Just a little update!

Oh heeey! Where have we been? Enjoying our house! Is it done? Nope!

I was really hoping that this house would be 100% complete by now, but hey, the weather is nice and we just worked our butts off to get the house to where it is now... We'll get back to working on it this winter when the weather is crappy! :)

So what's left?

Fireplace mantle: Our kitchen guy is doing it, and he's swamped. I made the mistake of saying we weren't in a rush. We aren't, but it would be nice to have that done! 

Here's the drawing. It will be white to match our kitchen cabinets with a reclaimed wood piece on the top. 

Trim: our trim is all just primed. So it will need 2 coats of paint. That is definitely a winter project! EVERY piece of trim. Baseboards, window casings, door casings... Good thing we didn't go for any crown moulding!!

We are also missing a few pieces of baseboard because we're waiting for the fireplace! 

Stairs: we ran into an issue with the treads on the stairs so it's taken A LOT more work and time than it was supposed to. 

Darby ran up and down them with muddy paws after I took the plastic off, but before we had a chance to stain/protect them. I thought I cleaned it all up until I put the stain on! You could see 2 paw prints on EVERY STEP!! I debated whether to sand it right away or put another coat of stain on to see if they'd disappear. I went with stain. Let's face it, I'm impatient and I wanted to get the stairs done. Stain was the wrong choice! It just made the paw prints darker. 

So then I sanded Every. Single. Step. 

And started the staining process over again. 2 coats of stain, 3 coats of polyurethane and then I still needed to paint the risers and stringers!

I decided to use Annie Sloan Chalk Paint on the risers. I did that next because I wanted to see how they looked dark. 

I think I chose the wrong order again!  For anyone who has used chalk paint, you know how you're supposed to apply a finishing wax once the paint is dry? Well how do I do that neat enough to only keep it on the risers and not get any wax on the stringers? Because if I get wax on the stringers, then the latex paint for there won't stick! Agh! What have I done?! I've just made more work for myself! So I've left the wax for another day and am slowly tackling the stringers. Slowly. Baby steps. :)

Attic hatch: sounds simple enough? Put a piece of wood and some insulation up there and call it a day. I wish it was that easy! We have the supplies, but we don't have a bazillion foot ladder. No idea how or why, but our garage ceilings are 12' high. We have 12' ladders. But you can't lean them in the attic hole because then they're too short! Story of my life!

We also have so much sh*t in our garage that we can hardly walk around. 

This one is actually at the top of our priority list so hopefully we'll get it done this weekend. 

Cladding the LVL beams: huh? See the yellow horizontal beams? 

Those are all structural and need to be covered in pine boards to look like more timbers. We have been waiting for a quote from the timber guy since May... Despite reminding him, I don't think he's really interested in doing them for us. So we borrowed my dad's table saw, and we're doing it ourselves! 

Landscaping/Grass: I always thought that this was something that could wait. Let's finish the house, get settled in and worry about the yard next year. Well... After living in Weed City for a few months, I realized that that plan was not a good one! 

We have a landscaping company from town coming to put up Armour Stone retaining walls in the back walkout area and 1 in the front garden. Our lot is so sloped! We thought we could get away without retaining walls, but every time it rains, the water runs right down in front of the basement patio doors. Retaining walls it is! I'm kind of excited for them! We chose a dark stone like this:

Grass... Well we seeded the front 1/2 of our property in the spring. It has grown in nicely. But because we have SO many rocks in our yard that we never got a chance to finish picking them and planting seed before the weather got too hot. So we are planning to get the rest of the yard seeded within the next few weeks. They say fall is best for planting grass seed anyway! 

Let's see... What else is there?

Insulation: we had some water issues this spring. 1 was a leaky outside tap that was fixed within hours and the other was from not having our yard graded before the snow melted. So we (ahem Jake) ripped out a lot of the basement insulation as part of a very thorough investigative process ;)

So we need to put that back together. 

We've also submitted plans for a detached garage permit and should be hearing back about that any day now. Because we need more projects!! I think we'll be hiring this one out... 

Now that I've made this list... I feel like I need to go do something! Hopefully I'll have a progress post a little sooner this time :)

Where have we been?!

Other than hiding out in the basement, there hadn't been a ton of progress on the house. We were (im)patiently waiting for our flooring to come out of the kiln and then be planed (all to the same 3/4" thickness) and tongue and grooved. 

I am happy to report that most of our flooring is done! Jake and I picked it up in 4 trips... There's no fancy boxes or packaging with this floor! Just random widths and lengths all piled into a trailer and carried into the house 3-4 pieces at a time.

Our installer was here bright and early Saturday morning and this morning (even with the time change!) and the "big room" consisting of the kitchen, dining and great room is all installed!

We LOVE it!!!

We are so happy with the random width look. There are a total of 6 widths ranging from 3"-10" and lengths from 4' to 14'. 

We've left the knot holes, worm holes, nail holes and some minor cracks to keep the character that we love so much. Before we sand the floors we'll fill the bigger knot holes with a coloured epoxy so there are no tripping hazards! 

That's about it in terms of progress on the house! We've been painting trim and doors for what seems like forever... But we're almost done! And once the floors are in, all of our trim work can be finished. It would be kind of nice to have a door on the bathroom! 

We have quite a bit of touch up paint to do before we move everything in too. Tatum has already managed to write on 3 of her bedroom walls with an Allen key! I really thought she would have grown out of this by now... I guess not!

No Pain(t), No Gain

Well, we're in the thick of it now. 

We decided to take on the chore of painting the entire house ourselves. We got some absolutely ridiculous quotes and just couldn't justify forking out that much money for something we're capable of doing on our own. 

