Big fat nothing

There isn't much going on with the house right now. We've moved ourselves in and some furniture. But I haven't finished putting the knobs on the cabinets and I haven't found where to put all the kitchen stuff. So everything is sitting everywhere. Not really picture-worthy scenes. However, I did manage to get my pyrex and other dishes moved over. Most of this was packed and stored in boxes all summer. I had some of it displayed in the old house, but for the most part there was no room. This is the cabinet I posted before that was empty. I used white contact paper to line the inside and shelves and it went from this:


to this:


click here to go to my other blog for close-up pictures and more info

I'm really happy with how the white turned out, and there was no big commitment like paint (which my husband was against-men sure do like the look of wood).

the bottom part of the cabinet is perfect for storing my ninja cooker (which I use a LOT so it's important that it's easy to get to) and my covered cake pans and cupcake pans and larger Tupperware stuff.

Moving in soon

It's been 8 weeks. Crazy, since it was supposed to be 4-6 weeks. It's hard to be on schedule, though, when the workers doing the finish work only show up once a week or so and only stay for a couple of hours. The house isn't 100% done but it's done enough. They'll finish it but we need to get moved in. We have no furnace in our old house now (we moved it to the new one) and it's getting chilly.

So here are some pictures I took today.

Garage-west side (this will have siding eventually)


Front views:




The steps going into the house


And to the basement


Our tiny porch




This is a pullout trash I installed in the kitchen today. It's much cheaper to do it this way than to buy the cabinet with the built in pull out. I bought this at Menard's for about $60 total.


These are 2 extra cabinets for the kitchen. The open one is an old cabinet I had in my craft room. We varnished it and it will hold my vintage pyrex on top and whatever on the bottom. The other one, which doesn't match, is one we bought at a local discount center. It is made of solid wood and was only $160. Only thing is, they don't have a lot of finishes to choose from. I don't mind mixing different wood finishes though. Not at that price. The cabinets that Home Depot has are $199 and made of solid particle board, plus they're totally unfinished. I like this one better. I got the letters from Hobby Lobby.


The ceiling fans-I love that these are switched separately. One wall switch for the fan, and one for the light. I also put a dimmer in the living room so we can dim the lights at night if we want to. This is the one in the living room (same one is in the master bedroom)


And my sewing/craft room


And one of the kids' rooms-anyone who knows my kids will know whose room this is


Plus an area rug from Big Lots that I bought for $30.


The bathroom closet-this will be handy


This isn't finished but here is the backsplash-this is where the cooktop will be. We still need to put the trim on the edges. This stuff is called Aspect Metal Tile and it was pretty easy to install.


And this is an old vintage stool I bought last summer that we repainted and recovered. Click on the picture to go to my other blog post with more info and pictures.

Progress. Barely.

Everything is going very slowly on the house right now. A modular might be faster than having a construction crew come out and build a house right on your lot, but it ain't fast. They do about 2 or 3 hours worth of work about 2 or 3 days each week. I'm sure they're busy and we're not the only people, but some communication would be awesome. We never know who is going to show up or what they're going to do. Especially fun if they need us to be here or need to communicate with another part of the process. Like when the plumber needed to talk to the hvac guy but didn't know when he would be here to do that. It's hard to get the hvac guy to come out with no notice. So anyway the garage is coming along (my husband and his brother are doing most of the garage). It still needs shingles on the roof and siding, plus the overhead door, walk-in door, and windows (which match the house windows)

view from the north side-no openings on this side at all.



view from the west-there will be one more window and on the very left side, a walk-in door.



from the south



and the inside of the garage-the basement stairs are at the very end of it and the door to the house is right next to them.





The carpet was finally laid-here it is in one room (all of the carpet is the same). I would rather have less carpet or none but someone insisted on it in the bedrooms and living room.



And the floor in my sewing/craft room. I love black/white checkerboard floors and wasn't able to get them in the kitchen or bathrooms using sheet vinyl (which I wanted to make it more waterproof) so I got it in here. I love this floor.





And the porch. We're just getting a small 6 x 6 front porch and will be putting a medium size deck on the back of the house next summer. This porch is not done-there will be a gable roof over it and some posts, and a step on one side.

Painted kitchen

The kitchen is painted. We still need to add the backsplash behind the cooktop and also the cooktop and oven (those will obviously be added right when we move in since I still need them in our old house). There's still a lot of dust, plastic, cardboard and other project paraphernalia but here is the kitchen so far. The color is Sherwin Williams Retiring Blue and for the kitchen we used a semi gloss finish. It doesn't look a lot different than the satin though.

The oven and stove area.


The view from the dining area (left doorway goes to the master bedroom and the one on the right goes to the laundry room).


Sink area (fridge obviously will go on the right and the dishwasher to the left of the sink). I am getting a different faucet because I'm spoiled that way. I want one with the built in pull down sprayer. Only one sticky-outy thing to clean around.


The island. This end has solid doors...


and this end has glass doors (taken before the walls were painted).

Painting

We've started to do some painting. There's plenty of masking in every room and that takes more time than the actual painting, I think. Anyway, pictures.

dining area (sherwin williams retiring blue)


here is my craft/sewing room. I'm super happy with this color which is the same as the dining room even though it looks different in these pictures. It will also go in the kitchen and kids' bathroom.




and the kids' rooms (we ended up painting all three)
sherwin williams teaberry:




sherwin williams potentially purple:




Behr Windsurf




and just for fun, this is Phineas and Daisy sharing a bed. We ended up buying a second one, because Daisy is too afraid to get up there when Phineas (who is the cat, by the way) is sleeping on it. And we originally bought it for the dog because she has arthritis. This time we told her to get up there so she did. Phineas was in his usual bed-hogging spot. The middle.


...

Arrival and Setting...

We've seen a few of these lately:


On Wednesday they brought the two halves of the house. They wanted them here a day before setting so they would be ready first thing. Here are the halves on the flatbed trailers





Then bright and early on Thursday morning, they started getting it ready to set. I didn't see the beginning of that. I woke up at 8 and they were already hard at work. I went out with 2 of the kids and we watched them getting it ready for a good hour before one of them got bored and went inside. Jake stayed with me though. Around 9 am the crane arrived and by 9:30 or so, they were getting it started. The weather couldn't be more perfect. Here's video of the setting. The first one is 8 minutes and the second is about 10. It might be boring. The voice is my son's-I didn't talk because I have a cold and if I talk, I cough.


click here to watch at youtube (better quality)


click here to watch at youtube

After all that, here's how it looked-in the first two pictures you can see the crane they used right next to it. It was huge and they had to pull out the legs to stabilize it and had to put counterweights on it. It was quite an ordeal.







Here's the opposite end:


then they had to finish the roof



Now there is a lot of finish work to do. They don't seem to work on it every day so it'll take a few weeks.