It Took My Breath Away...

I received a phone call from my friend Kristi Friend.  She wanted to tour the house and had an early 
house warming/thank you gift for some decorating I helped her with.   

 This gift took my breath away!  Have you ever had that happen?  I just love it and can't wait to hang it in our new home.  I kept the cardboard corners on it for protection, but I wanted to share it with you.

I already have the spot picked out where it will call home.  So, thank you Kristi, this is a gift I will treasure.

It's Not Easy Being Green

Say goodbye to the green max wrap it's disappearing behind our siding.  It is tough trying to decide on a color.  You get a small fan deck of colors and try and imagine what it will look like on a very large scale.  When I narrowed it down to my top choice I requested a larger sample.  Thankfully they gave me two large siding pieces which helped the decision making processes. 

Lee and Jerry working hard.  They never smile for the camera!

  

The room you are looking at is the upstairs laundry room.  We decided to locate the laundry on the second floor, this doorway leads to our attic space.  I'm very excited about this, in our previous house I couldn't access the attic and whenever I needed something Pete would have to get it for me.  

This past weekend Pete worked in the attic space.  He put up plywood walls and made a loft area for extra storage.  

 Here's Max and Tori in the loft space 

Here's another shot for the doorway.  

While Pete was busy working on the attic space I decided to locate some of my winter clothes.  Stacked in the corner of the basement of our rental house are a bunch of totes.  Of course on the bottom of the stack were my sweaters, as I made my way to the bottom, one tote was particularly heavy and not labeled.    Wouldn't ya know it, I found Pete's jeans and shorts that have been missing since July.  Notice no label on the tote, now the question is...do I tell him?  

The drywall is finished.  

We hired Harold and Ron Stowell to be our drywall contractors.  Wow, did these guys do an amazing job. At first they were a little hard to read,  they didn't talk much and were all business.  Well, over the last week I got to know them better and really enjoyed their humor and they are down right talented.  They even took extra time and skim coated our ceiling on the main level because they were worried about the snow reflecting on the ceiling with all the windows.  

 On Wednesday I took the kids to Wenke Tile and Carpet to finalize a few things.  The kids were great for the first 1.5 hours, but their fun meter was running pretty low when I took this picture.  

This is the kids vanity and two tile choices.

 Lee and Jerry cutting the big white triangle at the top peak.  

See the white piece way up there?

 All the trim was delivered on Wednesday too.  Pete will start trimming the windows soon.

And doors

On Wednesday Joe the stone mason stopped by to do a skim coat, to prepare for the stone.  Max thought this was pretty cool and asked if he could place the first stones.  Joe said, "Sure" so Max placed these on the skim coat.  

 Looks great Max!

We hired Chris Batts and his team to paint the house.  Initially, Pete and I planned on painting the entire house, but we've had a change of heart (aka we are tired).  Pete will still trim all the doors and windows and install all the cabinetry, but we are going to hand our paint rollers over to the professionals.  So, on Friday and Saturday they primed the entire house and painted the ceilings.  Pete and I couldn't believe it...that would have taken us weeks.   

I spent all of Black Friday picking stones from two different color batches I ordered from RBK.   Joe even gave me my own gloves to help protect my fingers.  

This was the very last stone.  

I love it!  I'm now thinking about a career change,  I'm not sure my back is up for it!  Tomorrow the columns will be finished and the cap across the garage will be installed.  Of course they still need to grout it too!

The HEAT Is On!

Yes, there is some truth to this photo!  

 I left off with my last post and we were waiting for our rough-in approvals from the inspectors.  We passed all inspections and rolled right into insulation.  My friend Rachel Erny's brother PJ works for Gypsum Supply and he did a fabulous job with insulation.  I couldn't believe how much warmer our house was with just insulation.  On Monday, November 5th Nieboer Heating was back to install the furnace.  

Here is a picture of the blown in insulation.  These guys were so fast I didn't even get one picture of them.  

We also chose to do batts in the ceiling of the dining room when we realized our master bathroom is above the dining room.  Things you don't think about when you are drawing your plans.  It could have been a little embarrassing, say for Thanksgiving if... well, you know.

We have decided to install laminate flooring in all the bedrooms.  Tori and Max both have allergies and this fall since we have been living in our rental which has no carpet they have been so much better.  I have done a lot of research about carpet and Pete and I decided that it would be best for the kiddos if we had little to no carpet in the house.  I was inspired by this blog http://www.theyellowcapecod.com/2011/10/31-days-of-building-characterwood.html and the laminate flooring she installed in her home.  So last Monday when the kids were out of school we headed to Sam's Club to pick up 60 boxes of laminate for the bedrooms.

It took two trips and thankfully these guys helped me load it.  I tried to get them to ride with me to the house to unload, with no luck.  

We decided to store it in our attic until we were ready to install.  These boxes were crazy heavy.  Thankfully superman showed up to help me carry them upstairs to the attic.  I will admit it was quite a leg workout and we were both sore the next day.

