day 83

Happy Saturday!  I, for one, am beyond glad the weekend is here.  Besides desperately needing to get caught up on laundry (um, we have zero diapers clean and are about out of disposables), I'm really looking forward to some time with my boys, some meal planning/grocery shopping and maybe even a long bath/facial/nail-painting session.  Oh yeah, and handling some house stuff.  Exciting, no?

I mentioned that my dad came up last weekend, so Hubby and I had a chance to get out a few times by ourselves without the little dude tagging alone.  It was amazing.  We don't have family close by and sitters get expensive, so it's usually always the three of us.  We really need to make date nights a priority again, though.  It was so refreshing to get out and actually have an uninterrupted conversation, hold hands and just leisurely run errands.  Anyway, when leisurely browsing the aisles of Target (let me reiterate - uh-mazing), Hubby came across a glass lamp.  He knew I'd been on the look out for a pair and I casually commented "too bad there aren't two".  Well, he made that his personal mission and was able to uncover a second one.  I'm not sure I totally love the shape, but for the $14.98 price tag, I was sold.  These babies were originally $49.99 each and I ended up paying $15.82 total, thanks to $5 and $10 Target gift cards I found in my wallet.

Ignore the lamp shade; it's the only one I had in the condo that had a harp.  The one downfall to IKEA lamps (which we have quite a few of), are the unique shades.  Anyway, I'm holding off on purchasing shades until I decide which room these are going in. Right now, I'm thinking they'll end up in our bedroom, but it's possible I'll use them in the living room.  I tried a linen-colored herringbone shade on it at Target and it looked pretty sharp.  They had grey ones, too.  The possibilities are endless!  I can't help but think the lamps look a little like old barrels, which is a tad more rustic than my taste, but I can't get over the price.  I'll let you know if I end up returning them.

This weekend, we started our festivities at 6 am with a little dude that was beyond ready to get up and play.  I don't understand why he struggles to get up at 6:30 during the week, but is wide awake and perky at 6 am on the weekend.  I was hoping for at least another hour of sleep.  Maybe tomorrow.  After a diaper change and an episode of Dinosaur Train, we decided to make breakfast for Hubby.  E's really into cooking lately, so it's been a lot of fun to have him helping in the kitchen.  I came across a breakfast ring recipe on Pinterest the other day and immediately pinned it, hoping to surprise the Hubby this weekend.  Well, he was stalking my Pinterest boards to look at faucets I'd saved and came across the recipe pin the next day.  I got an e-mail at work that read something like: "MOST DEFINITELY, YES!!!!", along with a link to the recipe.  So much for that surprise!

Despite having to go back to the store this morning because the crescent rolls I bought last night were crusty when I opened them, the recipe was a big hit!  I snagged the recipe from The Kitchen Life of a Navy Wife but the original source seems to be Bacon Time with the Hungry Hungry Hypo.  I'd highly recommend adding it to your breakfast rotation.  I didn't have cheddar cheese on hand and ended up using a mix of American cheese slices and shredded mozzarella.  Next time, I might do 6 or 7 eggs instead of 5, but, otherwise, I followed the recipe as written and it was delicious.

After our bellies were full, we headed out to the house to check out the latest progress.  Our first discovery was that our garage doors were hung.  Verdict is?  I love them.  Now I'm even more anxious for the siding and stone work to be finished.

This is the first snow we've really had this winter and E loved bundling up in his snowsuit and getting a chance to play on his new sled from Christmas (thanks Papa K and Gram-Gram).  He and Daddy took a couple rides around the house and the giggling was contagious.

Nothing else had changed on the inside, but we discovered our bathtub had been unwrapped.  It's just as pretty as I remember!  I'm guessing the plumber wanted to take a look to see what he was up against?  Hubby and E decided to check it out and make sure they still liked it as well.

[promise they're not dead - just pretending to sleep!]

E had a lot of fun running around the basement and jumping on the leftover wood scraps.  It amazes me what kids find entertaining.

I also had to take a comparison shot of when our foundation was first poured.  It's still fun to be able to hang from the beams!

I also took a few shots of the insulation on my big girl camera and made sure to document that we had indeed passed our inspections - woohoo!

We ordered our cabinets on Thursday and are now just waiting for the drywall work to begin.  So exciting!

day 80

I'm in a little bit of disbelief that we're on day 80.  11.5 weeks.  2.5 months.  In some ways, it seems like forever.  Afterall, we've really been working on this project for 8 months or so.  In other ways, another 80 days does not seem like enough time to get everything done.  But, I'm totally ready to be done.  Ready to move in.  Ready to decorate.  Ready to throw a housewarming party.  Ready to be out of this drafty condo.  The only part I'm not ready for is the packing up and moving again.  Any volunteers for that task?

