No visible work done today, but apparently there was some kind of inspection done, so all the pictures are of the (somewhat comical) notes left for the crew. Anybody wanna translate? Also, on the way home we SAW a spider crossing the road. Yes, the spider was big enough that we saw it cross the street in front of our car while seated inside and driving at 55mph. It was humongous. Steady progress today, the roof is weatherproofed, along with all the exterior walls and windows. Plus, the last window is installed, AND we have entry doors...sort of. Just a few pics today, a couple are of insects. A lot can happen in a month! I almost didn't recognize the place when we drove up today. I think they're done with all the exterior sheeting, the roof sheeting, and the radiant barrier roof decking (to make the house more energy efficient). All the windows (but one) are also in! They weren't even delivered until today. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. The first site visit for the pool is set for this week, and the only thing left to organize (eventually) is the fencing! Step by step we're getting closer to the end. Really quickly. We stopped by before dinner tonight, they were done for the day. They finished the stairs, so the long awaited pictures of the view through the upstairs windows are here :) I also just liked being able to walk around upstairs! This room will have our exercise machines, so I was really happy that we have a nice, green, peaceful, relaxing view out these windows. I forgot to mention when we were talking to the neighbors the other night, a little brown rabbit hopped by the back boundary of the lot - makes me feel like we really live out in nature. We think they tensioned the cables today too - since they're all trimmed and capped off now, and they weren't last night. Looking at the understair configuration again, I think we'll leave it as-is, although I will ask about making the closet door full sized, and making the arch in the opening to the hall higher as well. We'll see what they say, I have no idea how much lower the sheet rock will make things. We drove by this morning and saw that they were working. The upper part of the stairs looked done as well. After the walk-through last night, we noticed that our "secret" door, supposed to be under the stairs in the living room, seems like it could be full-sized after all -- which makes me wonder if all the rearranging we did for the floor plan in the area was necessary. Being the person that I am, I'm going to look at some older drawings and see if it's worth bringing up. If it seems doable, I would like to go back to the original plan for that space. Will keep you up to date. Fuz was also wondering if we couldn't just finish and stain the wooden stairs to match the floor downstairs, rather than carpeting it to match the bonus room. We'll ask the builder about that too. We also picked all our granite this morning! I tried to take pictures, but the slabs were out in the sun & reflecting off each other, so I stopped after taking just one (below.)
The master bath has granite called "uba tuba" - our choices were between a batch with sparkly quartz sprinkled throughout and a batch with not sparkly at all quartz. We chose the non-sparkly one, that's the slab in the (very poor) picture below. The rest of the house has a "tan brown" pattern, which actually varied noticeably between the 3 batched we had to choose from. For the kitchen/utility/bonus, we picked the more brown batch, to match the beige tiles. For the secondary bathrooms, we picked the darker batch with less regularity to the pattern (both to match the darker tile and to look more like natural granite). The most regular pattern seemed fake to me somehow. Anyways, more updates and pics tonight. During dinner tonight, Fuz casually mentions, "You should see the house...it looks finished." So of course I was all excited to stop by. We drove past once before going to the grocery - and he wasn't kidding at all. We went back after the grocery to take pics. It was almost dark, so the pictures look like night time, but it was so totally worth it. We even have half a staircase! It rained cats and dogs today, so not much happened at the lot. But we did get a chance to meet some more neighbors (inside the house?!?) this evening. We're having the first pool site visit next week, and the granite appointment on Saturday. I'm kind of excited because I got samples of our tiles to take to the granite appointment so we can be sure things match :) So I love the feeling of driving up to the house these days. I'm getting a real sense of how it will look as you drive up to it, and of course more and more of a sense of what it will feel like inside. I swear the insides grew when they put up the frame...I don't know why I thought the utility room felt small! Anyways, the bonus room is framed, except for one wall, and the roof, and I think all the other roof frame is finished already! Every time we stop by I love it more. So exciting...I can hardly wait for the stairs :) Only a few pictures tonight, for several reasons. First, this crew works until almost 8PM every night -- so we generally circle the lot in the car until we see them leave (silly, I know, but we like having the house to ourselves to take pictures). Second, the pictures don't really give a good sense of the progress, but the rooms are really beginning to feel like rooms with the ceilings and roof frame in place. Third, there was THE MOST AWESOMELY SCARY lightning here tonight, and I didn't want to be outside in it for very long! But anyways, the march towards the finish line continues. |
AboutEverything you want to know (and then some) about our new home at 7715 Trailside Estates Blvd. Archives
October 2011
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