops are all due the week after Thanksgiving. Whether we can get a driveway and whether we can pass the final without one remains problematic.

Do you think my kitchen island is big enough??!! 

A work in progress--countertops are in, one oven and dishwasher are in. Second oven goes in soon and hood is receiving special wood trim in the picture. Box seen thru the window is smaller HVAC unit on pad that Dave poured! 

Buffet top in multicolored tiles. We were going to use these several places but changed our minds. They will coordinate with fireplace surround. 

Looking out of the library. 

The floor of the library, complete with baseboard. 

Me building the closet cabinets. They were going to carpet last weekend so we moved everything out of the bedrooms and then the carpet layer decided not to do it yet. This explains some of the mess you see. 

Our lovely new back patio, in color of course!! 

Pouring the back patio at 7 am. Getting the truck up there was a challenge, but not nearly the challenge as getting to the other patio! 

A Few More Things

Tiling continues...and continues.... Even though the main floor is done and the one bathroom nearly so, there is still another bathroom, the fireplace, the divider wall, the buffet top, and the kitchen backsplash.
Dave poured a pad for our smaller HVAC unit. Both the patios and the HVAC work are scheduled to begin this week. Actually Monday, but we've seen the concrete work slide a few days before. Most of the lighting is in with the rest due in Monday. A few electrical items have to wait for the tilers to do their thing. Now we have to do some rip rapping on our slopes and neaten the 'yard' up. We still need a bobcat to come do some leveling of the areas right next to the house and then we have to grade for the driveway.
The count of lots either done, under construction, or in the permitting process is now up to 8!

A shot to show why the next needed item is a patio wall. 

The HVAC pad that Dave poured. Sometimes you just have to do it yourself! 

Looking Good

I have found that when you decide to do something as big as building a house essentially by yourselves, you are subject to lots of second guessing your choices!! So it was with great relief and delight that I saw the house today with the main floor finished. I chose this tile about a year ago and the day my tile guy went to order it they had just gotten an order for 70,000 square feet of this tile in 18x18 size. Needless to say it was going to be a long while to get mine in. So I said 'go with the 14x14 size' and that was available. I had chosen some of my colors months ago (wall colors that is) but one I changed only a couple of days before we painted. Well, I think the tile and the colors look great together. And so do the cabinets! Now I'm just hoping I'll say the same thing after the countertops and light fixtures are all installed.

Looking at the front door. 

Another view. 

The finished, though a bit dirty still, great room floor. 

Another Great Day

We arrived at the house/lot about 8am to find the roof crawling with people--a ten-man stucco crew was hard at work. They got a delivery of special sand mid-morning and by 5pm they were wrapping it all up. They left a few supplies and probably still have some cleanup to do tomorrow but the stucco is finished. Now it has to cure for 2 (or 3) weeks and be watered down nearly everyday during that time. Then we can paint. We also put in the last flooring order and ordered another appliance. The list continues to dwindle!! Sorry, we left the camera at home again. Photos coming soon.....

The Tiling Goes On

Our tilers have been hard at work all week. They are there early in the morning and don't quit until around 5pm. Most other workers we've had would wrap things up by 3pm at the latest. The guest bath is very close to being done, the main tile throughout the house is almost all in and they started the floor in the master bath today. Even I can't see much difference in these tile pictures, but the bathroom really is a very different tile from that in the other photos.
We have been told our second coat of stucco will be applied tomorrow, but they have not delivered the sand for it yet so....we are hoping. Meanwhile we are keeping busy running from one end of town to the other, picking up stuff we've ordered, trying to put in other orders, etc. Our list is definately shrinking. The third neighbor passed his final inspection today but is still missing carpet(backordered) so they probably won't move in for another 2 weeks. They did a beautiful job on the front landscaping for that house. Our CC&Rs allow us 6 months to finish landscaping so we will wait until we've moved in. We'll probably hydroseed mainly for erosion control and to get our final.

View from front door. 

Tiling under way--view from kitchen.