Other Random Pictures

Here are just some other random pictures I took on Sunday. The inside view of the deck railing
Living room from the formal dining room

More deck railing. I was showing Travis the pictures I took today, and I told him that I really liked the view in this picture...then I realized that "the office" is in the picture too:( Soon enough I will have a real bathroom

I just really liked the clouds in this picture

Floor Heat

We were finally able to get together with our electrician to get the heating wire for the master bathroom. He hasn't been able to make it to the house to install all the lights and outlets, but I think he was hoping for this Monday. I installed the wire in similar fashion as the radiant we ran downstairs.
After the wire comes a layer of thinset. A put a thin layer down and the crew headed off to lunch and came back to find that the puppies wanted to leave their mark in the thinset too! It was easy to find the culprit...

So here's where I left off with it for today. I will probably do one more layer of thinset to cover up the wires just a little better.

Siding Changes

Travis and his dad were able to finish siding the peak on the back of the house today. They also got a start on the deck railing.
It is amazing how much difference the little bit of siding makes. Here is a picture with no deck, no soffits, no gutters...Looking back makes it feel like we have made so much progress and I like to think it makes us that much more motivated to finish.

Actual vs. Planned

On Friday, Travis and I drove to Missoula to check out the Montana Stone Gallery which has a ton of granite slabs and a few other stones. We were trying to pick out kitchen countertops and considering the service was really poor, the whole experience was really overwhelming. We think we found a granite that would work really well. It was also nice to get out of dodge for the evening too.

We both have this weekend off, so we had hoped to get a lot of work done, and it never goes as good as we planned. We still made a fair amount of progress though. Travis and his dad worked on the siding around the big picture window. It was really time consuming because they had to frame out the half eliptical type window.

Travis finished framing out the bar earlier this week. Just to get somewhat an idea of the layout of the basement, you can see the theater room in the back of the picture.

Travis also did more framing in the theater room earlier this week. It is basically done except he still has to put a little bit more trim between where the bigger portion of the columns meet the smaller portion.

I was able to get one more wall done in the Jack & Jill bathroom which proved to be a little harder than I imagined (as you can tell by how dirty my tiles ended up getting).

Hopefully Sunday goes as we plan and we get a lot of work done.

Random Picture

Whenever I am out at the house by myself, I always end up taking a bunch of pictures of Mocha sleeping in random places. (My favorite today was when she was sleeping with her arm wrapped around my accent tiles for the Jack and Jill bathroom). I was packing up, getting ready to come home and I came up the stairs and found Mocha laying on the kitchen tile. When I went to take the picture, I realized that I haven't taken any pictures of the house from this direction and I thought it turned out pretty good...

Theater Room Framing

And the long awaited pictures of the theater room framing...

As you can see, there is a lot of detail going in to them. There is just a little bit of trim left to do and then we are going to paint it black. It looks awesome in pictures, but it is even better in person.

Updated Bar Pictures

Here is the progress that Travis has made on the bar. Only about 2-3 square feet to go.

Tile pictures

I've managed to get more tile laid over the weekend. Here is how the Jack & Jill bathroom wall tile is coming. I have got about one and a half sides done and we really like how it is turning out.
This is the guest suite bathroom. We tried a new pattern and also really like how it turned out. There is quite a bit of haze all over the tile, so I will try to post a better picture after I get it cleaned.

Here is the wine room...again with a dirty haze...

