08/01/2007 - Move In Day

Today was the first day that we were able to start moving stuff into the house. While the guys moved the heavy stuff, Mandy began lining the cabinets in preparation for unpacking dishes.



Here's a shot of the guys in action! A special thanks to Eric's dad, Josh Harper and Brandon Rodgers for helping out night after night, load after load!



Unfortunately, this is the view of the kitchen after only one evening of moving!

On Friday, Eric was nice enough to bring over a few furniture pieces (rather than leaving them for the movers on Monday) so that we would have somewhere to sit!

Here's a shot of the Grau men setting up our bed.

Mandy's mom came up the first weekend that we moved in and helped to get the kitchen set up. Daisy talked her into to taking a little TV break :)

Day 163 - 07/27/2007

Almost ready to move in. Boxes are packed and IOU's are called in. We should be moving in starting late next week. The next pictures will show a much more cluttered and disorganized house...but we'll be in!


Our bathroom with the finishing touches on it.



Here is the sitting are in our bedroom, along with the separate closets. Mandy is excited about having her own closet...she better not try to steal any of my closet space!


Here are our reading lights...Eric's "bright" idea :)

Here is one of our two upstairs bedrooms.

And the other...

Eric working hard to install volume controls for the in ceilling speakers...good thing we can't read his thoughts right now.

The builder and trim carpenter were able to come up with a fix for the handrail that was acceptable to the inspector. They had to add a few extra "twist" spindles, but it turned out very nice in the end.

Day 160 - 07/24/2007

Almost home...

Day 155 - 07/19/2007

We have power! We have passed our final electrical inspection and were able to have the power turned on in the house. We did not pass our building inspection becuase the spacing b/w the spindles on the hand-rail was too wide where we have the scroll spindles. The trim carpenter will be out next week to fix this.

As you can see, we have turned on the lights in the house to see if it looks any different...it does! They should have started sanding the hardwoods today, but for some reason, they did not. If they don't want to work the WHOLE weekend, they need to get busy.

On a side note...our progress has not been impacted by rain because we received little to no rain during the past 6 months...until now! We have been trying for over a week to get our irrigation system installed. The installer has had to dig out his trenches twice so far. He is expecting to finish tomorrow, but they are calling for more rain, so we will have to see.


Here is a picture of our kitchen with the countertops installed. The kitchen looks so different with the lights on. It is still day-light outside and all of the lights in the kitchen are on...that is why it is so bright inside.

Here's a closeup of the countertops we chose.

This is our powder room on the main floor. We have not put any pictures of this room on here before, because there were not any lights in this room.

Day 146 - 07/10/2007

Wow! Today was huge! We have a driveway and sidewalks, shutters and light fixtures galore! All we need is some countertops (tomorrow), appliances (tomorrow), plumbing fixtures (hopefully by the end of the week) and landscaping (not sure) and we are ready to go. Well, not exactly, but close.


Again, with the shutters, Mandy and I were unsure of what color to add. We were nervous that the black would just confuse things with the house, but were also concerned that brown would just not look right. Very glad that we chose the black.

Light fixtures! The wall sconce, foyer chandelier and stair spindles all work together. Mandy did not mean for things to work out so perfectly with the scrolls coordinating (so she says), but they do and it looks great!

Close up of the foyer chandelier.

Here is the coolest light fixture in the house.

The pendants give the bar area a nice touch and they match nicely with the light over the breakfast area.

The closet people came today. Our pantry and room closets have our shelves in them. Mandy and I have more closet room in our one bedroom than our entire existing house! Kathy says that just means Mandy needs to go buy more clothes...we'll talk.

This is our fan on the screened porch. Those wires hanging down is the speaker wire for our ceiling speakers. Those will be installed in a week or so.

Here is the light fixture Mandy chose for her vanity.

Here's Mandy's closet...look at all of that room!

Day 142 - 07/06/2007

The electricians were here today!! We have light switches, receptacles and a few lights installed! Our countertops and appliances will be installed in the middle of next week.

This picture doesn't do this justice. You really need to blow it up to see the colors. This is our Panera shot. Looking at these colors stacked like this with the white trim work makes us think of Panera.

Day 140 - 07/04/2007

Well...progress is slowing down these days. They are lining out the drive-way and had gutters installed this week. We are in the home stretch; this is where we begin to become very impatient.

The gutters turned out very nice. We went out on a limb with these...we had almost talked ourselves into just going with the white, but this color looked like it was close enough to the metal roof color and had enough red in it to match the brick, so we decided to give it a chance and were not disappointed with the results.

Day 135 - 06/29/2007

Today is a great day! We closed on our current house this afternoon and are now renting back from the new owner until August 10th (or whenever our house is ready before August 10th). It was a huge relief to get that sale completed...I kept having nightmares of the new homeowner not showing up at closing!

The builders are making good progress. The painters have been here almost all week and will be at the house a majority of next week, but they should come to a stopping point soon. The electricians will have to get in and install recepticles and switches while the plumbers are installing faucets and connecting the sinks to the drain lines.

The gutter installers should come out early next week to install the gutters for the house. We chose a darker color that will match our metal roof and will allow the downspouts to blend in with the brick. As soon as they get those up, we will post more pics.

Our friends, the Harpers, came by the house this evening to celebrate the closing with our first meal on the back deck. They also got a picture of the three of us.


Here is another shot of the stair-rail. It looks very nice with the painted walls and the stained hand-rail and stair treads.

This picture was taken standing in our dining room.

We're very happy with how the lawyer molding turned out in the dining room.

Can you see me mom?

Ty thinks the house is coming along nicely but he was ready to go after a while!

Day 132 - 06/26/2007

Wow...what a week and it is only Tuesday.

The metal roof is complete, our front porch columns are installed and our front door is stained. With the exception of the garage doors, gutters and some paint on the columns, the exterior of the house is complete.

Here is a close-up of the front porch...you can really see the columns, roof and front door from here. Don't forget you can click on the image for a larger version.


Oh yeah...and today we got cabinets. All of the kitchen cabinets, the master vanities and the upstairs vanities are installed along with the sink/counter-tops for the master bath and upstairs bathrooms.

The stain color we selected turned out to be exactly what we wanted. The cabinets are dark, but not too dark. There is quite a bit of red in the stain, so this lightens the cabinets. The counter-top shop will be out this week to make a template and will deliver the counter-tops in the next two weeks.

The painters have been busy as well. You can see that they have added more paint to the tray ceiling and began trimming the walls. Hopefully, by Friday, they will have the first coat of paint on all of the walls.

Here is Mandy's vanity. We chose to build her a corner cabinet that sits on top of her counter. There is an electrical outlet inside this cabinet. This will allow Mandy to leave her hair dryer inside this corner unit and plugged in. It is a large step from the cabinet and counter-top space that we currently have.

This is one of the upstairs bedrooms. They have the wall color in the room as well as the closet.

This is half of the Jack-and-Jill bathroom upstairs. We don't have a linen closet upstairs, so we decided to have one built with the rest of the cabinets.

This is a shot of the other half of the Jack-and-Jill bathroom. We chose a brushed nickel hardware for this. The hardware in our bathroom and in the kitchen is very dark, so we decided to have some fun with this.