It's Closing Time!

Our house is almost closed in, finally! We are about a week and a half behind my initial schedule. Not too bad considering the blizzards and hurricane force winds we've had this month and rain the month before that! 

Our framers (who I HIGHLY recommend!) came back to work on our house this weekend to try to make up for lost time. They worked last weekend too!

I always appreciate a hard worker and someone who makes an effort. These guys certainly do both. 

On Friday they finished framing the back covered porch and sheeting the roof with plywood. 

I absolutely LOVE this deck! Neither Jake or I are very big sunworshippers so this deck is perfect for us. 

The roof of the deck is currently being held up temporarily until the timbers are installed. Which reminds me, we need to pick out a stain colour! Note to self... 

Our roofers are starting today, and there's even some sun in the weekly forecast to help seal up the shingles. Yay! 

I was really hoping that they wouldn't need to shovel off the roof before shingling, fingers crossed the weather stays as predicted! 

We picked black shingles, or "charcoal" as the manufacturer calls it.

Framers will be finishing wrapping the house and installing windows today. We have the Building Inspector scheduled for Wednesday, so they better be ready!! Our big kitchen window hasn't even arrived yet... I've been told tomorrow. 

Here's a glimpse of our first windows and front door installed! Love them! I'm glad we went with black. Our framer took the picture and sent it to me... I didn't even have to ask! :)

The front door will be black as well. You know what they say, once you go black... You paint all your doors black to match :)

We still need to order our garage doors. The ones we picked don't come in black, so we'll need to paint those as well. We decided that we'll get them in dark brown so it's easier to paint over. We're still debating whether we should paint them before they're installed or wait till after and paint them in the spring. It's going to look so bad until spring if we wait! People driving by will wonder what the heck we're doing! 

I Heart the Heart of Our Home

They say the kitchen is the heart of the home... Well I know where my heart is!  Actually it's kind of a toss up between the kitchen and the floors.  But I guess the floors are also in the kitchen... So the kitchen it is!

We just got the drawings of our kitchen this week... I am thrilled!!  I know I shared a little detail about the kitchen in an earlier post, but here's where it all comes together!

This is the basic floor plan of the kitchen:

My kitchen must haves were an island, and an arched window.  You can thank Houzz for the arched window idea.  

The window faces the back of the house in front of the sink where we've actually already seen deer! It's big, and round and well... I like big windows and I cannot lie.

We have chosen a white, stepped shaker style door for our cabinetry.  We wanted something simple and classic in hopes that it won't become outdated in a few years, as opposed to picking something super trendy.  Here's the door style we chose, but obviously not in our colour choice!

I was so excited to get the drawings of our cabinetry. Now we can order the handles and knobs we picked!  We ordered samples and are really happy with them! 

We've decided to go with 2 different colours. Black for the perimeter cabinetry and brushed nickel for the island. 

These will be for all the perimeter drawers.

And these will be for all of the cupboards. They remind me of the nailheads on leather furniture, love them!

And these are for the island drawers. They are the same as the black ones, just a different colour!

In an earlier post I showed a picture of our island colour, but I'll show you again! It's call Icy Moon Drops and I think it will look great against the white cabinetry and reclaimed floors. 

Our island top will be a variety reclaimed wood species like this one:

Since we are kind of going to be living in the country, I didn't want our house to be too contemporary, so we've added some legs to our island to add some character. 

And lots of drawers!! I have 1 small bank of drawers in my house now so I'm excited to have big ones! And lots of them!

And we added the same legs to our desk on the pantry wall and the open shelving will be reclaimed lumber as well. I can just see all my cute tea cups on display :)

I'm excited to have not 1, but 2 pantries to be able to store all of our jars of PB. 

On the floor plan the fridge is kind of in the center of of the main wall. It was cutting up the counter space, so we moved it to the far side. We're also taking our cabinets right up to the 9' ceilings so there isn't that awkward dust collecting space. I don't own any fake ivy to display so this seemed like the best choice for us! ;)

And my FAVOURITE wall of all... The window!! 

Ignore where I had drawn the handles... They'll actually be in the middle. 

What's missing? Counter tops! 

We've decided to go with laminate counter tops for the perimeter. And we're actually picking the ones I have in my house now. So I know we'll like them!

We would have loved to have gone with a quartz counter top, but we decided to splurge on other parts of the house that can't be upgraded down the road. 

 

As for a backsplash, we don't know what we're doing yet. I want to wait until everything is up to decide. 

So there ya go... The heart of our home! 

 

 

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

In this case, those words are actually only one word. 1000 times... SORRY!!!

So the "crisis" with our roof, is no longer a crisis. Why? Because it's perfect!! It was just a really, really bad camera angle!

Just a refresher... This is what our house is supposed to look like:

This is what I thought it looked like:

And this is what it ACTUALLY looks like:

Ahhhh... Big sigh of relief! After apologizing profusely to the framer, my dad, the roof truss guy and the house designer. All of whom put their regular days aside to meet the crazy girl with an imaginary roof problem... 

I won't even get into my 7am visit to the roof truss manufacturers office. 

Let me tell you the embarassment I felt when I pulled up to the house to see a roof completely different than the one in the picture!!

So now we can move forward instead of starting over! 

All but 2 of our windows are boarded up in the garage waiting to go in, the missing ones will be here tomorrow. Shingles are on the roof waiting to go on and the back porch is a work in progress!

The peak of the covered porch is on now too... But my phone died last time I was out there.

I went out to label windows. We have a lot of windows that look the same, but open differently. I wanted to make sure that they went into the right spots. Hopefully I labelled them correctly!!

Look at that beautiful black window! :)

Ok! Off to get the kiddos from school... Just wanted to update now that everything with the roof is fine!!

