Siding is DONE

That didnt take long... It is all finished. Just not painted.  If you notice in the first two pictures, there is flush stained cedar and 4" hardie board.  The 4" siding will be painted dark grey. The flush stained wood, will be pretty much the same color, it is stained a light grey. Also, if you see in the second picture (the first picture is a parapit wall too), this is one of three "parapit" walls, which means the roof is behind the peak of the wall. It is tucked back in there and the top is flashed with Aluminum. It looks pretty good! This week is insulation and drywall being delivered. Ready for our June move in I hope! The security system, speakers, lighting, electrical is all wired. Ready to see this thing come together even more!

siding going on

So Siding is going on! We are doing 4 inch siding instead of 6, which is a modern spin on a traditional material.  On the front parapit wall and the jut out in the first pic and the back and side parapits it will be flush siding. You can see it just barely in the first pic.  It looks way better than i thought it would! The 4 inch siding will be a dark gray (sherwin williams grizzle gray) and the flush wood will be a light gray (repose gray).

updated pictures

These are from about a week ago. Windows/doors are in (from Integrity). It is starting to come together! Since then, the fireplace box is in, hvac going in, shower valves going in, wires being run.

1st pic is from the creek looking up at the back of the house.

2. Kitchen/dining

3. Living from hall, sliding door to left going out to porch.

4. In hall at top of stairs on 3rd floor, office to right.

5. View from fireplace in living room of stairs, playroom to left, kitchen to right

master bath: closer to decisions...

So i found this tile at Porcelanosa and LOVE IT! I think we may have landed on our master bath tile decision, which i thought would take forever! This tile is supposed to look like bleached wood but it is porcelain and it is 7 inches by 47 inches!! I am pretty excited about it! Hope it works in our bath!

interior barn doors

I may have posted on this before but decision time is coming! Here are some of the pics I have found on the internet I like, but basically we are doing a track system barn door to close off the playroom which is on your left upon entry to house. It will be a large door, at least 2 panels with another barn door sliding into it to make a corner. It is going to be pretty tricky but awesome if it pulls off! I have no idea where you find this stuff in Chapel Hill/Raleigh NC but hopefully our builder will know.

Appliance decisions here we come...

a quick update ont he house.... it is framed, roofed, windows and doors are in (including the massive sliding ones!) tubs are going in, electrical is being done and plumbing is in process. Cabinet Decision has been made, we are going with Bo the local shop owner who is office is literally a woodshop. I am so pumped about that!! One siding color has been nailed down- Repose grey a sherwin williams color. Leaning towards Grizzle grey as the other. So now it gets nit picky. We have to finalize our kitchen design thus being driven by some appliance decisions. Now yes it would be nice to just put the nicest highest end WOlf/Viking stuff in there, but for one we are on a budget and two, i have read some not so great reviews about both as well as spoken to some owners who aren't thrilled with them. So here is where we are as of now....

Kitchenaid architect series combo oven/microwave convection.

We decided against the bosch dishwasher and are sticking with Kitchenaid, doing their new dishwasher that is quieter and has a 3rd drawer that is really shallow up top for silverware and chef's tools!

Cooktop we are going to go for the Viking designer range.

Fridge will be a samsung counter depth french door unit.

Doing a kitchenaid architect II hood.

We had kitchenaid in our last house and loved it. Stretching on the Viking range so I hope it is a good one!

framing almost finished!

here is the current tour of the home! A little wet from the rain/snow we just got but here it is still!

Pic 1 is the living room on the right moving into the screen/glass porch on the left. That entire opening in between will be a glass door. Pic 2 is the view from our master currently :). The ceiling will be left vaulted with exposed beams..but not this exposed. Pic 3 is walking up the stair well from the basement to main floor. It juts out about a foot from the rest of the house elevation which is pretty awesome and makes for an open stairway with lots of light! Pic 4 is the

living room from view of kitchen. In between the seriously large windows will be the fireplace. Pic 5 is the screen porch. Below the railing will be tempered glass and above will be screen. What a view! This is shaping up to be one of my favorite rooms in the house. This view is from the living room and you can also enter on the left through the kitch/dining through a sliding glass door as well. Pic 6 is standing on the screen porch looking through the sliding glass opening into the kitch and dining. Dining extends out to right and kitchen extends left.

Enjoy! We are so excited as it gets closer to us being able to be in it and share it with others!

Weighing in on Island Pendants...

Ok so we need a vote going on here.... I am looking at island pendants...keeping in mind my previous post or two ago that the random light by Moooi will be in the dining here are my pendant light choices for the kitchen island (which is 9 feet long, will probably hang 3 of them). Leave a comment with your vote!

1. Conic Pendant 83$ from Eurway. It is a knock off of the FLOS pendant which is over 300$ each!

2. Burst pendant 95$ from Eurway.

3. Ball pendant from One stop modern 125$. Also Robert sonneman globe pendants at ylighting for 100 which look similar

4. ET2 caps mini pendant 56$ allmodernlighting.com

5. Et2 mini pendant in white 46$ from allmodernlighting.com

what a wall

So framing is almost totally done with the exception of the master bathroom and one wall on the 3rd floor and the stair bump out (seen here). It looks ginormous to me! The only room that seems small to me so far is the playroom but that's ok. Snow has now fallen on the house and J spent the day today renting a chainsaw and cutting down half fallen trees in the back. Saved a whopping 1000$ we were quoted and just spent 50 on the rental of the chainsaw. Hopefully this thing will be roofed in a little after Christmas! The next challenge will be pouring concrete over the garage for the floor of the screened/glassed in porch on the main floor. Our builder is up for it so we are moving forward, it is going to be awesome! Can't wait to see a roof and some drywall and siding on this bad boy!

a framing we will go...

