This week could have gone a little smoother...

This week at the house had it's ups... And quite a few downs. I should have made notes so I wouldn't forget any of them! 

Ask my dad how many times I called him crying! :)

Where should we start? How about Monday?!

Monday went fairly well. We locked down our new mason and quickly ran out to order all of our stone. We needed it by Wednesday because that's when the mason could start. The stone was in stock AND we could have it delivered by Wednesday. Sweet! That's an up.

The framers were working away trying to finish everything up for our framing inspection that was scheduled for Wednesday. 

The roofers also started on Monday! 

Tuesday:

Framers were at the house working, the main guy was sick, so not a lot got done. All the windows were in except the one that hasn't come yet and the one that needed to be fixed. Although I noticed that the master bedroom windows were in the wrong places... Despite my window labeling, so they needed to come out and be switched. 

Someone also hit the door frame of our patio door with a hammer...

It was an accident but if it wasn't so cold it never would have shattered this way. I've been told it can be "capped", whatever that means!

We also met with our plumbing/electrical/HVAC company Tuesday as well. We went through and showed them where we wanted everything as far as plumbing and lighting/outlets. 

Roofers were still working away, even with frost/ice on the roof. 

Wednesday:

Pre-inspection: Masons started, yay!! Framers were getting a lot done in anticipation of the afternoon framing inspection. 

Post-Inspection: 

What?!! Moving the windows AND changing the cathedral ceiling porches to flat?! I don't think so!!

This is when frantic, crying phone call # 37 to my dad happened. Along with an email to our timber designer (who had our timber drawings reviewed and stamped by an engineer). He seems to think it's just a misunderstanding... Let's hope so!! 

Needless to say, we failed our framing inspection. They also won't pass it until the timbers are completely installed. But the timber guy won't make them until he knows we don't actually need collar ties. Awesome. Our timber guy is also booked solid until the week of Christmas. So looks like our insulation and drywall will be waiting. 

 

Thursday: 

Plumber and electricians start with the rough-ins. Yay!

Our fireplace was delivered. Yay! But it doesn't fit in the opening. Boo. 

It's 4" too wide for the opening. Easy solution, just make the opening bigger. Except it's not that easy... There is honestly not enough room between the windows, not to mention the entire back porch is supported by this wall. Annnnd now we're sending the fireplace back and getting a new, smaller one. One plus is it's about $500 cheaper. Yay!

Roofers were finishing up after needing 13 more bundles of shingles that Jake had to drive an hour + to get. 

Framers were framing the basement and correcting any deficiencies from the inspection. 

One issue with the inspection was with a roof truss (all that girder talk in my text from the framer, Steve). What happened was the truss was delivered and it was 2" too tall. So they had to cut it down and repair it. But because it was different than the original plan from the roof truss engineer, it needed to be re-engineered. The fix that the engineer recommended was impossible to do because there wasn't any space to do it. By this point, the roof was shingled, and they were talking about taking trusses down... Oh boy. 

Friday:

Roof is done. Woohoo!

Plumber was finishing rough-ins.

Electrician was working away.

Framers were raising the two front windows to eliminate the need for cutting the top layer of stone all the way around and finishing framing the basement. 

Masons were working on the back of the house. 

Timber guy came by to take measurements and assess the situation. 

Jake bought a stain colour for the timbers that looks nothing like the colour in the brochure. Ugh. 

Roof was leaking in one spot. We figured it might not be an actual leak considering it hasn't rained or snowed since the roof has been on. But there was water dripping from the roof onto the floor in the kitchen. 

For now, we're assuming that it's from that frosty day earlier in the week and the water was coming from under the shingles. Fingers crossed!!

We also blew multiple breakers at our neighbour's house this week. We've been using their hydro until we get our own... We're going to have to get them something REALLY nice as a thank you!

So hear's hoping next week goes a little smoother!

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! 

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!!

It's the inside that counts... Or is it?

Picking the exterior of our house has been causing me a lot of stress lately. I don't want to make any mistakes because I know how important curb appeal is... But I also don't want to do anything too typical either. 

With finishes inside the house, you know that eventually they will become outdated and need some revamping... But the outside takes a lot more money, a lot more time and a lot more guts to change down the road. 

We have decided to do a stone/siding mix. We chose James Hardie fiber cement board in Iron Grey for the main part of the house.

It's kind of a blueish-grey and we really, really like it. 

I'm not a huge fan of bright, stark white trim paired with dark siding, so we chose James Hardie Cobblestone as our trim colour. 

I think it's a little softer and a little more subtle with the Iron Grey. Although trying to find a picture of that combination has been impossible. I just have small 8x8 samples to go from so I really hope that this doesn't become a risk I'll regret! 

By not choosing white as our trim colour it made picking a window colour a little more difficult. I've seen a lot of houses where they've tried to match trim and window colours (typically beiges or creams) and have failed miserably. The easiest way I could think to avoid this issue was to go with something that doesn't match at all. Black!  

I've seen black windows look really good on houses, but I've also seem them look too dark when paired with other dark trim or stone choices. That's what I'm afraid of. 

When there's enough of a light trim with the black window, I think they look elegant and classy.

We ordered our windows from Dashwood Windows. We have had a really good experience so far. Customer service has been phenomenal and I would recommend them to anyone. They even came out to our house and went through our quote and plans window by window. For people who have never ordered windows before, this settled our nerves and made us feel confident in our decisions. 

We have 3 windows on the back of the house that were a struggle for a couple other companies we had quotes from. Dashwood didn't have any issues at all. 

Other companies struggled with the great room windows:

We decided to leave the grilles out of these windows so we have an unobstructed view of the yard and mature trees. 

And my favourite window in the whole house! The kitchen window:

I guess the problem with this window was having the camber top AND windows that open. The "V" shape in the drawings shows windows that open. 

Remember the dormers from our plan?

We were originally going to use James Hardie Shakes in iron grey as well up there, but after a trip to the hardware store we decided that we wanted to have the look of real cedar. 

Cedar tends to be pretty expensive. So we looked at every kind of cedar-style shake available on the market, but they all looked really fake. 

Since those spaces aren't very big, we opted to go with real cedar shakes. We wanted something completely maintenance free, but I guess staining a few shakes every 5-10 years isn't a huge deal. 

We will stain the exterior pine timbers to match the cedar shakes for a more cohesive look. 

We were worried about trying to coordinate too many wood colours, so we're going to paint the garage doors and front door black to match the windows. I may paint the front door a different colour eventually, but this will give us a good start!  

The garage doors we're going with are a carriage style door with arched windows to highlight the camber garage door frames. These are Upwardor from the Bronte Creek collection. They're affordable, have a high R-value (insulation) and are Canadian made!

The only problem is they don't come in black! So we're buying them in dark brown so it's easier to paint black instead of trying to painting black over white. We won't be able to paint them until the weather is nicer next spring, so I'm sure many people will question our garage door colour choice until then! 

The bottom part of the house will be done in stone. We picked Permacon Lafitt which is a man-made stone. Man-made stone tends to be easier to install because they fit together better without much chipping/reshaping so labour and material costs are lower. Yay! But the actual stone is about twice to cost of brick. Boo. 

We debated about using stone on the front and a coordinating brick for the sides and back to save money, but we think that brick will really take away from the beauty of the back of the house, so we're sticking with stone all the way around.  This is why we've cut out quartz counter tops and a few other things that can always be changed later if we wanted.

Can you imagine this as brick? Just not the same is it?