Latest House Update

Two months after our house was delivered, it's nearly ready for us to move in.  Our builder is just about done with his work on the house, while Ryan or I have continued to go out in the evenings to put in a few hours of work every night.  Most of the main floor is painted now, and Ryan has been busy working on putting in the quarter round.  We're learning about the seemingly odd things that are required for an occupancy permit, such as shoe molding and shower curtains.  So Ryan is almost done with the shoe molding, the shower curtains should be arriving tomorrow.... and then we're just waiting on the last box of flooring to come in next week so Ryan can finish the last few rows.

Ryan and I had decided to do the flooring and painting ourselves to save the money -- since we couldn't justify spending (well, rolling into our mortgage) thousands of dollars on something we could do ourselves when that money would be better spent going towards a paved driveway instead -- but it has definitely come up a few times over the last couple of months how much nicer it would have been to have at least the painting done for us.  It has been more painful than expected to paint the house, and that's even after we've put the upstairs painting on the back-burner for now, and we won't even be touching the basement for a while until we get around to finishing it.

We're also doing a geothermal heat pump, so that's been part of what added time onto the original 4-week estimate we'd been given for when the house would be ready to move into after delivery.  The two wells were done being drilled last week, and the loop was just hooked up so that heat and cooling should be working in the house now.  

So hopefully we'll be ready for the occupancy permit next week!  Although then we'll still need to go through the actual awful process of moving, which neither of us are looking forward to except for it being done and over with.  We're definitely excited about our house itself (even more so now, with the added blood, sweat, and a few tears we've put into it), but it's been about a year and half since we first started talking about moving, so we'll be very glad to finally be settled for what we intend to be a good long while.

 

[Our builder has done all sorts of fun little extras we weren't expecting, including the stone retaining walls we're in love with] 

 

[The front yard with the initial landscaping done - we'll find out soon enough if these plants are in fact not something the resident herds of deer are interested in eating]

 

[The kitchen is pretty much done - appliances in, painted, flooring, counters and backsplash done] 

 [From the dining room looking into the living room - I was interested in seeing how the two colors looked against each other, but really, most of the colors ended up being very similar in tint and/or tone anyway so I guess there's not as much concern about clashing ;)]

[The hall bath with the solar tube in full effect - it's amazing how bright it gets in there without the lights even being on!]

 

[From our bedroom looking through the closet to the bathroom]

 

[Our bathroom, pretty much done except without the ever-so-important shower curtain and before I finally took the painters tape down]

[The bonus room, i.e., the room that seems to invite the most running around in a circle yelling, so far... video to follow in my next Josie-related post ;)]