Who builds a house in the middle of the winter??

When we first decided to build we discussed the pros and cons of starting in October.  The biggest con was obviously the late fall start date and approaching winter weather.  I kept praying for mild weather until the house was framed and roofed and if at all possible the rock and stucco completed.  I got most of my prayers answered.  If the stucco guys hadn't been so slow we wouldn't have had to tarp and heat the outside of the house.

Anyways...  As I was saying, I was extremely happy that most of the outside stuff was completed before we got any major snow because it could snow as much as it wanted and we could still work on the inside, which is technically true.  Apparently I forgot that we have a no driveway to speak of.  I guess we do have a driveway, it's just covered in three feet of  snow just like the rest of our dirt approach, and did I forget to mention that snow plows apparently do not go through our subdivision?  For good reason I'm sure, it's a dead end on both ends of the road, however it makes it difficult to park anywhere near our house.

Once we're in the house it's not bad because the heat is working (still no water or electrical), it just that getting to the house is sometimes difficult with the weather we have been having.  The roads are too snowy or icy to make the trip up and back safely.  Weekends are great because they have been fairly nice lately, there just aren't enough of them.  I truly don't mind doing a lot of the work ourselves, I know it's done the way we want it and I have learned a lot.  Finishing the basement is going to be a breeze.  I am just soooo tired.  I'm tired of the whole building process, I'm tired of working full time and then going to the house and working with floodlights, I'm tired of eating fast food, I'm tired of trying to fit laundry, homework and time to spend with Kandis into 2-3 hours a night, and I'm tired of living in someone else's house (I miss our own stuff!  My father-in-law has been amazing though).  Sometimes (more often than not lately) I just want to hide in a closet and cry.   We are so close, so at least there is a light at the end of my tunnel.

The shower and tub surrounds were installed this week.  The very nice installation man probably thought I was nuts taking pictures of the shower as he was working on it.  The shower looks great, haven't been back to see the tub skirt or surround in the main bathroom.  Kitchen and bathroom counters and cabinets are going in next Wednesday and then after that it is just little stuff, I'm so excited to see the appliances in place.

I had no idea that all of the trim and doors needed to be sealed with caulk before you could paint!  We have 15 doors in our house so that is a hell of a lot of door trim and door jams that needed to be sealed, not to mention baseboard trim and all those little nail holes.  My fingers are numb from spreading caulk, those fancy little tools they have don't work nearly as well as a finger.  We bought paint and it is going to be beautiful when it is on the walls.  The house will be light brown, really creamy, and the office wall is like a dark slate blue.  Can't wait!

 Some of the wood floor before it got covered.

 The kitchen floor covered in protective paper before we paint.

 See, I wasn't lying about the snow.  Isn't she a cute little house?

 We're ready to paint the town!

 Trying to dig the trench for the electrical lines, too bad the ground is frozen solid.

 This is the soffet/facia guy.  I'm pretty sure he was frozen in place 

because he was in that same position for a really long time!

 The cultured granite installer cutting the shower surround out.  

Yes, that is an El Camino in the back ground... It belongs to the soffet guy.

Our shower surround.  It's not pink, I promise.

Final Countdown

Before I get started I want to apologize to my very talented wonderful husband.  The stress and tension of building a house has apparently gotten to us.  Monday was not a good day for us.  We chose to do all of the flooring ourselves as well as the paint in order to save some money especially since we were upgrading certain things in the kitchen and bathroom.  Well when Mark talked to the builder on Monday and was told that it was almost $1000 extra for cultured granite in the bathroom rather than cultured marble.  Apparently that was the straw that broke the camels back because the next thing you know he is on the phone with me and screaming about stopping construction on the house until we have an itemized list of all of the expenses and we were 15k over budget.  Well when you think you have to come up with an additional 15k it tends to make your heart stop.

I let him scream because what else could I do?  I knew it wasn't directed towards me and so I let it go.  This went on for three more calls that day and still I stayed calm and let him vent.  Let me back up for a minute and explain that we have been laying the wood floor and everything was going great.  We spent Saturday and Sunday at  the house and only had hallways and the pantry to do on Monday and Tuesday night.  On Monday night we had to figure out how to make a transition on the floor from going forward to backward.  We did figure it out but it was still time consuming and before you know it Mr Stress Ball is freaking out again.

We work in silence for a bit until he insinuates that he is doing all the work and then I lose it.  We exchange some not so nice words and then continue to work.  Now envision this, I'm standing there and I have a three foot long piece of hardwood flooring in my hands, Mark is bent over plugging in the jig saw and I have this sudden urge to just hit him over the head with the wood piece. Please believe that I have never, ever, ever felt the urge to cause him bodily harm, even during our previous remodeling projects and building a monster truck.  I didn't hit him and I never would have, I just wanted to for a minute, hence the apology at the beginning of this post.  I confessed to him last night and I really don't think he is going to let me live it down.  He's now convinced that I am trying to off him, I told him not until the landscaping was finished (wink, wink).  Needless to say this post is more for me than for him since there is no way Mark is ever going to read this post or at least not this far down.