More Progress

Just another quick update to let you know what we have been up to. It was too dark out before I started thinking of getting pictures, so hopefully those will come tomorrow. For the past couple of days, Travis has been working on a different project than rock work. He has been framing out some columns for the theater room and trimming it out. Sounds simple, but there is a lot of detail that is going in there. It's hard to understand what it looks like until you actually see it, so I will describe it more after I post some pictures. So for now, you will just have to trust me that it is looking great. It will probably be one of the first rooms completed...shows where our priorities are:) I was on the road this week, but was able to work on some more tile today. I got almost all the tile laid in the guest suite bathroom. There is probably about 3 tiles left to do, but I have a complicated cut around the toilet ring, so I decided to wait until later to finish it. We again did a different pattern with the tile and we really like how it turned out. The tile is a porcelain tile, but I used an accent tile that was natural stone (which is thicker). It made it a little tougher and messier because I had to use a whole lot more thinset under the porcelain tiles so that they would sit the same height as the natural stone. I also started tiling the wine room with a slate tile tonight. I wasn't able to finish though because it got too dark. Which obviously goes to show that we still don't have electricity. I also met with the trim company again today. They took some more measurements and also took all of our interior doors to be painted. We have decided on white trim with a knotty alder piece inset at the top that will be stained to match our cabinets. I think we have changed our minds so many times since I initially posted our trim style, but I think this decision is final! Also, Travis has also almost completed rocking the bar. There is still a lot of work ahead of us, but we are making progress every day. I'm really hoping the interior schedule that I set, stays pretty close to on time, so that we can still move in towards the end of August. So far, so good...I'll post more pictures soon.

One Year Ago

So, July 10th, one year ago, they put the driveway in to access our lot so this whole building process could start. This past year has been a rollercoaster of a ride, and although there have been a lot of ups and downs, Travis and I have enjoyed this so much. It's so fun to go back and look through the pictures and see the progress we have made. Although it has been a year and we haven't moved in like we had hoped, we are on the home stretch.
Our lot with just the dirt driveway

Until how the house is grown to look like this today!!!

Tile and Rock Pictures

Equally as important as the theater room, the bar is coming together nicely as well. There is just a small section to the left of the left opening and the top left to do. It is extremely time consuming because every one of the middle pieces had to be cut, but it looks great.
Here is the tile in the "Kraft" room. It's a bit dirty still, but you can at least get the idea of the pattern.

We finally put a lock on the front door and took off the cardboard. It looks great, but you can also see how much rock is left to do!

Theater Room

One of our high priorities was to see how big of a picture we could get in our theater room. We brought out the projecter the other day, and although, the picture doesn't look that big, it is a 105" picture. The picture is crooked because we just had it sitting on blankets on the ground, but it is going to be so nice! Who is up for Monday Night Football parties????

Septic System

The started digging up our yard yesterday for the septic system. As you can see, our dog has no fear on our deck!
Today they got the septic system all tested and approved and covered back up. Apparently they have to have room for two drain fields in case the first one fails, so from where the equipment to the road is where the second drain field if need be would be.

As exciting as it is to have the septic system installed, we will still be using the office until the electrician and plumber finish up . We won't have the plumber out until I finish tiling, which according to my timeline is early August.

Do the Dew!

In order to keep up with my "strict" timeline, we have been putting in a few later nights at the house. Mocha and Travis are getting jacked up on dew and coming at ya like a howler monkey:)

Update

I am too tired tonight to post pictures, but thought I better let everyone know what we have achieved over the last week. Travis has been busy rocking the bar downstairs and last weekend I was able to complete the tile in my "Kraft" room. For those of you who didn't see our house plans, when they drew them up, apparently they thought I would be eating lots of salad dressings and mac & cheese in there instead of crafts, so they spelt it with a K instead of a C! I decided to do a brick pattern for that room. So far my mom's favorite tile is our jack and jill bathroom tile, which both Travis and I agree that it turned out really nice. I didn't ever post a picture of the cleaned tile, but I am planning on tiling the shower wall this weekend, so I will just post a better picture at that point. Today, they also started digging the drain field for our septic tank, so we have a big hole pretty much covering our whole back yard right now. I have tried to make another timeline since we haven't kept to any of the other ones in the past, and if all goes as planned, we will be moving in to the house at the end of August, so keep your fingers crossed! I don't think the rock will be completed at that point, but at least the inside will be finished. We also purchased our appliances the other day and I am so excited to use each and every one of them. The electrician hasn't been out to the house yet, but it is probably for the best since we are still purchasing some of our lights.