Thankfully we have been SUPER fortunate to have great friends and family to come help. It doesn't hurt that they're actually excellent painters! 

A special shout out goes to Tracy for tackling both girls' rooms. They were the trickiest rooms in the house thanks to the turquoise ceiling and the wall paint colour that is just a touch off from the primer colour. But they turned out great and look professionally done!

We are so appreciative of all the help! 

So far we have used 20 gallons of primer, 6 gallons of ceiling paint and 3 gallons of wall colour. The ceilings are all done and we just have the walls left in all rooms except for the bedrooms. We're getting closer!

Hopefully we can get the trim and doors painted early this week so our finish carpenter can get started. 

Doors all ready to be painted dark gray. 

Everyone is super sore and achy from hours and hours of painting. We'll all be glad when this part is over!

Our tiling is all finished. It turned out so well. 

Main bath floor and tub surround. 

Ensuite shower. 

We had someone come out to measure for glass doors this week too. They should be installed in the next 2 weeks. 

Our garage doors should be getting installed Monday. I can't wait to see how the front of the house looks without plywood for garage doors! 

I wish our hardwood was ready... That's the only thing holding us up right now. As long as they're 100% ready to be installed by February 17th, we should be fine. Our installer is scheduled to come from the 18th-22nd. Fingers crossed! 

Interior/exterior update

I struggled to come up with a catchy title for this one...

The house is coming along! 

The siding is 2/3 done... 

All those shakes we stained are up too

I'm so glad we went for real cedar. The colours are amazing. We plan to stain the timbers a bit darker in the spring. We used the same stain for both, but they're two different species so we were expecting to have to redo it. We just wanted them stained and protected for the winter.  

Our back timbers SHOULD be up in the next few days. But I've been saying that for weeks it seems...

On the inside, all the mudding and sanding of drywall is done. So once we clean all the dust off the ceiling and walls, we'll be ready for primer and paint! 

Jake bought a sprayer so hopefully it will move things along faster! We want to paint our basement ceiling/floor trusses black eventually so it will definitely be needed for that!  I found this picture on Houzz and we both love the idea. 

On to even more exciting progress... We have some floors and tub/shower surround up!

This is our mudroom floor. We bought these tiles for $0.30/tile at Home Depot. We decided to lay them on a diagonal/diamond pattern to make them more interesting and I'm pretty happy with them!

Our ensuite shower so far...

I love this little alcove! I feel like I'll need to buy some fancy shampoo now. 

The floor in our main bathroom turned out so well. We absolutely love it. Now we're considering using the same, only black, for our basement laundry room. But that's a DIY project for down the road. 

I'm excited for it all to be grouted. Our installer said he'll be done by Wednesday. Yay!

Stress and Siding... Not related.

What should I start with? Stress? Might as well... Because it will likely be throughout this post anyway!

Things are starting to get really stressful as we near the end. If I thought it was stressful before, I had no idea what I was heading into! 

Our drywall is all hung and the taper worked all weekend and is almost finished as well. The house is really starting to look good! (Trying to maintain a positive attitude :) )

When we decided to build this house ourselves, we never really thought about all the little things we'd actually end up doing BY ourselves.  When it came time to hanging drywall, there were all these little spots that needed blocking and strapping so they had something to actually attach the drywall to. Our framer had done a pretty good job of getting most spots, but not all of them. So we attempted to do things on our own. Keep in mind, we work the exact same schedule, and it's the WORST possible schedule for accomplishing anything. 

We had to work on these small projects between our 3 night shifts with little sleep, little patience, little skills and lots of grumpiness. 

We didn't get it all done. So areas were drywalled, and yesterday was spent taking the drywall down in these areas... Ugh. Thankfully it's just the garage that we didn't get time to finish, but it still annoys the hell out of me that we didn't get it done. So now, we are going to have to buy new drywall, hang it ourselves, tape and mud it ourselves. After paying for professionals. But not before we add more support for the garage door brackets behind the drywalled areas. And hopefully we get this done before our garage doors arrive this week. Oh have I mentioned that our schedule this week is days Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we're off (but I have the girls so I can only be available between 9:30-3) and then we work Friday, Saturday and Sunday days followed by Monday and Tuesday nights. Right. Plenty of time. 

Have I also mentioned that my house has now sold and we need to be out of here by February 11th? So add packing/storing an entire house in that schedule too. $&@!#!!!!! If you see me, and I have no hair, it's because I pulled it all out. That could be true about my eyelashes too... They seem to be the first to go when I'm stressed. 

We are also painting our new house during this time. That should only take a few hours, right? It's about all I've got left, once I give up sleeping and eating for 3 weeks. Annnnnd I should probably move onto siding now, because I'm getting chest pain thinking about everything that has to happen with no time to do it in! 

Siding... It's up! Not all of it, but I'd say 1/3 of it. And I LOVE it!! 

We are using James Hardie fiber cement siding. The body of the house is called Iron Gray. I know what you're thinking, it should be called Iron Blue! I agree, but I love it all the same :)

The trim around the windows and doors is also James Hardie and it's called Cobblestone. I am so happy we went with it over a stark white. 

I have no idea when they plan on being finished with the siding. They're super nice (and funny) guys. But they don't move very quickly! It's also been bitter cold most days so I don't blame them. They've been at the soffits, fascia and siding for 2 weeks now... at this rate they should be done around May 2-4. ;)

I guess I should get off my butt and start packing... I've taken all the pictures off of my walls, but that's about it! Maybe I should get a job with the siding guys! My hours would be better...