Dining room through to library and a peek into the kitchen on the right.
Kitchen…and Joshua.
Stairwell up to the studio.
Studio…in need of railing…
Front stairwell in need of a railing upgrade.
Guest bath.
Hall bath. Tile guys are getting all of the floors prepped to start tiling next week!
Master bedroom.
Tile, waiting patiently to be installed. Hardwood floor installation starts Monday, too!
And…garage doors have been installed. They will be painted black to match the other exterior doors, but I am in love.
We are entering the exciting phase when all of the “pretty things” are installed over the next two months. Stay tuned for tile, cabinetry, trim, doors, countertops, appliances, hardware, lighting and plumbing fixtures, and all the other things HGTV leads you to believe can all be installed in three days.
As we approach a very large number of days that this project has been underway, we are *this* close to starting drywall.
I feel like a broken record, saying for the last 8+ weeks that we are close to starting drywall, but we are actually almost there.
The insulation is nearly complete and drywall has been delivered, with drywall guys on standby.
Though the interior has been progressing slower than I would prefer, the exterior has made some big strides.
We’ve also had some visitors who came by to check out the property…
Lorelei was not terribly impressed with the raw interior, but enjoyed walking the grounds. She decided the yard was good for playing and that she will come back for many more visits.
Since Lorelei’s visit, the dirt pile has disappeared and the yard is completely graded.
Try to envision the hedged courtyard with a fire pit and herb garden that will be here in the future. Likely Phase 271.
Look how smooth and lovely the side yard is!
Also of note, the classical columns for the front porch arrived! They weigh a casual couple of tons each.
Funny/not funny story: The column company tried to deliver these to our builder’s office, which is in an office building in a busy part of town. They called and said, “We’re here!” and our builder, who was at our property, said “So am I! and I don’t see you…” And that’s when they realized the billing and shipping addresses had gotten mixed up.
I’m glad I wasn’t there for that.
The driveway is complete! It is now a breeze to pull up and park by the front door, which I intend to use frequently.
Lastly, the exterior painting is almost done. They will have to come back to paint the porches and garage doors, but the yellow is history!
We have a site meeting in a few hours. Wish us luck and hope that drywall is starting…
Just kidding, we have a long way to go until it’s time for furniture.
We had a big inspection last week for the rough plumbing, HVAC, and framing. The inspector was cranky and came up with a list of things (several of which the builder and I have never heard of before) that need to be fixed before he’ll pass us. Still working on getting that completed.
In the meantime, we are bursting at the seams with insulation.
Progress continues on the exterior:
I am loving the paint color!
The black doors and shutters will add some much needed definition.
Less exciting but extremely necessary, they are putting in the septic system. I am not sure what all this entails and I don’t think I want to know. All I know is that the ugly orange fencing is gone and the open yard feels a million times better.
So much more open from the porch!
This will soon be a lovely, grassy field.
The cellar door is in! Getting close to being able to secure the house.
Perhaps most exciting of all in the last week, I selected our soapstone slabs for the kitchen and butler’s pantry. I am absolutely obsessed with them.
If you need me, I’ll be staring at pictures of my slabs.
We have passed the one year mark of owning the property. Closing day seems like 100 years ago and last week at the same time. This feeling is only compounded by the roller coaster 2020 has been.
I know you’ve been on the edge of your seats since the last post, waiting for me to try parking my car in the garage. Last weekend was the big test, and though it was much easier to maneuver in my car than in my dad’s enormous truck, I did send some feedback to our landscape architect/site planner (my husband) that it would be really helpful to widen the driveway about 3 feet.
I have not yet received confirmation on this change order…
We have a roof!
The exterior is looking more and more buttoned-up each day. The painters are slated to start this weekend (yay!). The last big impact item will be finishing out the porches with the columns and ceilings. We are waiting on the front porch classical columns to arrive in the next few weeks. Though these toothpick temporary supports are necessary at the moment, they are sort of killing the vibe.
Without the appropriately scaled supports in place on the front porch, I think it looks like house has an overbite. Don’t worry, we’ll be putting in 16″ diameter columns to correct this.
I had a lovely open-air visit/picnic with friends that I hadn’t seen in person since March(!). This is my friend Jessica and her 14 month-old daughter Sophia. Sophia has literally doubled in age since I last saw her.
