Flooring!

Matt and I have been working so hard and we are getting so close to the end! Everyone who comes in always says that we are so close! I wish! It still feels forever away. There are so many little things left, but I do have to celebrate the little things we get done!

The hardwood floor looks more beautiful that I could have imagined. It is soooo filthy and I can't wait for all the carpet to go in so we stop kicking up dust! Matt was a champion. He put most of the flooring down in one day. He was a major perfectionist too! All the seams had to be just right and if the piece chipped when he cut it, he would cut another. I am glad though because it really looks so amazing!

The mudroom is sooo close to being done! We got the tile done in the mudroom and just need to finish the shelving and put on the baseboard and finish electrical.

View from mudroom into the kitchen. Matt chipped one tile while he was putting in the hardwood and had to rip it out. He'll fix it when we start doing shower tile.

Finished tile in the guest bathroom.

Finished tile in the master bathroom.

Now that flooring is done, we can get the cabinets installed! Hopefully they get finished soon! We can also finish the baseboard, start finish electrical, get the power tied up and turned on, finish the tile in the two showers, finish the rock outside, get the outside painted after the soffit and facia get done... and so on and so on and so on. Really we are close! Keep posted for more!

Turkey Success!

Matt has been turkey hunting for four years now. He started right after we got married and has increasingly become more and more obsessed with turkey hunting each year. He has also had NO SUCCESS. Finally, this year, the busiest we have ever been and with the least amount of scouting, Matt finally shot his turkey! He sent me this picture when I got to work. He got up soooo early every day to go hunt and then would go to work after hunting. On this day, he was hunting alone. He was sad that no one was there to give him a high-five, but he said everyone on the mountain could hear him whooping and hollering after he shot it!

 

That night, Matt and Jenny (okay, mostly Jenny) cooked Matt's turkey and they had a Thanksgiving dinner! I was at my class so I missed the whole thing. However, I did hear that the turkey meat was "the best turkey" Matt had ever eaten. He said it was super moist and didn't taste gamey at all.

A few days later, Brad's youth hunt started. On opening morning, Matt, Randy, Nate and Brad went up to look for turkeys. Matt had pretty much figured out where the turkeys were roosting, so he got them all into the right spot. Matt said Brad was super loud walking around, which is bad because turkeys have really good hearing and eyesight. Matt was worried Brad was going to scare all the turkeys away. Once they got settled, Matt started calling the turkeys and three walked right up to them! To Brad's credit, he took this tom with a single shot! Matt said he threw his gun on the ground and ran down to see his prize! He was one happy camper! They picked up Jenny, Jenni and the little kids and all went out to breakfast at L.D.s in Richmond. Of course, I was at work! I miss everything!

Brad's Birthday

This year for Brad's birthday, Matt and I bought him a ticket to an RSL game. Everyone accused us of using Brad's birthday as an opportunity to go to an RSL game, and they were right. We drove down to Salt Lake on Saturday, April 19, for the game. Brad was soooo excited. He was asking questions a mile-a-minute. He has never been to a soccer game before and has never played so he wasn't sure what everything was. Lucky for us, it was a great game! We had some shots on our goal, and the game-winning shot was right there in front of us! Brad joined in all the high-fiving with strangers when they scored! It was a really fun night!

Quick Updates

I've been thinking about it all day and have come to the realization that we are too busy. We have spent a whole six-eight hours at home awake this week. From Monday to Thursday, a whopping 6-8 hours. We are both up early to go to work, home from work only to run over to the house to start work, and back home between 9 and 10 every night. Needless to say, everything is a disaster. I have loads of laundry in a basket that have been sitting untouched since they were dried on Sunday. The dishes just sit filthy in the sink until they start to smell. The garbage cans are all overflowing. My car is a complete disaster zone. Even my purse is literally hanging by a thread. Any day now it is just going to rip and spill all my stuff out. I am exhausted. Matt is exhausted. He is so exhausted, he doesn't have the energy to hang the new toilet paper roll, so he just sets it on the counter. We have several days worth of dirty clothes on the bathroom floor. Yes. We are disgusting. I have zero energy to do any of that stuff when I get home. I need my house to be done! Not just want. No. NEED.

Here are a few updates from the past week:

I love paying people to do things. It means that stuff gets done and Matt and I don't have to do it! This week our new friend Blake started the soffit and facia. He is also going to finish the siding that isn't done (that we don't have the time, energy, materials, equipment, etc. to do ourselves). Then we can call our other neighbor Dan to come by and paint the outside.

Matt and I have been slowly working away at the rock. We are almost done. Just the post, one wall, and one side of the garage. Then we get to grout the whole thing! Gah. The nice thing is that this is pretty much the last thing we'll have to do ourselves outside. We are paying someone to pour the driveway, and paying another guy to build the rock wall and level the lot. We will have to put in lights and outlets when we do finish electrical, but that's pretty much it outside. Oh, and we need to buy a garage door. 

