Monday, Tuesday

The past few days have seen a lot of progress house-wise.

Yesterday, I was shocked to see the house when I came home from work.  When we drove by the house yesterday morning, this is what we saw:

And here is the same view at 4:30:

Yup, the guys came to take down the staging yesterday.  But not before an emergency downspout installation.  On Saturday, the owner of the stucco business came in the afternoon to fix a small problem between the house and the wooden part of the roof overhang.  While he was there, he asked Joern who was coming to install the downspout in front of the house- the downspout that could not be safely installed without staging.  This realization, that we did not have the downspout installed, caused a bit of scrambling on Joern's behalf, as the guys were planning to come at 7:00 am on Monday to take down the staging.  After a few frantic calls, Joern was able to get the plumbers to the house at 7:00, and the guys removed the staging around 10:00.

I can't believe how beautiful the house looks now!  Not only were we unable to see the house exterior for 2 months, but our windows have all been covered over for the same amount of time.  I love it!

Cute Tile Guy also made tons of progress yesterday.  He tiled the entryway, the part of the foyer between my garage and the front door.  I love how light everything is!

It was also the first day that I walked on the tiles, so of course, we had to record the event:

We also found our first mess.  When we were in the house over the weekend, Joern told me that there was a bird in the cellar, but as he walked into the cellar, the bird made its way over to the garage.  But, the bird didn't go without leaving us a small gift:

It goes without saying that I cannot wait for our doors to arrive!

We went back to the house last night, once it got dark, to see the official result of Joern and Marcel's lighting project. We cannot be more pleased with the results:

Today was another day full of progress.  Cute Tile Guy finished the foyer steps.  I know that home decor is all a matter of taste, but I love how our foyer turned out!

Cute Tile Guy also tiled the walls in the powder room.  Don't freak out like I did: he will be using white grout between the tiles, which will totally change the look.

Unfortunately, the cap tile did not arrive yet.  It will look even better with a cap around the top.

I also noticed that the opening above the window in the entryway was closed, and Joern told me that the stucco guys were at the house yesterday to work on the outside of the cellar.  So, we had to take some more pictures:

It was exciting day again at the future home of Joern, Allison, and Erbse.  I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Outside, Inside, its all looking different

Its been a busy past few days in our house.  We've had the stucco guys, painters, "Cute Tile Guy," and Joern hard at work.  Today is Friday.  The stucco guys finished the stucco on the first and second floors on Wednesday.  Today, the painters came to paint the exterior of the house.  From far away, you can't even really see the stucco, because we chose the finest stucco available with the highest quality.
Here's what the house looks like today:

Its tough to see the bumpy texture from far away, which is good.  I am NOT a stucco fan, and would have prefered anything to stucco.  But, Joern said it best today when he said, "we really took what we could work with, did the best we could, and have created as close to an American looking house as possible."  He's right. 
Here's how the house looks close up, you can see the texture of the stucco:

Okay, this is an extreme close-up.



                                   This picture was taken about a foot away from the house.

                                   You really have to be up close to see the texture- Hooray!

Its also  really hard to tell from the picture, but the exterior of the house, minus the garages / entryway, is finished!  The staging is set to go next week!  Wahoo!  I can't wait to see the windows again from the outside.  The stucco guys and painters will need to come back to do the cellar entry-way, but I am very happy with what we have already.  The goal was to complete all the areas where the staging was needed as soon as possible, because we have been paying weekly rent for the past month. 

 

Cute tile guy is done tiling the majority of the cellar.  He has not done the triangular shaped part of the foyer before the two steps, but the entire rest of the hallway and the media room are now complete.  Cute Tile Guy explained to Joern that the difficulty was in lining up the grout lines in the two rooms evenly, because we have two doorways, so the grout lines need to be even between the two rooms the entire length of the house.  The tiles are kind of difficult to photograph, because they are shiny, and such a light beige, but here are a few views:

Here is a view at the bottom of the stairs.

Media room

The upper-part of the foyer, and the hallway.