It's cold in Wisconsin this week.  Not "Los Angeles cold" (see clip below - it's worth a laugh, especially if you hail from a state that actually gets snow or ice), but truly cold.  I think my car said -6 yesterday morning and we were up to 16 this morning.  Anyway, the cold means two things.  1) We're lining the walls of E's current room with blankets (see above).  I have never seen/lived in/experienced such a drafty place.  Especially one that's only 23 years old.  The wind and cold air is gushing through the electrical outlets and seeping in where the floor and walls meet.  It's crazy.  2) There hasn't been any progress on the exterior of the house.



I absolutely do not blame the siding guy for not coming out this week.  My fingers turned red when I ran out to the house for a short five minutes today at lunch.  While I was not surprised to see no work going on outside, I was completely surprised to see that the insulation was done inside.  Well, stage one is done.  The walls are insulated and plastic is hung.  I assume they'll be ready to do the ceiling insulation once the drywall is up.

[kitchen corner]

[dining area ceiling]

[master bedroom corner]

[living room]

[bedroom 2]

Nothing too pretty to look at, but we are beyond excited to see progress again.  I tried to peek through the plastic on the window to see when the inspection had been done and it looked like it had just been signed off on this morning.  The crew must have been on stand-by to come complete the insulation as soon as the inspection was signed off on.  I believe, at this point, they need to start warming up the inside and will then begin drywall.  The furnace is installed and hooked up to a thermostat already so I think everything just has to be fired up.  I'm not looking forward to paying two heating bills in this weather.

In other news, it was crazy windy on Saturday (day 76) and we lost some shingles.  It hasn't been hot enough for everything to properly adhere to the tar paper, so the 40 to 60 mph winds were able to do a bit of damage to the roof.  Not exactly what you want to see when you walk up, but the Construction Manager is aware and assures us everything will be fixed.

And, we received news late last week that the tile we'd selected for our fireplace is no longer available. I'm a huge second-guesser of decisions and was actually quite confident in my fireplace tile decision.  So, the thought of having to select something else wasn't very appealing.  Luckily, the Designer seems to understand by taste pretty well at this point and I was immediately on board with his recommendation.

[tumbled Torreon by Daltile]

Next up?  Ordering cabinets.  Finding a kitchen sink faucet.  Picking a paint color for the master bath and main bath.  Picking a paint color for the kitchen.  Maybe picking up a different post light (still not in love with the one we bought).  Picking out a lamp post.  And???  Anything I'm missing?

day 76

I finally had a chance to grab some progress photos on the real camera.  I've been out to the lot a few times this week to check on things, but it's always been a quick trip at lunch.  The siding guy must think I'm nuts.

Speaking of the siding guy...  He was out working again today - by himself.  The first few days there were two workers, but all of this week there has only been the one.  It just doesn't seem efficient to me.  The good news is that he's just about done.  There is a little bit left to do on the side of the garage and then he'll have to wrap up the trim on the front of the house.  I'm anxious for the stone to go up so I can everything pulled together, but based upon the cold front coming our way, I'm guessing that's still a while out.

We also finally had the inspection on the carpentry, rough plumbing and rough electrical this past Thursday (day 74).  I have no idea what is normal, but there is a list of nine things that must be corrected before they grant approval.  The various crews are supposed to be out there making fixes this weekend so that the inspector can come back on Monday or Tuesday.  Once we get sign off, they'll begin insulating.

The HVAC was installed at some point this week as well (day 73 maybe?).  We've been told it's ready to be turned on as soon as they're done insulating so that drywall work can begin.

And, thanks to a Garden Web forum, we took a second (or one hundred and second) look at our kitchen plans and realized that the pantry door and refrigerator door would have interfered with one another as laid out.  The cabinet guy suggested adding a 15" utility cabinet to scoot the fridge down a bit, so we now have slightly altered kitchen plans.  I also had him make the switches I'd previously talked about -- getting rid of the full-height doors between the oven and cooktop and then switching to three drawers under the cooktop.  The floating shelves aren't shown within the diagrams below, but we're still planning to hang them to the right of the fridge.

 

There were several other changes people suggested, but I wasn't willing to make the trade-off for some of them (e.g. getting rid of our pantry to extend the space to the right of our sink or moving our sink to the peninsula).  I'm sure there will end up being things I want to change later, but right now I'm thrilled to have something larger than our old galley kitchen (which, despite being small, I adored - the before/after photos are worthy of a post... actually the whole house is).

[ignore that there is nothing on the wall - this wasn't long after we moved in]

My dad came up this weekend, so Hubby and I had a chance to get out for a date night tonight.  We went grocery shopping, hit Taco Bell for dinner and stopped at Pier1, JCPenney and Target.  Date nights have seriously changed in the past three years