Texture and Trim

Near the end of the week the texture on the walls and ceiling was finished, which meant that we could get to work on trim! Matt had the finish materials delivered on Friday, so Friday night Matt and I set all the interior doors and on Saturday we started doing door and window casings. We still have to do the headers on all the doors and windows but Matt is doing some fancy work, including creating his own piece (since he couldn't find the one he wanted anywhere) and some crown moulding. We also need to put on all the baseboard. Once the trim inside is done, the painter can come paint! We are pretty close to picking the color we want inside.

As far as things outside, you can see that we are finished now with three of the four sides. The west side is up pretty high and Matt has been hesitant to finish it without the right stuff. After the siding is done, the painter can paint the siding (the color has already been picked), we can put rock on, and we can have the soffit and facia done. Soon the outside will be done and it will look like a finished house!

I am starting to see the end of this huge project, which is good and bad. Good because we have been working hard (Matt even more than me) for a long time and it will be nice for that to be over, and of course nice to have our own house! Bad because we still have a lot to do and I am more antsy than ever to get out of Randy and Jenny's basement and into our house. I want all my stuff out of storage and I want my own space. We have loved living with Randy, Jenny and the kids, but we definitely have a new appreciation for privacy and freedom that you don't have living in someone else's house.

Unfortunately, Matt has to work all during my spring break this week, so we won't get much done except at night. I was hoping that he would have some time off while I did so we could just work all day like we did during Winter Break. Oh well.

More Siding

Luckily while the sheet rock has been getting done, we are able to work outside on the siding. Thank heavens it hasn't been raining. We have had some perfect Saturdays to work outside, considering it is only March. I almost got a little sunburned this week. Anyway, my dad has been a trooper helping Matt and I with siding. Matt did most of the back of the house by himself, but has had my dad helping out with the other three sides. We did the entire front of the house on Saturday. There were a lot of trim pieces to cut, which took a lot of time, but it helped having an extra person to hold things in place, cut stuff, nail stuff, etc. I was mostly in charge of cutting pieces on the chop saw. I'm certainly not perfect, but getting better!

We are left now with just the three gables, which will be a little different because they come in big sheets rather than big slats and fit together differently. You can see that we are ready for rock too, so as soon as that is ordered, we will be able to work on that! We are hoping to time it right so that we can be working on trim inside, and the painter can paint outside, then switch and work on rock outside while the painter paints inside. We'll see how it works out in the next couple of weeks.

The gables will be white with the vertical siding. The windows will be trimmed in white and the rest of the horizontal siding will be a brown/gray color. Where you see the black in the picture will all be rock. There will be a white trim just above the rock (it's kind of hard to see in the picture).

Sheet Rock!

Right after the insulation went in, the sheet rock guys had their crew over stocking the sheet rock and putting it up! These pictures were taken on the second day, so they were finishing hanging everything and had started mudding. I am loving the vault ceiling so much now that it is sheet rocked. I was a little worried about size (everything seems to shrink a lot when you put up walls and close everything off) and it felt really dark (only the light from the room you are in, not from the whole house!), but that has passed.

Vault over the dining room and stairs, and regular ceiling in the kitchen

Pantry and open shelf above (Matt claims he will be putting a stuffed turkey there someday and I claim that is never going to happen)

Living room

Entry

Stairway where (unfortunately) Matt's elk "Spike" will hang

Hallway to bedrooms

Main bath for bedrooms

Bedroom 1 (bigger of the two bedrooms)

Bedroom 2

Linen closet in the hallway

Another view of the vault and living room

Laundry side of the mudroom

Benches/lockers side of the mudroom. Matt is giving me 100% control of the decision making in this space. I am so excited! Pinterest here I come!

Man-door in the garage

Master bedroom with tray ceiling, which I love!

Master bathroom. Seeing the shower framed in is so weird!