What I love about the tiles is that the don't stick out.  It is such a huge space, that if the tiles were too much visually, you would get a headache.  They are really neutral, so we can use many different rugs in order to pull the space together, if I feel like we need rugs.  I also love that they reflect the light.  If we had gone with a matte finish tile, the light that we have to play with, would just get eaten up by the matte finish.  These tiles reflect the light so well, they add to the brightness of the space.  It is really hard to tell when you walk in to the entryway, that you are, in fact, in a cellar, which is just what we wanted. 

I'm really excited to see what next week has in store for us, tile-wise.  I think that Cute Tile Guy will start with the foyer, and the stairs, maybe?  I know his plan was to be done tiling by the end of next week, but I don't really wsee that happening.  Its okay, we planned for this, which is why we told the plaster guys that they should expect that the house is ready by the last week of September. 

Joern also worked on a surprise this week!  I'm not quite certain how long he planned this, but I have so say, so far, it is really cool!  Joern has planned to install LED spotlights in the overhang underneath the roof. 

Here is a rough idea of what his project will look like:

But the cute guy won't always stay up there, just the light :)

And here is what it looks like at night, (please excuse the crazy angle of the picture)

Joern plans on installing 4 on each side of the house, which works well, since the house is a square.  He spent about 3 hours in a shop here that I refer to as the "Geek Shop."  After 3 hours, he called me to tell me his plans for the lights.  It was important to me that the each side could function independently, because, I can see how the back or side could annoy our neighbors, but I think that the front illuminated would look fantastic, and feel we will want to illuminate the front most often.  So, Joern very proudly told me that the lights will run independently on each side, and that they are remote controlled.  Oh, and this is the coolest- our IPHONES will serve as the remote control!!!!!  I'm sure there will be some other way to control the lights when IPhones are no longer in, but it is so cool!  This way, we can turn on our lights when we aren't home.  Joern currently has plans to run the lights off of a photo-sensitive cell, that turns the lights on at dusk and turns them off automatically when the sun rises.  But, we have the option to turn the lights off with our phones.  I only have a little apprehension to something that automatically turns on for the entire night as soon as it gets dark only because I will forget to turn off the lights, and I don't necessarily want to illuminate the whole house all night, but I guess we'll figure out something!

Joern has a lot do finish this weekend, because the staging is going to be picked up on Monday morning at 7:00 am, so the lights need to be installed by Sunday evening.  It is exciting though, I'm sure this weekend will merit another post! 
See you soon!

Updates

I wish I had a good reason to explain the lack of updates lately.  We've had a lot and not a lot happen housewise, which may have something to do with the lack of posting.  Or, I will pull the "mommy card," something I am looking to pulling for a while, by saying that most of my free time lately has been spent researching car seats, strollers, and hanging out on The Bump.  Whatever, I haven't been on top of posting AT ALL!
The electricians were back to make sure that all the lights work.  In order to do this, they had to install light bulbs.  Basically, I can now say, "and then there was light."  So now, whenever we want, we can go from this:

                                                      To this:

Now, if we were only doing this on our own electricity, it would be even more exciting.  Sadly, we've been waiting at least 5 weeks now for our electricity.  But, to be fair, the electric company said that it would take 6-8 weeks for our connection, so we're still in time. 

We've made quite a bit of progress with our exterior stucco.  The guys put on a layer of material and then installed a mesh over the entire house.

The mesh will help prevent any cracks from forming in the stucco. 

Once the mesh was worked into the second layer of stucco, another layer was then placed over the mesh.

Oh, and to make matters even better, it was so very hot here two weeks ago!  The stucco guys normally walk around the site fully clothed, but it was horribly hot.  Poor guys!

In the following picture, you can see how much cleaner the finished side looks, compared to the front that is only covered in one layer of stucco.

The stucco guys also installed insulation around the front door area too.  It is important to insulate around the front door as this wall is poured concrete, which is a very poor insulator.  No poured concrete in our home has contact with outside air or with the ground. 



