Dream House Update: January

Lots and lots of house stuff happening!

We're cooking with gas thanks to our newly buried propane tank.

We have a deck. A big, beautiful, deck. Is is grilling weather yet?

Don't be jealous of my amazing red clay splotches!

The front porch has planks (and red clay) and caps for the stone portion of the columns.

We have window trim and crown molding.

The Hardie plank turned out to have some issues. Yes, those planks are missing paint. Thankfully, Hardie is repainting the entire house for us and giving the new paint job a 15 year warranty.

We got our DIY on and installed our Ikea kitchen with major help from my dad, my brother, Brad's dad, Tracy, Tim, and Carolyn. Plus - my mom provided a yummy lunch for all of us.

Double plus - we had thunder snow during the instillation.

Carolyn made the dream house's first official snow man.

Painting, tile, doors, and counter tops are all happening soon, so watch for those photos in the next update!

<3
Hattie

Dream House: December happenings

I think the blogging world probably gave up on ever seeing another house update, but friends and family haven't let me forget that they have been waiting (and waiting and waiting) for an update on our progress. My only excuse for the delay is that I really unplugged this December. This is the first time I've pulled out the laptop in over two weeks. Which means that: I have hundreds of unread blog posts from blogs that I follow backed up in my google reader, I had hundreds of photos stuck in my camera waiting to imported, edited, and uploaded, and that I spent a ton of time this Christmas with family and friends eating, playing games, watching movies, reading, baby sitting, laughing, talking, helping people move, shopping, snuggling, and just enjoying each others company. It has been so amazing and relaxing just to step away from the laptop for a few weeks.

While I have been blissfully vegging out, the dream house has been a flurry of activity. Here's what happened in December:

We have outlets (lots and lots of outlets!) just look at how many places I can plug things in in the kitchen alone. We took pictures of pretty much every outlet, pipe, vent, and wire in the house for future reference, but those pictures are not very exciting to look at. What is super exciting? Siding! Finally!

A few "during" shots. The color is woodland cream by Hardiplank. In a few of these photos it reads a bit tan thanks to overcast days and/or the setting sun, but in person it is a lovely pale, pale yellow. Here are the after shots:

I can't wait to paint the door a cheerful red and have a finished front porch. Once the siding was up, they were able to start the insulation.

We have standard batting insulation, blown in insulation, and foam insulation, depending on the part of the house. We decided to go over the budget to get a really high r value. We should get our money back in lower electric bills over the life of the house. It's not as fun as splurging on light fixtures or tile, but this girl can't stand being cold, so my toasty toes will thank me in the future!

Finally, the Sheetrock went up this week.

They still have to finish mudding, then it's on to flooring and trim!

Woot! House progress was a pretty wonderful Christmas gift!

<3
Hattie

Dream House: Week 17

It's time for a long overdue house update! Basically, we are waiting. First we were waiting for siding to arrive. And we waited some more. And some more. And we had Thanksgiving, and waited some more..... until Friday, when the siding made it's appearance.

Yay, siding! It was supposed to start going up today, but no dice. I guess we will have to wait a little bit more, but hopefully not too long!

On to more exciting news - the stone portion of the columns and foundation is complete. I absolutely love it!

Hopefully, a lot more will be accomplished this week. I'm praying the rain will hold off/not stay too long!

<3
Hattie

Dream House: week 15

A lot has gone on over the last two weeks at the dream house. We got cinder block columns...

And in a few days our beautiful stone started to creep over them. I have a serious crush on this stone. I heart it big time!

We had a lot of this going on.

Which of course led to this.

It was insulation and duct work city as the hvac crew went to work.

On Saturday we did a walk through with the electrician which called for lots of measuring and so forth.

Let me tell you, it is somewhat stressful to try to think of where you might need an electrical outlet in ten years. I was standing in the craft room pondering where I might need to plug in a glue gun over the course of the next 50 years, and then I realized, this is why they invented extension cords.

Skeeter's face pretty well describes mine after the whole experience - kinda worn out but still silly enough to stick out my tongue.

In other news, any tech gurus want to help me figure out why I can't upload my house video? It was shot on a Canon Rebel T3 DSLR  and is a pretty hefty 1.7 gigabytes. YouTube won't take it as a .mov file (comes up with an error message after taking - I am not kidding - 24 hours to upload) and when I import it into movie maker, it looks great until it's published - after which it takes on a weird jumpy rainbow overlay that makes it pretty impossible to watch. Advice?

<3
Hattie

Dream House Week: 13

You may have noticed that I skipped dream house week 12. I would have posted, but didn't think a picture of a pile of windows and doors waiting to be installed would have thrilled you. So, yes, week 12 was a bit boring, but week 13 more than made up for it! We have stairs and windows and doors and plumping rough in, and much more!

First, the 360 window and door views,

On to the awesome retaining walls. I didn't know I would love a retaining wall, but I can't resist those adorable stairs.

Next up, inside stairs!

from the basement to the first floor,

and from the first floor to the second.

The living room fireplace arrived,

and a lot happened upstairs as well. Here's the first bedroom you come to at the top of the stairs.

To the left is the second bedroom.

The hall bath is all roughed in and ready for the tub.

I am in love with our master bath. Look at that tub. Just look at it. I can't wait!

I'm also in love with the little bench in our shower. To fully appreciate how much I'm looking forward to this bathroom, you have to understand that the bath in the roost is hardly large enough to turn around in, has a permanently mildewed tub, and a shower that only gives you enough hot water for 1 and 1/4 showers at a time. It is no fun to be the 1/4 person. I will probably live in our master bath after we move in - I am so excited!

The master bedroom is almost the full length of the house. I think I'm going to use that little nook under the window as a place to read. I'm now on the lookout for a super comfy chair and little table.

Yay, new house! I made a little video tour so you can get a better idea of the space. YouTube and our slooow Internet are having a fight, so I'll post it as soon as it's finished uploading.

Have a Happy Halloween!

<3
Hattie