We started working on tile this week. We are going to do all the tile floors, then move on to the hardwood floors so the cabinets can get installed soon. We are in a bit of a rush because we decided to do granite countertops, which apparently take three weeks to make AFTER they measure your installed cabinets! We were hoping to be ready to close the first week of June, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. It's looking more like the third or fourth week of June if we're lucky.

This is the small bathroom that we started last night (technically we started prepping for tile on Monday, but did the tile work last night). Tonight we got about a third of the way through the master bath. Matt is going to work tomorrow and finish the master bath. In the evening, I will start grouting and Matt will finish laying tile in the mudroom. We're hoping to be able to have me grout all day on Saturday and Matt start hardwood. Phew. We'll see if it actually happens! I can't wait to see what the tile looks like after it is grouted and we put on the baseboard.

So there is the quick update. I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining, because I know that I am the luckiest person ever! I am soooo happy with our house. Everything is coming together even better than I thought it would and I love that we are building it ourselves and that I get to be a big part of that. I love that I know what it takes to build a house and that Matt trusts me to help him. I love that I get to make all the decisions and get exactly what I want! I am sooooo lucky. Just tired.

Rock

Matt started rock last week and it looks soooo good! I am so excited! I had to go over all the space where we are putting rock and cover it with a scratch coat before Matt could put the rock on. It is like putting together a giant puzzle trying to fit all the pieces together.

You can see the scratch coat and the black tar paper and lathe that helps keep the rock on. This picture is a little outdated. On Saturday, I finished all the scratch coat on the house and the post.

Again, this picture is a little outdated. The rock now wraps all the way around the front door and up to the corner. We still have to put rock on the house below the two windows and on the post.

After we put all the rock on, we have to go through again and put grout between all the rock pieces. Matt says we put the grout in the cracks the same way you put icing on a cake, with the icing in a bag and squishing it out. Then we'll use a tool to smooth everything down.

We still need to finish the siding (we are sooooo close! Only one gable left!) and then the painter can come back and paint the siding. All the trim will be white and the paint will be a brownish-grayish color. After paint, a guy will come and do soffit and facia. We are very close outside! Only a few final touches!

This week Matt and I will continue working on the rock outside and start putting in the hardwood floor inside. We have our cabinets ordered and being made, hopefully they'll be ready in three or four weeks. The floor has to be done before they will install, which means we have to have the floor done in the kitchen and bathrooms before they can be installed, so we have a lot to do! Wish us luck!

Paint

Deciding on a paint color was the first of many difficult decisions. I am the type of person who is fine when I have a limited number of options. Like, give me three to five choices and I can handle that. Don't ask me to walk into Home Depot and look a like a thousand different options. And let's be honest, after like ten minutes of looking at colors, they all start to blur together and look the same. Finally we decided on a color, and everyone told us it was too dark. Well, I basically told everyone not to question my judgment and I am glad I did! I love the color sooo much! The more I am at the house, the more I like it!

Mudroom- Holy crap it looks even better than I thought it would. There will be cubbies under the bench, but we won't put those in until the floor is down. We are doing tile floor in the mudroom. Opposite of the lockers will be the washer and dryer. There will be cabinets over the washer and dryer.

Kitchen window- I love how Matt's trim just pops with the dark paint and the white trim.

Hallway

Master bedroom

Master bathroom tub and shower

Dining room/living room

View of entry from the dining room- There will be a cabinet in front of the half wall that will be like a desk area. The cabinet and counter will match what we have in the kitchen and bathrooms.

Master closet- My half

Master closet- Matt's half

Master closet- My half again, but you can see how the shelf on top wraps around the entire closet. I couldn't resist squishing in extra storage anywhere I could!

Family room/dining room/kitchen view from the hallway

Mudroom with the pocket door

Spare bedroom with big closet

Closets

This post is a few weeks late, I know, I've been slacking with blog updates lately. Matt and I were able to build the closet interiors after we set all the doors. Mostly I built the closets while Matt worked on trim and headers for the doors and windows.

Linen closet

Spare bedroom- On the left, there will be the two bars for hanging clothes, and on the right the single bar for the longer stuff. There is a shelf at the top along the full length of the closet.

Spare bedroom- This is a pretty small closet and room, so it will eventually be a nursery. On the right there will be three bars for hanging clothes (baby clothes are TINY so we thought the three bars would be a good idea). On the left, there are the shelves and one bar for longer things at the bottom. There is a shelf across the top.

Master closet- This is Matt's side of the master closet. He has the two bars for hanging clothes and the shelves for shoes and other stuff. There is also a small shelf that wraps around the top of the closet, including over the doorway. 

Master closet- This is my side of the master closet. I have the double bar for hanging clothes and another single bar for dresses and long coats and stuff. I also get the other half of the shelves and you can see the shelf that wraps around the top.

Pantry

Mudroom! I am so excited for how this has turned out. Matt let me decide how I wanted the mudroom to look, so I got to design the bench and locker space (thank you Pinterest!).

Coat closet in the entry