Been a little over three weeks since I last posted, and in that time we have gone from (relative) 0 to 60 in no time.  Moving so fast I can barely keep up with the decision making and pressure to make choices let alone being able to set aside time to blog.  Not to mention that by the time I take photos and get around to blogging, the photos are old news, so often you are a couple steps behind!  But I want to keep you all updated and assume you still love hearing all about it as much as we like to share, so I am doing my best to keep posting!  And I will stop complaining now…

Last left you with insulation, and that was short lived as the drywall went up in no time, and we have ourselves a real house.  Unbelievable.  I took a few videos as I thought they would be better than photos, but they are too large to be uploaded onto this site, so no luck.  I went back and took some photos which don’t give you a good idea of the space, but here they are anyway.

 

This is actually post painting, and I have a blurb about our paint selection in a bit.  The paint turned out a lot lighter than we expected.  It’s supposed to be a bit gray-blue, and it is, but very subtle.  We are certainly not afraid of color, but did not want to go too dark for the entire house, so erred on the side of caution.  Maybe too much, and now we have to decide if we want to change it up to a bit darker shade for the final coat which comes much later, or just do a few accent walls to add color.  Bill has left this up to me (insert maniacal laugh here).  He said I did such a good job on our current home that he is fine with me choosing on this one.  If I translate that, I think it comes down to “I don’t care”, so this one is on me.  Should be fun (I think).

First few are the “great room” – living, kitchen, dining combo…

 

Master bedroom

Hall and Karen’s office

 

I’ll share the videos from last week in email and on FB so you can see the “before” and here you can see the “after” with the first coat of paint!  We were not 100% prepared on a paint color, so that was a bit of a last minute scramble for such a big decision, but we hammered it out and chose one.  Here is a deep dive into our decision making process.  haha

Just slap a few samples on the wall at sunset when the light is the worst and choose!  We did not go for the dark one (which was supposed to be MUCH lighter) in case you are wondering.

So the paint is today (thursday the 1st), then trim goes on (seriously? — so fast), then cabinets delivered on Monday with installation to start next week.  Then finish work on electrical (lights, switches) and plumbing as well as the other finishes like tile and appliances and then floors are last.  Then they do ANOTHER coat of paint to cover up any scuffs and bumps from all the other work, and we have ourselves a livable house.  Not sure what will happen on the outside, but that will fall into place after the interior is done I imagine.  The next 4 weeks are going to be crunch time.  This week Bill and I have had so many meetings and tasks to complete, we are just exhausted.  Lots of “shopping” which consists more of “searching” for the right item and telling the builder what we want.  Bathroom fixtures, pendant lights, toilets (elongated bowl or round, hmmmm?), bathtub faucets, and sinks just name a few, and that doesn’t count the stuff we are doing outside the construction budget like window coverings, closets and AV installations.  It’s all coming at once and while we are having fun and trying to enjoy it, we do have full time jobs (not a lot of hours put in the week – yikes), lots of traveling, and then (me) with all the MagnaMemos activities, I’m starting to lose track of what I’m doing.  Day by day, right?  Breathe.

We are also overwhelmed at how far over budget we are, but that should really not be a surprise to us as anyone we have ever known that has done this has said the same.  From the jubilation of selling our house, back to the task of juggling finances to actually make this work.  Ugh!  That is another sorted tale…

So can’t wait to show you all the finishes when they are in place.  We have made some beautiful selections most of which I have shared with you, but even I cannot picture what they will all look like in place, so we will see it come to fruition together.  So exciting!

Other things to note:  The garage from the old house came down this week and that was very exciting.  If you remember, they had left it up so they could work out of it and use it for storage, and it was VERY close to the new house.  It came time to take it down as it was getting too crowded.  Was going to be a precarious task as if it fell the wrong way, it would hit the new house.  I knew the day it was happening, so I went over to see, and was a bit late as it was already a pile of rubble.  Only one scuff on the new house and everything fell the right way.  Really changes the feel of the property and opens us up fully to the neighbor.  We’ll have to consider a fence, perhaps!  We also disrupted a hornets nest or something in some kindling that the neighbor had leaning on the garage, so that was exciting to say the least.  Our site forman took to the task of eliminating them.  It was a multitude of very angry creatures.  And you all know how much I love bees.

I am having a lot of trouble with the photos posting “right side up”.  Seems they view differently on handheld devices versus viewing them on a computer screen and I can’t figure out why.  I apologize if they are not the right way…

 

Big battle:

 

 

A couple of doors went in as well and the siding went on.  You can see in the lower right some paint samples for the outside of the house.  The yellow color is just the siding color.  Will be painted of course.  Couple photos here.

 

 

Bill is traveling for the next two weeks, and I have a long trip week after next, so it will be interesting for us to see things when we get back.  Hate being gone like that, but we have to work to support this monstrosity now I guess, so better not lose sight of that!  LOL…

I hope you enjoy the photos, and should be posting more soon as things get delivered.