Shit + Fan = Our Nightmare

Oh boy... Where do I even begin?

I worked days the last 2 days while the framers worked tiressly on our house. They have been sheeting the roof in near hurricane strength winds and working weekends to try to catch up from last weeks blast of winter. 

Jake was off the last 2 days so he could be around in case we had any problems with the house, plus our windows were delivered on Monday, yay!! 

Jake has been excellent at sending me photographic updates while I was at work. Greatly appreciated!

Although a picture he sent me today, had me thinking... 

Here's the picture, and then I'll point out the problem. 

Front porch looks great, plywood going up, great! But wait a second... Something doesn't look quite right. 

Have a look at what the front of our house is supposed to look like:

And again, here's what it's actually looking like:

Notice anything missing? Maybe the entire roof?! The pitch is WAY off. Someone f'd up, and f'd up huge. 

So after countless tears, phone calls, texts and emails to my dad, framer and roof truss sales guy at 9pm... All but one of us have determined that things aren't right. 

Have a look from the back:

What it should look like...

And what it actually looks like...

Me, my dad, the framer and the roof guy are all meeting out at the house first thing to play the blame game... This is a game I don't want to win. 

Boom Shakalaka

Finally, after days of waiting for the weather to improve, the boom truck arrived to put up our roof trusses! 

It was too windy for a good 3-4 days so it put us behind schedule. 

Thankfully there was still lots for the framers to do. Like frame the basement walls including our laundry room downstairs. We'll have laundry rough-ins on the main floor for when we're old. But for now I'd like more space in the mudroom and I figure I can manage stairs for a few more years :)

The sun is shining now and my fingers are crossed that plywood will be making its way onto the roof today. Next week is supposed to be milder, so it would be ideal for shingling!  

The timbers for our back porch were delivered yesterday. They look so big and strong! 

They are 8x8 pine timber posts which we'll stain to match the cedar on the front of the house in the spring. 

With this crappy start to winter, we're really putting the pressure on to get everything closed up. Our windows are being delivered on Monday... Exciting!!

How our house looked at 7:30am today!

Feels like -19°C you say?

We watch the weather forecast more than a bride who's planned an outdoor wedding. 

And tonight, it scared us!

We were getting ready for bed and took one last look at the projected temperature and saw that it's supposed to feel like -19°C over night. Yikes!

That's cause for concern for our foundation and the heater we bought isn't on. 

So we hopped in the car and drove out to the house to turn it on. The joys of winter building...

As you can see... Jake is thrilled. 

Roof trusses will be on tomorrow... So we'll be one step closer to closing the house up. We can't wait. 

Dealio of the Week

When I was at Rona this week getting the heater for the foundation I grabbed a flyer. I always love a deal!

There weren't any items in the flyer that I needed at the moment, but Rona was having a 15% off any item on November 15th!  So I started to think of things we could buy and save ourselves 15%.

The deal was 15% of any item in the store and up to 15 of the same item so we decided to buy our kitchen sink and ensuite mirrors and check out separately. 

We saw a very similar sink at Home Depot that we wanted for $399. So this was already a deal to us, and we got 15% off!

I have been looking for round mirrors for our ensuite for a while. I can usually find 1 that I like at HomeSense or Winners, but I needed 2!

These mirrors were already pretty cheap to begin with at $63, but even cheaper with 15% off!  

Oh hi legs. 

We have ordered our bathroom sinks online from homedepot.com. For some reason, the exact same sinks on homedepot.ca were $100 more per sink!

They're identical, CSA approved, 8" widespread to accommodate the faucets we picked. Just gotta make a quick trip to Port Huron to pick them up!

So the only things we have left to buy for plumbing fixtures are our faucets and toilets. We don't need them for a couple months yet, so we're going to look for deals!

Baby, it's getting cold outside!

Brrrrrr!! It's a cold day when your house doesn't have a roof. Or windows! 

Thanks to a few cm of snow, we were up at the crack of dawn and out to the house to shovel. Winter is here... I'm fine if this week is just a preview and we go back to 15°C weather again. 

Just shoveling out my kitchen... No big deal. :)

We want to keep as much moisture off the subfloor as we can. And we also need to keep our foundation and basement flooring from freezing. That seems like an impossible task with no roof, no windows, no insulation, and snow. 

So today we bought a propane heater and boarded up our basement windows and the gaping hole that will one day be stairs to the basement in attempt to keep the foundation around zero degrees. We left one removable piece on the door so we can still get in and out easily. 

Jake hammering 2x4s into frozen clay to keep the plywood over the windows in place. I think he had fun :)

All boarded up!

We went with a Mr. Heater Convection Propane Heater. It's 30,000-80,000 BTU and can heat up to 1900 square feet. A 20lb tank (a regular BBQ tank) is supposed to last up to 14 hours. We don't need to have the basement warm, just not below zero.  We decided to get a 30lb tank so that we can squeeze a few more hours out of it while we're at work. 

So after we got the house all boarded up we assembled the heater and tried it out. 

Our plan is to keep it on the lowest setting possible to preserve the tank, assuming that it provides enough heat. 

Once we fired the heater up, we were surprised to see a huge flame! It made us both a little nervous. We kept trying to reassure ourselves that it was fine, the flame was contained and that these heaters were made for this sort of thing. We boarded the house back up and got in the truck. Neither of us were feeling overly comfortable about leaving a propane fueled metal fire pot in the basement of our new house so we called my dad for reassurance. 

The first thing my dad asks, "You've got insurance, right?"  

We do, but that wasn't the reassurance we were after so we quickly went back inside and shut it off. We'll give it another try when we're out there cleaning up this weekend before we trust it alone!  Thankfully the propane heater is supposed to be a temporary solution until we have our own hydro. Then we can use electric heaters and we might actually be able to sleep at night!