Good-bye goat bridge

For the last few months, we have entered the house billy-goats-gruff-style.  Lucy would insist on walking across the board saying, "trip trop, trip trop" as she crossed the goat bridge.  No longer!  We stopped by today and found the goat bridge gone.

Kind of like the troll, refusing us passage.

The good news, the stair forms look good!

Is this what is called a stoop?  Never was clear on that.

The driveway was also graded and the base was set for the garage.  It is a lot easier to envision the garage location now - previously, there was just some stakes...  pretty difficult to imagine.

Now level, the driveway is ready for paving.

Garage site - check!

I'm floored

The biggest update from the last week had been the pouring of the basement floor. Large in scale, but difficult to see since there are no stairs to the basement yet.  Other work was completely invisible, such white primer in the upstairs and a little mudding and sanding on the first floor.

Taken while hanging off a ladder with one arm.  Impressed?

That is, until today!  The wood floors were installed today on the 2nd floor today.  Three inch common (rustic) birch will run in the upstairs hallway, master bathroom and master closets.

The pre-sanded floors in the master bedroom.

Unimpressed that the floors end at her bedroom door.  Sorry, kid. 

Work was intense this weekend getting the current house ready for sale.  Two SmartBoxes surely can hold a lot of stuff, enough to require lots of Advil.  Listing is still on schedule for this Thursday.

Packed.  Full.

Tile and Granite - Solid.

The last two days have been very busy with house-related activities.  The crazy-factor is growing exponentially since we have now targeted next week to get the current house on the market.  Today, the pink countertops were replaced with granite.  I can't believe we lived with pink countertops for 9 years.  Pink.  Seriously.

Before.

After.

Last night we spent 2 hours at the Tile Shop picking out tile.  This wasn't supposed to be such an ordeal, we already had picked out the general styles and had samples.  Of course, as soon as you start looking, you start changing your mind.  In the end we think we have almost all of our decisions made - except the backsplash in the kitchen.

The kids bath will have floor and wall tile in the shower enclosure.  Lucy is sampling the showroom model that inspired our kid's bath choices.  Oversized white subway tile with a bluish-green glass tile accent.  

Here's a closer look, the floor tiles are an extremely convincing porcelain that looks like marble.

The master bathroom will be classic black & white.  The same porcelain-looks-like-marble for floor tile and shower walls.  The shower will have real marbel floor (upper left) and a horizontal accent stripe (lower right).  The floor will have some small black square tiles set in a "clipped corner" pattern.    

Finally, this porcelain tile will be used in the front entry way as well as the back in the mudroom/powder room area.  

Week of Mystery...

This week has been a total mystery for us.  I was busy every night and unable to visit the site - since I was busy, Andy was on kiddo duty.  We stopped by for a short visit on Saturday morning to find a whole bunch of surprises.

First floor wallboard
We entered the house and were welcomed by a pair of legs on stilts.  Our wall boarder was hard at work on the first floor.  The second floor looks good to go, although nothing that a picture can really show.  All smooth and looks ready for paint!

Pretty incredible how easy our wall boarder makes stilt-walking look.   I thought it was impressive, Lucy didn't seem to care.

The view from the dining into the living room.  Look at those functional windows opened at the top!  

The view from the dining room table into the kitchen.  So glad to see the symmetry on center of the lights.  The 3 in the foreground are for the pendants above the island.  The 3 in the background are can lights.  If they were off at all I think my head might explode it would bother me so much.

Fireplace!
Now that it's nearly 80 degrees in March - so amazing - we have the fireplace installed.  It doesn't look like we expected without the frame.  The glass appears more backset than we thought, but we'll reserve freaking out until we go back to the fireplace store and see the unit again with the face frame.

The Heat n' Glo SLR32 - Cosmo.

The underbelly

The basement plumbing is complete, inspected and ready for the cement floor.  Our contractor says that the floor should go in this week.  After a few days of curing, we should be able to move some stuff into the basement from our craigslist and other shopping exploits.

You can see the wet wall on the left that will connect our laundry room  and our future downstairs bathroom.  

A shopping trip to Home Depot and Lowes resulted in a haul of lighting.  Wiped out their inventory, so still need lots more.  Golly, a house takes a lot of lights! 

Close up with the Kitchen Cabinets

Thought a look at the kitchen plan might be fun.  Everything below countertops will be in the stained cherry, and above will be painted white.  The refrigerator cabinet will be all white to the ceiling.  Interesting thing about refrigerators, countertop depth refrigerators are crazy expensive - I mean CRAZY. So we had the wall behind the fridge framed to hold a standard depth fridge, but have the front align to counter depth.  Who knows, might not look any different.

Not a lot of uppers because of the windows in the kitchen. Also, having a pantry helped us keep the number of cabinets down.

Here's the fridge wall.  The door to the mudroom and powder room are to the right of the fridge.

And the island.  Should hold 1 stool on the end and at least 3 along the length.  Notice the microwave drawer  - this will be a learning experience, but we just didn't want to give up any counter space.  With a hood, you also give up the space above the stove.   

This weekend, we visited a granite place in Farmington, DDF Jet Cutting.  Great prices and nice stock. The same granite that would have been $60 - $70 installed elsewhere is $37 installed through them!  We are having them install in our current house before we sell, so we will know if we want to go with them for the new house.  Might be a way for us to get all granite (price-wise) instead of only on the island....  fingers crossed!

Rockin' On

Sheet rock is going up!  A two minute stop at the site showed me just how quickly sheet rock can go up.  They just got started and already much of the 2nd floor is rocked - mind you, there is much, MUCH more to do with the floating, sanding and finishing.  The space feels pretty different without the ability to walk through walls.

Lucy's room - the most complete view of the progress.

Soffits in the Master Bedroom, these were needed for the additional ceiling height given the hip roof.

The loft at the top of the stairs will have a half-wall that is a bookshelf.  It's finally been framed in!

Siding is coming along, just a few patches yet to go.  Looking pretty sharp.

Progress, progress, progress.

An Insular Incident

We passed our inspections.  Immediately the insulation began.  We are having a blown in fiberglass into the walls.  The fiberglass is formaldehyde-free and gives a higher R-value than the fiberglass batts.  We had a meeting yesterday morning with our cabinet maker, just happened we got a peek at the insulation process.  Thank you, Andy, for your detailed research to find this option!

With the exception of smaller cavities, everything was enclosed.

A giant hose ran from the truck outside through the house.  Not sure of the purpose of the kitty litter (left).

Then, they poke a hole and blow in the fiberglass.  This was a test, it wasn't finished because that R-value would not be very good!

Here's a quick video that shows how the blow-in looks.  Sorry, it's a wretched video, but gives you the idea.