Sophia was a little skeptical at first, but she quickly made herself useful inspecting the plumbing. She also had a grand old time walking through walls and limboing under electrical wiring.
After the interior inspection, we had some lunch. Sophia was committed to getting the full porch experience, insisting on sitting in her mom’s chair and watching the neighbor’s horses.
We decided to walk off lunch and take a grounds tour. The roof is looking good from the treeline!
We have some new gravel to make the circle drive continuous. However, there are still several piles of material in the way keeping the “circle” aspect from being useful. I’ve watched many trucks attempt backing down the one section of the driveway and it’s never pretty. We have many bent pieces of rebar driveway markers to prove it.
Looks like the grounds crew’s efforts are paying off! This verdant patch here is all new growth, sewn by yours truly.
Yesterday, after my site meeting with our builder, I decided to put up some paint samples of the colors I’m considering for the porch ceilings.
Approximately, .02947 seconds after I took this picture, I was chasing after my samples across the porch. A storm was about to hit, thunder was cracking in the distance, and sudden wind gusts were sure to make my paint selection efforts futile. (Though frustrating at this point in time, sitting (safely) on a porch as a storm approaches is maybe one of my favorite things in life.)
Since the house is not painted yet and this yellow color of the raw Hardie siding will most certainly influence how these colors read, I should know better than to be doing this at this point in time. But, as I have mentioned before, I am my own worst client and I refuse to listen to myself.
Bearing in mind that the siding and trim will be very close to the color of the windows and that I am going for the “haint blue” ceiling effect to keep the evil spirits away, which color do you vote for? Left, top, or right?
It’s been nearly 3 weeks since my last post. The reason for this is partly because we’ve had a lot of other things going on, but it is largely due to the fact that not much has been happening at the house.
The plumber saga dragged on for several weeks (injuries, surgeries, no shows…excuses, excuses) which has set us back nearly a month in getting our rough inspections complete so we can move on to insulation and drywall. They did finally show up this week and are almost finished (hallelujah!).
Tubs are set and water lines have been run…
Though I was not shy in expressing my displeasure about the pace of the interior progress, I have been delighted by the exterior progress.
We have porch floors!
And siding is almost complete. I have submitted the exterior finish schedule to the builder in preparation for the painters to start in a few weeks – bye bye, yellow!
I am so excited about the screened porch, I can hardly stand it.
I am in love with my door and window trim. I could stare at it all day. And I plan to, once the screened porch is finished.
We’ve also had some good progress on the grading. The Chia Pet dirt mound has had quite a haircut…
…and has been transferred to the front of the house to smooth out the slope around the driveway.
We arrived last Saturday for a meeting with our builder and upon inspecting this, Josh insisted we make an emergency trip to the CO-OP to pick up more seed and erosion control mats for this section.
Lawn crew reporting for duty.
My dad came to help the next day. This is like an acre of dirt.
Grass is starting to come in on the hill by the garage we worked on a few weeks back.
Just for fun, one day when my dad and Josh were off chopping down trees on the other side of the property, I decided to test out parking in the garage with my dad’s giant truck. Kath was a good sport and rode the 37 feet from where the truck was parked in the driveway to the garage, and then she got out to help direct me so I didn’t crash into anything. It took a 27 point turn for me to get into the first bay. So, I’m thinking a) we need to widen the driveway and b) I will be parking in the second bay if I get a vehicle larger than my small SUV.
Next time, I intend to try this exercise with my current vehicle. Stay tuned for the results. Oh, and for house updates.
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.
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!
Today marks one year(ish) that we went under contract on the property. My first folder of photos is dated 08-30-2019, so I thought I’d do a little photo comparison of then vs. now.
Rolling pasture…
Gravel driveway in progress. Mostly a muddy mess. All that is dirt now will return to grass soon.
Though it looks like we have torn up the all of the grass from some of the other angles, this one shows that, relatively speaking, we have left much of the property untouched.
See, not so terrible!
All of these little blobs in the yard are trees that will hopefully grow to be big and beautiful.
Josh is pulling out weeds around them.
This view has changed quite a bit!
Stepping inside for a moment: doesn’t this look like some sort of modern art installation??? Our electricians are very artistic with their wiring.
