Continuing tile

The half bathroom, the laundry room, and the kids bathroom are all grouted and ready to seal. We have been working on the master bath slate and have all of the full size pieces laid. Tomorrow we are going to do all of the cuts and plan to seal and grout over the weekend. We have the plumber scheduled to install the fixtures on Wednesday. Tomorrow our flooring arrives for the rest of the house. We are laying a birch wood laminate which has a blond color. We bought the flooring from www.simplefloors.com and saved a lot of money. The flooring already has an underlayment pad attached.

Yesterday we had work done on the soffits. I had to hire a siding contractor to finish the job for me. I couldn't get the high reaching work done by myself and don't have the time either. They are going to finish the siding and do the trim and soffit work.

Tomorrow a garage door company is meeting me to look at our door opening and tell me what we need. A standard door is 16x7 but our opening will be closer to 9 feet high. I also have to do some additional framing around the opening to house the track system the door will ride on.

David is pulling the final electrical wiring tomorrow and said he will have us ready for our final inspection by Monday.

Those of you who live locally are welcome to come volunteer a work day in the next three weeks!

Tile & Kitchen Cabinets

The kitchen cabinets were installed today except for the details (crown moulding, kick plates, trim pieces). At noon tomorrow the countertop fabricator will measure for their template to build the Corian counter. It is really nice to see the cabinets hanging and they look good with the wall color.

The past few days we (primarily Delinda) have been laying tile. While I have worked Tuesday and Wednesday Delinda did most of the tile work in the kids bathroom and the utility room. All of the full size pieces are in place. Tomorrow we are going to work on the 1/2 bath laying all full size tiles and then we will go back and begin doing cuts. She has done a great job on the tile to this point. I thought for a split second this evening I was a surgical assistant handing the scalpel to the surgeon as I handed her tiles and spacers and she put down the mortar and positioned the tiles :)

Driveway, Walkway

The concrete was poured this week. Monday they will come back and put in the expansion joints. I am working on lining up the brick mason to come back and finish what he had been waiting to do until the concrete was finished. Once the concrete is complete I would also like to apply a coat of wet-look sealer to the drive and walkway. In the garage I plan to apply a colored sealer that will keep dirt and grease from sticking to the floor.

The past couple of days I had been out of town but Delinda continued to paint. Today we finished putting down the Hardibacker on the upstairs bathroom floor before laying tile. Tomorrow afternoon we will complete mudding and taping the joints and then we will be ready to tile.

Wednesday and Thursday the cabinet installer will do his part and we are hoping to have the countertop fabricator come do their measure on Friday.

I have decided to pay someone to do the trim and soffit work. I will finish up the remaining siding but it has turned out to be too time consuming a job for one person along with everything else we are doing in addition.

Conley's room, spare room

Delinda has been working on painting Conley's room and the spare bedroom. Conley has a blue and gray room and wants a pirate theme. The spare room is khaki, the same color we did in the living room and office.

We had rain today so the concrete was postponed. I have been getting quotes from garage door companies this week and am finding that I will need to do additional framing on the overhead. We need about 14 inches of overhead room to make the door and opener fit correctly and currently we have about 11 inches. The current height would be 9ft for the door and it would reduce the cost by about $250 to frame that down to 8ft. I am going to wait until all of the quotes are in before deciding if it is worth the work to make the changes. We intentionally used as low a grade as possible before pouring the garage floor so the driveway would not have a steep slant.

Preparing for tile/painting

The attached pictures are of Savannah's bedroom paint (shade your eyes!), she is going to have a beach theme.

Another photo is of the backerboard before tile.

We just had our appliances delivered Monday so they are sitting waiting for the cabinets to come hang out in the kitchen.

We have been working on preparing the bathrooms and utility room for tile flooring. Because we have wood subfloors we have to apply a cement backerboard to the floor before tiling. So far two bathrooms are ready for tile and in the third I have all of the board cut but need to apply the mortar. The backerboard has to be mortared to the subfloor and then screwed to hold it snug in place. We had planned to buy a ceramic tile we liked at Home Depot but the day we went to buy it they had a special order of Indian slate so we decided to go with that in the master bath.

Delinda has continued to paint between helping me with the bathroom floors. She has Savannah and Conley's rooms painted as of today just now leaving our bedroom, the entryway, stairway, and spare bedroom.

Dining room, Mbath, 2nd bath paint, concrete

The concrete work finally got started today. Yesterday the concrete contractor had a Bobcat at our house to grade the gravel but the guy who dropped it off didn't leave any keys. They finished leveling it this morning and got the garage poured. This weekend they will come back to form everything else that needs to be pured and complete the job at the beginning of the week. Paul Miller is doing the work and had intended to complete everything the same day but couldn't get things rounded up between equipment and guys to do the work.

The dining room and bathrooms are now painted. Delinda chose bathroom tile and we are going to begin working on those floors. As soon as that is complete the plumber will come connect our fixtures.

The kitchen cabinets are sitting in the living room and the installer's wife let us know today that he will be calling tomorrow to schedule.

Next color

Great weather today. Rain moved through yesterday but today was sunny, in the 70s and things look very green outside. I had been thinking the grass would need to be cut soon before I had to hire someone with better equipment. By today it was too late. Fortunately Matthew, the son of Ray (the contractor who helped us get through the dry-in on our house) has a landscaping business and was in the neighborhood. He cut, trimmed and used a blower and our grass actually looks pretty good. I don't think it will take too much work to have nice thick yard.

We got back to painting today. As I prime the rooms, Delinda paints. She has moved into the office and is using a khaki that also is in the hallway and living room. The office is to your left as you enter the front door. It is pictured with the ceiling fan. When we finish the room we are going to add french doors. To your right is the stairway and the entry to the dining room which has the hanging light with the shades. That view is from the dining room into the kitchen.

Delinda has done a great job with choosing colors and also with picking the hanging lights you see.

Painting

We have continued painting this week. It has rained since last night so we didn't do any painting today but plan to be back out again tomorrow afternoon. The downstairs and stairway have been primed and Delinda has painted the living room, kitchen, hallway, and the 1/2 bath.

We are going to use wainscoting on the lower half of the 1/2 bathroom walls.

Many of our lighting fixtures are now hanging so progress has been good. I am expecting the gravel I had delivered to level the garage floor to be spread on Monday.

Kitchen cabinets will be delivered on Tuesday.

Paint - kitchen & living room

Delinda started painting yesterday. We are using three main colors on the 1st story walls, a deep red, khaki, and a cream. The red will run the long wall of the living room into and around the kitchen. The khaki will come out of the kitchen and wrap around the half bath going into the hallway and over the other two living room walls.

The unpainted wall in the picture is where the khaki will begin and the red will end. As you can see we don't need to worry about painting behind where kitchen cabinets will be installed.

We are going to use white trim for the base and crown mouldings of the kitchen and living rooms. The trim will make it easier to transition the red wall to the white ceiling and provide more detail in the rooms. When you enter the house from the front door you will be able to see all three colors of walls. We will probably use the khaki and or cream in the dining room and office as well.