Posted on by Emily

Day 434

We are moving at quite a clip!

Master tile is underway.

Our shower valves have blankies so they don’t get too cold.

Master vanity is in. The tower and fronts will go on after the countertop is installed.

Butler’s pantry cabinets installed by yours truly and my A-team (Dad, Josh, Julia, and Nate). I’m already plotting to paint these cabinets, the walls, and the trim a deep, moody color.

And laundry cabinets. The trim guys will build laundry basket cubbies in the middle so I can have a big folding surface along this wall.

The farm sink will be Bu’s spa. He’s excited…not.

I am just smitten with the brick floor in the mudroom, the tall baseboards, the dutch doors, and the transoms.

But, the true love of my life is the kitchen.

I’m dead.

I can’t even.

Ok, back to the progress report.

Stairs!

Newel posts and balusters. Our base newel post is massive and I love it.

The top of it is almost as big as my head!

Outside, the porch ceilings were going in and the gutters and downspouts were being installed as I was leaving this morning.

Lots of things happening!

Posted on by Emily

Day 337

Not a whole lot of progress at the house this week, unfortunately. Tradesman are slammed in the Nashville area, which is not good news for our house build, but it is good news for being able to pay for the house build, since both Josh and I work in professions related to construction.

We did get 8″ of rain at the property last Sunday, according to our neighbor. This helped to get the grass going. See it peeking through the straw matting?

They finished the first chimney this morning and are about 1/3 of the way done with the second. I am hoping they finish it this weekend so we can get the roof on next week and the bulk of the exterior trim and siding finished. That will be a HUGE deal to have the house looking fairly complete from the outside.

The siding and trim on the dormers is complete and I am SO PLEASED. It looks a little funny now because some of the material is white and some is beige (it will all be painted the same color), but I love all of the layers of detail. I’m a bit of a trim enthusiast as you can tell by my dormer detail from the plans:

Josh and I spread some more grass seed and erosion control matting this morning.

There was a different crew working on the chimney than had been there before and one of the guys came up to me and asked if I might have some mixed fuel for my weed eater (which he must have assumed we had in the truck) that he could borrow for his saw. I told him I didn’t have any, but if there was any on site, it would be in the garage.

I thought this was kind of odd, but then it occurred to me that he thought Josh and I were the lawn crew.

I did not tell him otherwise.

Posted on by Emily

Day 324

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

We spent the bulk of the day at the property yesterday.

Josh wanted to mow the septic field to make it easier for installation of whatever is required for the septic system. I don’t really want to know the details. I just want it to work.

Meanwhile, as the guys were working on the exterior trim, I was available to answer questions.

At first, I think they were annoyed that I was there. But after a little while, they started to come and get me to ask questions and make sure they were lining up all of the trim correctly.

I think it also helped that I had brought them donuts.

I spent a lot of time drawing and detailing all of the trim and I am thrilled to see it come to life!

On the other side of the house, the masons were starting to brick the living room chimney. Hopefully they’ll be done with the two chimneys in about a week.

It had been a little while since we had a family site visit and tour so we decided to have a picnic and invite the quarantine pod:

My sister and brother-in-law both drive mini coopers, which don’t stand a chance on our easement road as it is currently quite rugged due to construction traffic and lots of recent rain. Consequently, these two parked their car up at the top of the road and hiked the quarter of a mile to our house. Here, they have just arrived from their journey, sporting full hiking apparel and their backpack beach chairs.

This just cracks me up.

Kath and Grandmother also made the pilgrimage, in sportier ensembles. They arrived by Jeep, which could manage the road just fine, and dropped them off at the garage.

Julia and Nate hadn’t been in awhile, so we gave them the extended tour. Here they are practicing being overnight guests, with Julia in the shower and Nate…taking care of business.

After the tour, we had our inaugural fine dining experience at the house. We set up folding tables and camping chairs for a picnic lunch in the dining room. This made me so happy. I can’t wait for many more meals in this room, though hopefully with slightly upgraded furniture.

After lunch, Josh continued to mow and my dad did some weedeating around the fence. I had brought some irises from our current house that needed to be divided and replanted.

I planted 20 or so by the fence, to the left of our driveway entrance. In 6 or 7 months, they should be blooming as we drive up to the house!

Posted on by Emily · 4 Comments

Day 216

We had a meeting with our contractor this morning.  We needed to discuss all kinds of thrilling things like where we wanted the access to the crawl space to be, how we were going to lay out the HVAC units, electric meter, and gas tank behind the garage, and where we would like gas stub outs.

Have I lost you already?

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Here’s Josh, waiting patiently for our contractor to arrive…and most likely looking up equipment he’s decided we need for the property.

I decided to take a lap.

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They finished filling in around the house.  It is now much safer to walk the perimeter.  And, they are supposed to start laying block tomorrow – woot!

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So much dirt.  Our contractor told us they also ran into some “chert”, which is a new term for me.

I asked my landscape architect of a husband what that meant and he dumbed it down to layman’s terms for me:

J: “it’s rocky soil in the substrata.”

Oh, of course.  I knew that.

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The trees have really filled in.  Just a few weeks ago we could see our neighbor’s house through the tree line.

The front yard also looks nice and neat (if you can see past all of the dirt…).  Our other neighbor mowed for us this weekend.  It took him 4 hours on his tractor.

This is not good news for me as it means Josh will be adding more and/or larger equipment to his list.

We may have no budget left for furniture, but he assures me the yard sure will look great.

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To distract myself from the equipment budget concerns, I focused on finalizing selections.

One of the last selections to be made was the chimney brick.  I knew I wanted it to look like the brick fireplace in my Grandmother’s house that came from an old jail.  This one is pretty darn close!

I’m leaning toward the bottom mortar color.   Or I could do a 50/50 mix of the bottom one and the right one to warm it up a little.

The sales rep described the top two as “similar in color to peanut butter”, which immediately ruled them out for me.  First of all, it’s to yellow for me.  But, more importantly, I just can’t get past the thought of there actually being peanut butter between the bricks as they are stacked.  Not only does this gross me out, but it seems like the antithesis of mortar.

So, in summary, we will not be going with the top two options for multiple reasons.

Which do you vote for? 1) light gray or 2) light gray and light buff 50/50 mix?