Now for the building update...  The wood floor is almost done, we just have to do the pantry, we would have been done last night but we ran into a staple issue and had to make a run to Lowes in Harrisville first.  I would post pictures but there is so much dust in the house that when I take the picture it looks like it is snowing in the house.  It is just lovely though.  The stucco is done (finally!).  Just FYI, if you are going to stucco in the winter be prepared to pay additional charges for having your house tarped for two weeks (like that was my fault?  They could have worked the week before Christmas but chose not to, remember when I busted them on that very nice sunny Friday before Christmas?), either way the tarp is off, although I have not actually seen the finished product in the daylight I hear it looks great.  Don't even get me started on the jerk, Mike, that works for a reputable rock supplier who tried to tell me that I couldn't pick stucco colors from a paint swatch, even though that was what the sales lady showed us.  So after he argues with me he says that he gave the stucco guy samples of the colors that I picked (from the paint swatches!!!) and I need to approve them.  As Kandis would say, "What the Fluff!!"  If he can make the color from the swatch for a sample why can he not just give it to the the stucco guy from the swatch instead of wasting my time arguing with me???  I was very surprised at the level of service he provided considering they are a major supplier of rock for builders, can you guess who that is?  I probably wouldn't go back there as a first option or even a second option.

The soffet facia was completed today and the garage door should be installed tomorrow (which reminds me of another story...), hopefully we will have electricity soon.  The bathroom surrounds, kitchen cupboards, and island are scheduled to be installed the last week of January.  After that it is just little stuff like faucets and knobs and we can wrap it up.  We should easily be able to close by Valentines, a little longer than I was hoping for but it's finally almost here.  Septic is almost ready to be done, we are looking at the next two weeks for that and then I guess we might have running water.

So back to the garage door.  We are just finishing up the long hallway last night and there is rustling in our garage.  Mark checks it out and comes face to face with a SKUNK!!!  Thankfully he didn't scare it enough to spray.  Not so thankfully, it would not leave the garage, which is the primary entrance and exit to the house.  After we finished the floor we checked one more time and it was still in there so it was out the front door we went, which has about three feet of snow on the walkway since no one had used it since the first snow storm.  By the time we got to the car our feet were soaked and we were was freezing.  We finally made it home at 10:45, grrr, these have been some long nights.  If we had had a garage door we wouldn't have had this issue, apparently the installer was waiting on the stucco to be finished.  

Notice the time on this post?  We clearly didn't go to the house tonight, apparently there were important tv shows on...  I guess it's okay I needed a break too.  It's back the grind tomorrow night though.

p.s. We really aren't 15k over budget, Chicken Little was just overreacting slightly.

One floor down, one to go

For the first time in our home improvement careers, we are right on schedule!  Can't tell you how amazing that feels.  The laundry room and main bathroom are totally tiled and grouted.  Our bathroom is totally tiled and tomorrow night I will grout while Mark does some clean up so that we can start laying the wood  floor on Tuesday night.

I am the Grout Queen!

The wood will be a lot easier than the tile since it goes down in straight rows and there are just a few nails in each plank and on to the next one, then before you know it we're done.

Our builder will start putting up the trim in the rooms that will have carpet while we are doing the wood floor, then he'll finish the trim and we are headed for paint.

I forgot to mention the miniest door I have ever seen and we will have two! The coat closet and the linen closet are both rather small and the doors are so cute, even Mark said so.

Isn't she cute?  I think I'll call her Lucy.

100 lbs of mortar and 14 hrs later...

If I get fired or decide to quit my job apparently I have a future as a tile setter, or so Mark says.  Not my dream job so I guess I'll stick to my current job, either way we are about 97% finished with all of the tile work in the house.

We've been through 100 lbs of mortar, 23 20x20 tiles, and 6 gallons of water but the laundry room and bathroom are tiled.  I'll grout tomorrow while Mark cuts the difficult tiles for our bathroom, all of the whole tiles are done in our bathroom and we'll grout our bathroom Monday night then all of tile work will be done.  I can't wait!  It is really starting to look like a home.  We picked up all of the wood flooring Friday night, 27 boxes of it!  I hauled 23 of the boxes into the house by myself.  Mark was vacuuming the water out of the drain in the basement so it wasn't like he was just sitting around.  :) 

I'm hoping to have permanent electricity this week so we will be able to lay the wood floor with real light instead of floodlights.  The stucco guys (who by the way are slightly lazy!) should be back Monday or Tuesday to put the final coat on.  Can't wait to see the finished product! 

The house is really starting to look like someone will be moving in soon.  We picked out paint and I plan on taking some time off to paint.  I think if we can have everything painted by like the 25th or 26th we should be able to close by Valentines then it's a party at our house!!

I am really excited to be able to close out the storage units and have all of our stuff around us again.  We were getting the tile stuff out of the unit and I very nicely asked Mark if he could see (and possibly grab) my sewing machine.  He didn't think I was too funny...

It's late and we're off to bed, it's been a long couple of days.  I think it's going to be a long couple of weeks but it is all going to be worth it in the end.

 The upstairs bathroom, partially tiled.  The tile really isn't orange.

The laundry room, also partially tiled.  

The tile saw, this has been our best friend lately.

27 boxes of wood flooring...