OK, back to our grounds tour: we were able to park up in front of the house on the gravel driveway!
One of the things we had to check today was the proposed location of the well, as indicated by those 3 tiny, white flags to the right of the tree grouping. Evidently the man from the well company “witched” the well location in just 20 minutes. He told our builder that this process sometimes takes an hour. I am very sorry that I was not present to document it.
Also, Josh cracks me up in this photo.
Back towards the house, our chia pet dirt mound continues to thrive. I’m about to fire up some of the heavy equipment on site myself if this thing doesn’t disappear soon.
The weeds in the septic field are as tall as I am. I turned to Josh to ask him what this lovely white and purple flower was and he quickly informed me that it is “trumpet vine”, which is highly invasive, and, therefore, undesirable.
Darn.
Peeking through our tree line, we can see where our neighbors have cleared a spot for their home. We’ll probably be able to see their house from our house in the winter, but the tree line is dense enough to keep our lots private.
It has been another week dedicated to electrical wiring, plumbing piping, and HVAC ducting.
Are you still there?
Just thrilling.
They used the template provided by the tub manufacturer to cut out the tub deck.
Unfortunately, they did not consult me on placement before they did this and the cutout is too close to the windows. But that is easily fixed.
Though I’m glad we will have adequate ventilation in the house, I cannot wait until it’s time for drywall and all of the ducts and returns are out of sight.
I’m sure it’s all very efficiently run, but this ceiling looks like a hot mess to me.
Meanwhile, outside, part 1 of 27 of the electrical to the house has been inspected and approved so John has filled in a section of the ditch wide enough for a vehicle to pass over. He also started spreading gravel up the rest of the driveway while I was there. It was exciting to see the beginnings of the circle drive!
We’ve also been working hard on finalizing orders this week as raw materials seem to be skyrocketing in price.
We’ve been trying to pick our spots and make some trade-offs to stay in budget. The herringbone brick floor in the mudroom and the heated floors in the master bath are on the chopping block. My dear husband offered to start driving for Uber Eats so we don’t have to give up these features. I’m sure he’ll have no problem squeezing that in between working a full-time job, getting his MBA, and building a house.
We decided on #1 red oak instead of select, which has no knots and less tone variation from board to board. Josh and I agreed that we’d like a little more character in our hardwood floors and this was a good area to save some money. This showroom sample has no stain on it so it’s much lighter than our floors, which will be stained dark walnut.
Though the hardwoods will likely be installed in the next month, they will not be stained until the very end of the build, so it will be a while before we get to see the full effect.
Our builder and I had a long meeting yesterday to finalize exterior trim, siding, columns, and garage doors, as well as interior trim, doors, transoms, stair parts, and miscellaneous millwork.
As I was double-checking the door quote today, Bu decided to make himself a little napping Bu-rrito in the house plans. He stayed like this for over an hour. I’ll take it as a sign that he’s excited about the new house.
We are in the not so sexy stage called “rough in”. It is during this stage that they put in the guts of the house, which are critical for it to function, but not the most photogenic.
The electricians were placing all of the housings for lighting and putting in switch and outlet boxes. My electrical plan was so detailed that the electrician only had 3 questions for me. Not bad for several hundred components, if I do say so myself.
It is always my goal to leave absolutely NO room for interpretation when it comes to electrical plans. I’ve seen far too many switches *centered* on large walls across from the entrance to a room.
Not in my house.
Electrical panels boxes, easily accessible in the garage.
Slightly more exciting than the electrical, they’ve built the tub deck for the master tub.
I’m hoping they will enlarge the opening for the tub or the cat will be the only household member able to use it.
They’ve started on the roof as well…which will be super handy once they have it complete.
Handy because we arrived yesterday to check on things just in time for a torrential downpour. Conveniently, they had just dug the ditch for the electrical lines, which runs right across the middle of the property, between the house and the driveway and all the way around to the back of the garage.
We put Barry’s truck in 4 wheel drive and hoped for the best.
On the bright side, I got some good wide angle shots of the house as we slid through the mud all the way around the house.
The electrical ditch basically had the effect of a moat. So, now we know what that’s like in case we ever want one.
For now I think we’ll stick with fences to secure the perimeter.
Speaking of, my dad and Josh have almost finished the fence. It’s looking mighty fine!
Primm & Property 