The wall between Joern's garage and the house was also covered in insulation, and has now been covered over in plaster.  Joern is very proud

We also met with the owner of the stucco/ plaster company a few weeks ago.  He invited us over to his house to see the interior wall treatment that he has at his house.  We were very surprised that he invited us to enjoy coffee and chat with both he and his wife.  It was a lovely evening, and our stucco guy is really such a nice guy!  Joern and I also agreed that we really liked the plaster treatment on his walls.  There was a little texture, but very little, and if you didn't touch the walls, you would say that they look rather American. 

We were expecting the stucco guys to come last week to work on the house, but I guess they were busy.  It isn't the end of the world that they weren't there to work on the outside, because outside work has little to do with us moving in. 

We also met with a salesperson about garage doors.  One of our "surprise grillers," at our Richtfest installs garage doors for a living, so Joern asked him to install ours.  He got us in touch with a salesman from the company he works for, who came out to the house last week.  Honestly, I'm not such a fan of the door that we went with, but when I looked at the alternatives, well, it wasn't so bad.

I guess I made a big enough stink about the doors because Joern was willing to drive two hours, in one direction, this past Saturday to check out their garage door showroom.

Here are our doors (without the square windows up the side):

I know, I know, its plain, and I usually love plain.  One of my agruments against the door is that its super trendy.  Everyone is currently installing this door in this color in their houses.  I'm so afraid that in 10 years, everyone will say, "hey, that door is soooo 2010."  Second, I am just afraid that it is a giant wall of black.  Its just a little too sleek, with no visual interest. 

My agruments aside, there aren't many other garage door choices. 
Here is a sample of another style of door we could have chosen, along with a number of window choices:



You can see in the above picture, the bottom row represents what the majority of the door would look like, with a bunch of window options that would go along the top row of the door.  Although I would have prefered this, but with wider pannels, in the end, I broke down. Some fights just aren't worth fighting, and I really have gotten my way in the majority of house decisions.  Joern can have this one, and this way, I won't freak out the first time Joern drives something into the door. 

We also finally signed the wood floor contract!  Yesterday, it was back to the showroom again just to go over some of the details of the contract.  Of course, we have a special case, as we did the contract through our friend, who happens to own the company, instead of ordering from the showroom, but the installation is running through the showroom, which is responsible for the district in which our house is located.  But, I am really glad we went there yesterday!  The representative we've been working with asked for a final okay on the floor we chose, but when he showed us the floor, it wasn't our choice!  We changed a few weeks ago from oiled to varnished, and obviously the guy who marked our change wrote down the wrong style of floor too (our regular guy was on vacation at the time.)  So, when we were at the showroom yesterday, he asked, are you sure you want this one?  Sure enough, the other guy noted that we wanted a parquet that is made of thin strips pressed together, to give a very lively, modern look to the floor.  Those readers who know me know where I was hit, at modern.  Nope, no modern in our house!  We quickly clarified that we wanted the much more traditional look.  We also discussed oiled versus laquered.  Yes, we were warned that the oiled floor would required re-oiling twice a year, but in the end, we went the floor we liked more, which was the oiled. 

The following picture highlights everything I was just describing: 

The floor we chose is the bottom.  It is much redder and more classic than the top ones.

The one on the top right is the laquered version, it is browner, and not as warm. 
The example on the top left is the "strippy" floor.  Cool, but not my thing. 

We agreed though that applying the oil by hand twice a year was not our thing, so we will be hiring someone from the floor company to come out to the house twice a year to oil the floors.  Some may see this as a waste of money, but we will have to look to save somewhere else, and just accept this is an unavoidable cost.  No matter what the oiled floor looks so much better!

Last, we finally got the tiles for the cellar.  Although I posted before that we had chosen a tile for the cellar, we never purchased them.  In the end, we cheaped out and went to a Home Depotish store, and but the tiles.  They're beige and shiny, and I'm pretty sure they'll still look awesome. 

Today marked the next phase in the building process, but I will leave that post until tomorrow, because the beginning of a new building phase means looking forward, no more updates or reviews.  Without giving too much away, all of a sudden, we are starting to feel that we WILL move into the house, and not in the next five years.  I feel like moving in will become a reality in the near future!  Wahoo!