FINALLY! Walls are up in the basement and framed in and the first floor/main floor is framed as well! It passed the flooring inspection for the floor over the basement and the playroom/kitch/living/dining is all framed (or lack there of). It is so open which is nice. Not a lot of interior walls on the main floor which i love. I learned a lot of things about the house now that it is actually 3D or 4D or whatever you call it now. THE WINDOWS ARE HUGE! Which is great... The playroom is not as big as it was in my imagination but they don't need a lot of space. The living room is wayyy bigger than I imagined and the Kitchen Dining is going to be my favorite place in the house for sure. Pretty pumped about the mudroom too. The screened in porch is going to be awesome. Hopefully the 2nd floor (3rd sort of if you count the basement) Will be going up tomorrow or Wednesday. This is the first week in 3 months that we have no forecast of rain for the weekdays. I don't have pics of the 2nd floor yet so I'll post soon. There were so many workers around today and i am sure they think i am Loco with my huge camera out there all the time, so I will wait until theyre gone today ;)

So pumped this thing is taking shape!

light decisions still in process....

so i think we have decided to do 4 inch cans instead of six. The six inch ones jump off the ceiling a little too much for us.... I LOVE this Moooi Random light in white for over our dining room table. I think it is very "modern natural" ish and a conversation piece for sure. I think it won't distract from the glass wall behind it and the view, so it would look awesome i think! I've included a pic of the dining room table I will get from Crate and Barrel (the Big Sur) but I would love to find a woodworker in the area to make something like this, so if you know anyone in NC let me know! Otherwise I'll suck it up and not buy locally...

fixture decisions

AHH it makes me nervous that we have started deciding things! We went to the plumber today and selected our fixtures. Here is what we came away with

Moen 6100 Level for the sinks (which we will attach to a basin). Toto dual flush Aquia with soft close feature and with removable lid and seat (WOW) for easy cleaning! Only 300$ which was surprising! We went with the Danze Parma commercial looking faucet for the kitchen sink with the pull down handle which i am so pumped about! It was also under 300$. We went with the Artisan sink basin shown here in the chef pro series, undermount with a single HUGE basin, 30x17 i believe which was WAY cheaper almost 1/3 cheaper than going with the awesome Blanco sink which is basically identical. For our master shower we got a 7" rainhead ceiling mount and a handheld showerhead on a bar that can double as a body spray if you lower the bar. I don't remember the manufacturer of those. It is coming together and I hope all of our selections work together! Doing a fiberglass basin and standard faucet in the laundry and just a single basin and standard faucet in the basement. It is scary making these final decisions but lots of fun. Our 3 year old did great in the 3 hour meeting and thanks be to the iPhone with movies and games that kept her happy as could be!

here we go

SO the forms are off and the concrete is looking goooood on the basement walls which is good because they will be exposed! The door that the bulldozer is in front of, I didnt realize how huge it is until you see the opening for it! 8 feet of a glass door is going to be nice! I know the garage is going to turn out cool but I just learned how it works (didn't i tell you plans make no sense to me?) There is an overhang which is what the rectangular opening to the right is but that is not where the garage door will go, it is set back a few feet! I had no idea, but i am pumped to see how it turns out. We are going to put some recessed lighting in between the opening and the garage door so that will look cool.

Hmm... i am ready for framing :)

Taking shape

Finally! A footprint of our house is in the ground and starting to take shape. The forms are up and as you can see in the first picture, the concrete is pouring in as we speak! I am so so excited! Even though it looks like a bunker at the moment, it helps me (the non visual one of the two of us) see what it is going to look like a little more than the 2d plans! J and I actually braved the red mud last night and walked all around in it and outside of it! I cannot wait!

On another note, the windows and slider doors are ordered! We went with casements from Integrity by Martin and Sliders by weathershield. We came in about a penny under budget so that is good too! That is my goal in this project. I have watched so many HGTV home reno's where they go 10, 20 50K$ over budget! Are you crazy? Not this project! can't wait to see the framing start!

Front Door

So I really want a cool front door, it is the first experience of the home moving from the outside in so it should make a statement I think. Now, we don't want to go with the cold/modern/steel doors like the gorgeous ones from Neoporte. They are a little tooo modern for me, and not to mention almost $10K!! Here are some pics of ones I like. What do you think? How do you go about getting doors like these???

The Glass house

So until I met with the window guy I didn't quite grasp the amount of windows in this house! In our current rental home, I am sitting on the couch (there are some windows behind me) but from where i sit right now I can see NO windows looking into the foyer or kitchen. It is going to be culture shock when we move in. There is pretty much windows on most walls in the home. And I am not just talking windows, I am talking 6 foot windows, 9 foot windows, and 1 foot sliding glass doors. I might have to start calling it the glass house! That is J's dream, I am adjusting to it! Ha. I always tell J that I am not good at looking at 2D plans, I need 3 d pictures, well it appeared so when the window guy was like ok and for these 9 foot windows? I was like wait, 9 feet of windows? WOW! So I learned a few things, 1. I am about to live in a fishbowl 2. we will have great views of the trees. 3. I cannot understand scale in regards to plans. 4. I need to start saving for blinds :)

In other news, the house is totally gone, it is a huge dirt hole that is all leveled out at the bottom. The well is being dug this week and several trees were taken down and it really opens up things a lot (while still keeping a 360degree view of trees.

and the walls came tumbling down....

the long awaited demo! We went out to the property today hoping to see them widening the drive so that the trucks could start coming in but we found this! Within about 30 minutes most of the top floor of the split level and kitch/dining/living was in a heap. Pretty awesome to watch!