We are very excited for the progress as always! The mudding still needs another day and then they will texture the walls and ceiling. After that all dries, we can start hanging interior doors and putting up baseboard and trim on windows and doors. Then paint! I am starting to see light at the end of the tunnel- a very long and work-filled tunnel, but it's there!

Addictions

We have an addiction.

I guess the real problem is that we don't ever use any of these cups that we wash as refill cups.

Insulation

It is crazy how some things on the house seem to take FOREVER, and then some things go crazy fast! Last week we had our electrical/plumbing/framing/hvac inspection and we passed! Yay! The inspector was shocked that Matt had done the electrical work himself. He said it looked professional. Another proud moment from me.

He gave us the go-ahead to schedule the insulation, so Matt called and they said they'd be out sometime during the week, probably the end of the week. Well the next day, we stop by and HOLY CRAP! This is what we saw:

Kitchen

Entry and stairs

Basement living room

Vault above stairs and dining room

Garage

Vault in family room

I basically started freaking out because all of the electrical was all covered up in the insulation! We spent so long putting that all in and in one day it was totally covered up! Not to mention that we don't actually know if everything works! Ah! Cross your fingers that we are good!

Speaking of electrical, here is the last update on that... Matt had to run all the wiring for tv and internet and here's how it looks:

Update on siding... a week ago, Matt and my dad were able to put up most of the siding on the east side of the house. We still have a few feet of the horizontal siding, and then we'll do a different type (vertical with wider spacing) on the gable. On Saturday (so 2 days ago), my dad, Laurie, Matt and I worked on the siding on the west side of the house, and got to the same point. So we are officially done with the back, close to being done on both sides, and need to do the siding on the front, which we haven't even started yet. Making good progress! We need to order rock soon!

Finally! The lumber package that has been cluttering the backyard since December is all used up! My mom helped me move everything a few weeks ago, and now all we have sitting there is a few pieces of siding. Now that I can actually see my yard, I am getting excited! On Saturday, it was a pretty nice day and all the neighborhood kids were out on the big hills behind our house playing in their "forts". It looked like so much fun! I can't wait to someday see our kids out there playing! It made me love our lot even more.

Today the sheet rock was stocked, and Tuesday and Wednesday this week they will get going! Keep posted for new pictures!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Siding

Matt has been working hard on the house, as always. And now that we're almost done with electrical (inspection tomorrow), we get to work on some other stuff, like putting siding on the house. Matt got the entire back of the house (with the exception of a few feet) done in one day while I was at work! When I showed up to help, I didn't get to help with the siding. Matt made me help him move a huge pile of siding. I know, I am VERY important.

All the windows will be trimmed in white to contrast the darker paint we'll use on the siding.

Matt was able to finish one side of the house on Saturday with the help of my dad. He has this side and the front to do the horizontal siding, and then he will do vertical siding on the gables.

The front of the house is just about ready for rock!

A few weeks ago, we had the sheet rock guys come and hang some sheet rock in our garage so we could have some break from the cold and have a chance to close up the house. It makes me excited to be able to start doing sheet rock (hopefully by the end of this week?) but also makes me scared! Everything looks so different with sheet rock!

Matt is looking pretty disgusting with his mustache...

Cassie Goes to the MTC!

On February 26, Cassie entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo. She was so excited! There are so many rules about who can be in the car to drop a missionary off at the MTC, and Cassie had so many people who wanted to see her off, that Matt and I decided not to go down. My mom did take a bunch of pictures, which I'll share here, so thanks mom for making us feel like we were apart of it!

My mom took some amazing pre-mission pictures:

Saying good-bye to living at home:

Pictures with family at the Provo temple:

Saying good-bye at the MTC!

Going, going...

Gone!

My mom sent me a video of Cas in the car and walking in to the MTC and it was only about 3 minutes long. She was so excited that she practically ran into the MTC! We have gotten a few emails from her so far, and she is doing great! It is so much fun to be writing a missionary! We love her and miss her so much already!