site visit – Primm & Property

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Emily

Day 418

Well folks, we have drywall!

Living Room.

Dining Room.

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.

Posted on October 24, 2020October 24, 2020 by Emily

Day 371

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?

Posted on September 6, 2020September 6, 2020 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 August 30, 2020 by Emily

Day 318

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.

Coming along!

Posted on July 26, 2020July 26, 2020 by Emily

Day 281

Some things have happened at the property this week. Let me fill you in:

I noticed last weekend that we had a rather significant framing issue upstairs. Not a structural one, thankfully. In fact, the house is built like a tank, with more lumber and hurricane ties than you can imagine. No, the issue was regarding measurements. I realized the issue when I walked into the master bath and the vanity wing wall was partially obscuring one of the windows. Per my plans, this should not have been the case.

I started investigating. Come to find out that the guest room had been framed over a foot too deep(!), thus throwing off every wall upstairs east to west. Mostly notably, the master bedroom was 10 square feet too small as a result. No bueno.

I did my best not to have a “come apart” (as they call it here in the south) and started documenting everything for the builder. I was particularly wound up over this because my plans are not only to scale but also dimensioned. I can forgive an inch here or there and realize there may have to be an occasional adjustment, but variations of more than a foot simply will not do.

Good news: I noticed this while still in the framing stage and not as we were trying to move in furniture.

Bad news: I was the one that caught this.

Good news: It can be fixed and our builder is on it.

Bad news: Nearly every wall in the main part of the upstairs has to be moved.

Good news: We will not be charged for this.

Bad news: It will delay us about a week.

I had two 2-3 hour site meetings with the builder this week to go through everything and mark what needs to be corrected.

I should have brought snacks.

OK, now onto the next critical item: the kitchen cabinet color.

It is well-documented that I am my own worst client. While I can be incredibly decisive with selections and decisions for my clients’ spaces, the same cannot be said for my personal spaces.

I have painted this poor door sample with 5 different colors and then my own custom blends of these colors to get the color just right. Let me just say that neutrals are complicated because they can take on various undertones depending on what time of day it is and what kind of light is hitting them. My struggle was that I liked some better in natural daylight and the others better at night with incandescent light. In the daylight some were taking on a fleshy undertone (which I am absolutely allergic to) and at night the others took on a green cast.

My cabinet guy will be delighted when I tell him he has to paint match a 50/50 blend of 2 colors, one of which is at 75%. Here is the winning combination:

This is the same color on the whole door. See how different it looks in light and shadow?!

While the cabinet color took an inordinate amount of time, it took me about 45 seconds to make the call on the roof material.

Back to regularly scheduled programming and progress photos:

They put on the underlayment for the roof and some of the flashing.

They started on the dining room chimney.

They have done some more digging around the garage, though there is still a bit to do.

Josh and my dad laid out where the 4 rail fence will go along our shared property line.

They have their work cut out for them as they put in this fence next weekend.

I will be providing supervision and snacks.

Posted on July 19, 2020 by Emily

Day 274

Well, as predicted, things have ground to a halt on the house. Nothing happened at the house this week that I could tell, unfortunately.

I met with the cabinet guy yesterday to go over the kitchen and master bath cabinetry. Though it will be months before any cabinetry is installed, just the thought of it makes me so happy. As an interior designer who designs a lot of kitchens, and as someone who thoroughly enjoys cooking and baking, I have put more time into perfecting this kitchen than perhaps any other space I’ve ever designed. I can’t wait to be in this space, whipping up a new recipe (likely from a Barefoot Contessa cookbook) for dinner with my family.

Probably about 6 more months until that’s a reality.

I’ll just be over here at the corner of the property, dreaming about gatherings of family and friends until then.

In the meantime, Josh and my dad have been working on securing the perimeter. Josh discovered that our neighbor along our tree line was perhaps unclear on the actual boundary of his property. We’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, but as he was clearing his entirely wooded property, he cleared almost 20 feet onto our side of the tree line. So, over the course of the past two weekends, Josh and my dad have put up metal stakes and wire along the property boundary to help make it clear.

Not the most beautiful thing, but effective. It’s hidden by the trees from our side.

Along that same side of our property, past the tree line, there is another neighboring property that has recently sold. We spotted some markers we think indicate a building envelope so we are being proactive and planning a four rail fence along that shared boundary. It will tie into our neighbor’s fence on the West side of our property, shown here:

As they say, good fences make good neighbors.

Posted on July 12, 2020July 12, 2020 by Emily

Day 267

It’s been a slow week at the house so I decided to check the trail camera footage for anything good.

Screen Shot 2020-07-11 at 1.27.28 PM There are dozens of videos of this man carrying in stacks of 2x4s like this one. He must have shoulders of steel. Each time, he gracefully managed to carry over 100 pounds of lumber as he walked the plank into the house.

Though there were 100s of videos, other than Mr. Hulk here, there wasn’t much of interest.

We did catch a few moments of our site meeting with our builder last week.

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Here we are practicing social distancing.

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Discussing the front porch…

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Going over all of the exterior trim details with some very helpful hand gestures.

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Josh and I are peeking out the dining room window here because in the middle of our meeting with our builder and the HVAC subcontractor (who were standing across the room inside) one of our neighbors starting screaming/yelling her dog’s name.

Now, normally this sort of thing wouldn’t send me into a panic, but this dog is trained as an attack dog. When we first met him, our neighbor had to hand us a treat to feed the dog so he would know that we were on the “approved” human list.