I few more years and this little guy will be taking two boxes at a time up the stairs.   

Yep, that's drywall!!!  Pete and I didn't have the drywallers scheduled until November 12th.  We were ready and they were available, so they started a week early.  All the drywall is hung and they started mudding on Monday.  They should be finished next Tuesday!  

Now you can tell how cool the tray ceiling is.

We were also excited to have some of our cousins from Harbor Springs visit this weekend.  

This is Pete with his youngest brother, Doug.

First, cousin picture on the front porch!   

On Sunday afternoon they headed north!

The kids started running after their car which made me tear up.

On Sunday evening we had the first Birthday celebration, ringing in 75 years for my Dad, and &%  for my sister.

It was a bitter sweet day because 9 years ago this past Sunday my mom past away.

It was nice to all be together.

I took this picture today.  Jerry's back working on siding, the man in the green jacket is Ben and I ordered all the siding, windows and exterior doors from his company RBK.  It's nice that he stops by and checks on our progress.

 So far I love the siding color, though the green wrap has grown on me!

SHUT The Front Door!

Lee was back to install exterior doors!

 I can officially say, "Shut the front door."  Our exterior doors were installed on Saturday!  I LOVE the front door.  It is 8' tall and looks great on our beautiful front porch.  We decided to not do sidelight windows from the door company and do actual windows.  The front of the house faces south/west and we wanted to be able to get that nice west breeze.  

For the last two weeks we've had many trades working on our house.  We have been blessed by guys that do wonderful work and keep their word.  Let me tell ya a little about them...

First, we have Nieboer Heating & Cooling.  Our first meeting with them was in May or June when we were still finalizing our blueprints.  We relayed to one of the owners, Luke, what our biggest concerns were and he assured us they could handle the job.  We made a few minor changes to our house plans, one was changing an exterior wall to a 2 x 8 wall to accommodate two heat runs to the second floor.  I'm so glad we met with them early on.  

We had four guys on site working on our home.  Jason, Lee, Adam and Dan.  

Lee, Adam and Jason working on the vent for the fireplace.

The mechanicals are complete and passed inspection!  We may even have timed it just right to get Carriers new Wi-Fi heating control system.  This would enable us to download an app to our I-phones and control our heating remotely!  So cool!!!

 We hired Fawley door for our garage doors.  From the time I ordered them to the installation was a week and a half!  The day I walked into their showroom I walked right over to these beautiful barn style doors and said this is exactly what I want.  Michelle the sales lady wrote up the pricing, (of course ridiculously expensive) and I proceeded to continue looking.  This was before I realized the oops with the tray ceiling, so  I ended up with a very basic door under my budget so I could afford the tray.  I have no doubt I made the correct decision.  

We still have hardware to install on the doors.  

This is Andy and in that cardboard is garage door parts.

Mike Deleeuw of Deleeuw Plumbing is our plumbing contractor.  I think I've only driven Mike and his guy Jon slightly crazy!  First, I should have ordered my shower/tubs earlier.  Rookie mistake!  This week I watched them cut out a few wall studs to get the tubs in.   Second, I forgot to mention an additional dishwasher.  And third, we had a shower unit missing in action.  It was suppose to arrive on Thursday.  Of course I didn't go over to the house on Thursday and when Pete did go at 10 pm at night the (unnamed) plumbing supply company wasn't open to inquire on the whereabouts of our shower unit.  I assumed they said Thursday, it would be there Thursday, and no one contacted me to inform me different.  I called first thing Friday morning only to find out they weren't sure when it would be delivered.  This was frustrating because Jon from Deleeuw was at our house ready to install the shower.  I'm not sure why no one called to inform us of the delay when we had been told Thursday.  

This did not go over well with Pete.  He just happened to be leaving a sales call right by the unnamed plumbing supply company and paid them a visit.  Wouldn't ya know it they placed the shower unit on a truck in Grand Rapids and drove it down to our jobsite.  We had it by 1:15pm on Friday.  

Jon is on the left and Mike is on the right!

They should be finishing everything up and I'm hoping for a plumbing inspection on Tuesday!

That's Max's tub going up the stairs.  

 Our electricical contractor is JR Electric.  Jesse is the owner and has been working late many nights to get our job finished.  He has a big commercial job he is working on and owns Jaspares Pizza on Gull Road.  He is one busy guy!

 A few weeks ago we spent about 2 hours going through the house to discuss outlets, switches and lighting.  I appreciate his level of detail.  He was patient with me as I walked from our master bedroom trying to figure out what lights I would want on as I made my way to the coffee pot!

So, tons has happened in the past two weeks.  Again, many people worked hard to get us a few big steps closer to our dream.   We are hopeful to pass all inspections and start insulation at the end of this week.  I'm just excited to say, "Shut the Front Door!!!"