Another important piece of information here is that, when I was 3, we were visiting our neighbors who had a dog named “Fudge”, who was completely harmless but about 10 times my body weight at the time. He came bounding over to say hello to me and I promptly climbed my dad like a tree.

So, I immediately started to think about how I was going to scale the roof in the event the dog was charging toward our house. Since we don’t have doors or windows yet and the car was 50 yards away, the roof seemed like the best plan.

This went on for several minutes and we still had not seen the dog. Our neighbor then switched from yelling the dog’s name to yelling what I thought was “I have a treat”.

I chuckled and then realized she was actually yelling “retreat”, which seems like an intense dog command, so I quickly resumed plotting my ascent to the roof.

Several minutes later, she stopped yelling and we still hadn’t seen the dog so we assumed he had indeed “retreated” and we went back to our fascinating conversation about heat pumps vs. dual fuel systems.

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Emily

Day 263

Well, the whole house is now wrapped in this lovely paper. It just needs a bow.

We have new temporary handrails around the staircase. Not exactly the finished look I’m going for but it certainly helps to define the staircase.

And to prevent injuries.

The view from the top of the stairs.

I have already figured out what is going on most walls in the house but the stair wall is still a giant question mark…

They finally framed in the doorway to Josh’s closet. He had to check it out.

He then asked where my closet was and I informed him it’s the one across the hall from his and twice the size.

He took it well.

After losing interest in the closets, he discovered that they framed a doorway into the mudroom attic space.

Oh man would I have loved to play in there as a kid.

And here is Josh patiently waiting for his man cave.

It might be a minute…

Posted on June 28, 2020 by Emily

Day 255

Looking more and more like a house each time we visit!

We headed out this morning to see the progress and were delighted to see that framing is nearing completion.

The wrap covering all of my beloved windows is really killing the vibe.

Also killing the vibe is the master bedroom windows not being centered under the roof ridge. I noticed these were off when they first started framing the second floor walls. Our builder assures us this will be fixed at the end of framing.

I’m counting the minutes.

At least the view is still nice from the inside, which will be our view as we wake up.

(The dirt piles are temporary.)

I’m so excited about all of the dormers and sloped ceilings in the bedrooms. Super Cozy.

This is the view from the back bedroom, through my closet, through Josh’s closet, and through the master bathroom in the middle, master bedroom on the left, and bonus room on the right. I realize this will not be a view once the walls are drywalled, but it helps to get a feel for the layout upstairs.

I call this to your attention because most views upstairs look like this, which is basically a maze of 2x4s.

I did get this shot of one of the critical axes upstairs from the guest room, through the main stair hall, master hall, and into the master bedroom. I’m standing in the master bedroom and my dad is in the guest room. Hi, Daddy!

They have really cleaned things up downstairs. I am standing in the kitchen, looking into the entry and the living room. Feeling good!

We headed up to the office next. Josh approves.

Barry was studying all of the details of the framing.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…

Posted on June 25, 2020 by Emily

Day 250

Hey there!

I stopped by for a quick visit between meetings the other day and saw many interesting things as I turned onto our easement drive:

The property adjacent to ours that has been for sale for quite a while now has a gigantic septic fence in place.
The “For Sale” sign had been taken down, so this sale is likely really happening and we are getting some new neighbors. We were secretly hoping the seller would give up and offer to sell it to us and our existing neighbor for a fraction of the cost.
Due to the odd shape of this lot and the gigantic septic field in the middle of the lot, I have no idea where they will place a house. I really hope it’s not a big factor in any of our views.

On a more positive note, I spot a chimney!

A little imagination required, but can’t you see it coming to life?!

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The chimney was really exciting to see. There is another one on the opposite side of the house that is more for looks and balance. This one here is a wood burning fireplace in the living room, but the dining room and library will have ventless gas inserts.

I love fireplaces.

It’s hard to imagine wanting to have a fire right now because it’s almost 90 degrees and 80% humidity as I write this.

No worries, though, because I can just lay down in the puddles on the floor to cool off.

It’s sort of a panicky thing to see water like this on the interior of your house even when you’re still in this rough stage of framing. The good news is there are no windows and doors on the house at this moment in time so there will be plenty of time for this to air out and evaporate.

There’s that gigantic septic field fence from the other side.

As soon as I saw this, I told Josh we may need to go ahead and put up a fence along the shared property line…

Back to the progress! Check out these dormers taking shape. The bedrooms are going to be so cozy.

Though I know we have to have it for waterproofing, I really detest this paper they are putting on in a somewhat random fashion. It is very distracting and they are covering up the window openings.

I can’t wait until we can cover it up with siding and put in the windows. I’m hoping at our meeting tomorrow, the builder will tell us this is happening very soon.

I like this view because you can’t really see the ugly paper.

Also, it cracks me up that it looks like our house is hiding behind the tree, somewhat unsuccessfully. Sort of like when my cat sticks his head under the sofa and thinks you can’t see him.

I turned around from my vantage point and admired all of our little “volunteer” trees that have sprouted up. Hopefully some of these will make it to be big trees someday.

As I was leaving, I spotted a work truck at the edge of the other property adjacent to ours. It is entirely wooded and we have about 40′ of woods between us, but we haven’t see a soul or any evidence of human life on this property the entire time we have owned our property. A little strange that literally the same day that the other property looks to have something happening on it, this one does too. We went from feeling like we were out here by ourselves to all of a sudden having a bunch of activity.

Looking into that fence tomorrow…