Hardwoods

The hardwood is finished, so here's the picture looking towards the dining room and office. These will be the last pictures of the hardwood for awhile...
because it is all covered in paper and cardboard now...

Doors and Trim

The trim was delivered on Friday and we talked to the contractor and they are going to start hanging doors and the remaining cabinets on Monday and then go room by room with the trim starting upstairs. The hardwoods made the house feel a lot more finished, so I am beyond excited to get the trim in!
Here are the doors that were all painted up for us

This is my wine room door with "rain" glass. Looks really cool!

I will be out of town for most of the week and I am not making any promises that Travis will update when I am gone...so check back later in the week for updated pictures with trim, doors, and much more!

I managed to break the tile saw this weekend, so I didn't get any tile laid on Saturday. On Sunday, I was able to get the Jack and Jill bathroom tile laid (minus 1) and this time I did the water line cuts myself! I'm a little partial because I did the tile, but I think it turned out really good. For not costing a lot more than a regular fiberglass inset, it sure adds a lot of flare! Now I just need to grout and seal all of it.

I also finished another wall in the guest bathroom and started on the last wall. I think I can start to see a very faint light at the end of the tile tunnel. My biggest project left is the master shower and tub...

Fun Lighting

I wanted to take a picture of the stair lighting to show how fun they are. It wasn't very dark in the house yet, but the lights sorta act like a runway:)
These are the theater room lights and it is hard to tell what they look like in pictures. This room will also have rope lights in the tray ceiling.

Granite Pictures

The granite for our master bathroom was an extra slab that our fabricator had. He gave us a sample and it looks really nice with our tile, cabinets, and our vanity mirrors.
This was the granite slab that we originally picked out for our kitchen, but didn't like the fizzure (crack with the yellowish color around it) that was on the left hand side.

This was the new granite we chose for the kitchen, and the picture doesn't do it justice...

Rock and Hemlock

Travis and his dad were working on the rock again today and made lots of progress. I also don't think I have posted pictures of the barrel roll with the stained hemlock boards. We are probably going to paint the lights a darker color instead of the white. We bought a couple more boards of hemlock and they just need staining and we can finish it up.

Granite Update and More

Travis finished the hardwood, minus a few pieces around the stairs. The trim and all the interior doors were delivered to the house today, and I believe there are going to start getting installed on Monday. We also ran back down to Missoula to choose our actual granite slabs, as they are going to start templating for them next week. We got down there and nobody was there to help us AGAIN. We were so frustrated! The secretary started showing us the slabs that were available for what we wanted to go with in the kitchen and turns out the one we liked was on hold...had we known last time that you could put slabs on hold, we would have put a whole bunch on hold, but we didn't get any help last time either. They showed us a couple different slabs in the same type of granite and they all had a big fizzure in them, which caused some discoloration in a weird shape that we didn't like at all. So, we started wandering around, and Travis found a slab that looked really good with our cabinets, flooring, and would further tie in the black crown molding on our cabinets. They had just received the shipment, so we had the secretary look up the availability of them. There were six slabs and she said all of them were on hold. At that point, our sales person finally showed back up and was able to help us out. Turns out they weren't on hold, and we really like the choice of the new granite we picked out for the kitchen. It's called Cosmic Black and it is pretty black with some lava looking streaks through it...not a very good description, but it looks really cool. For the laundry room, locker benchs, and Jack & Jill bathroom vanity, we selected a slab from Idaho that has somewhat of a gray background with white spots that are shaped somewhat like river rock...again not a very good description. So, we got the granite slabs we wanted on hold and can't wait to see them installed. I will post more pictures later this weekend which will hopefully include lots of progress from the weekend.

Hardwood Pictures

The battery in my camera was about to die, so I took a few quick pictures to show our progress on the hardwoods. We figured out that over the past four days, not including our normal paying jobs, that we spent over 40 hours working on the house! We got the whole living room done and almost all of the dining room, entryway, and hallway except for just a few boards. We also started into the office. We love the color and all the variations in the wood. The wood is an engineered hardwood, so we put down a layer of glue and then also staple the boards in, so it was a pretty time consuming process. We managed to really increase our productivity over the weekend. We started with 8 boards the first night, 16 the second night, 23 last night, and 27 today. The hardwood got pretty dusty, but you get the idea...

The open space in the entryway is for a tile inlay

Coming Soon...

Travis' mom was in town cleaning like crazy today so that we could start laying the hardwoods tomorrow. We laid out about 10 pieces today to get an idea of what it would look like and I am so excited to see more! The trim will be getting delivered either late this week or on Monday and the trim carpenter is starting on Monday. Having the trim get put in is going to make the house feel so much more finished. The electrician is also hoping to be done by the end of this week. Travis has also been working on the barrel roll around the front door and lots of rock around the front entry. I will try to get some pictures posted tomorrow.

More Tiling

I started tiling the shower wall in the guest bathroom using the same accent piece that we put in the floor. I also used a small chair rail type piece as a border to the accent piece. Since bullnose was not available for this type of tile, we used schluter metal as the end cap.
On Saturday, I sealed the wine room tile. I did this before grouting this time because the slate is a natural stone, so it would absorb the color of the grout. It's been awhile since these tiles were clean, so sealing it really brought out the colors again. On Sunday, I grouted it, but the tiles were still a little dirty and the grout wasn't quite dry yet, so I am waiting to take the picture. I'm also waiting to take a picture until I can get some lights downstairs too. Yep, the electrician didn't show up on Friday or Saturday, so he didn't finish on Saturday like promised.

I did the same thing with the powder bathroom floor. This is the picture with the seal and without the grout yet.

Pouring the Shower Pan

Over the past couple of nights, Travis has been working on pouring the shower pan in the master bathroom and I was helping by supervising. He cut the drain hole to size and since it sits just a little bit higher, he put backerboard down so that it all sits at the same height
Then, we went to put the shower pan liner down and stapled it towards the top so that we would have any potential holes for any water to seep through. Another piece went on the drain as well.

Then, the actual drain piece was screwed to the height. The slope should be at least 1/4 inch for every foot to ensure the water actually drains. So, the backerboard was then put up to indicate where the slope should start at the wall.

And finally, the mixture was poured to make the slope to the drain. The mixture was supposed to be about 4 parts sand to 1 part cement. I think we got it a bit to watery because we were just throwing sand all over it to dry it out some more. It was a lot more difficult to slope it than we originally anticipated. I think tomorrow we are going to dump some water in the pan to make sure it drains like it is supposed to. After that we are just going to pour a heavy coat of the water sealant that I have been using under my tile on the cement floors.

Lighting Pictures

Yep, it's true, we are finally getting our lighting and outlets hooked up. The main floor is basically all wired as far as it can be right now. There are so many light switches everywhere that it usually takes me 5 tries to get a light turned on or off! Here's a picture from the road
This is of a closet in a Jack & Jill bedroom. Do you think the light is bright enough?

Here's the master bedroom. It's super bright in there and we don't even have the ceiling fan in there yet!

This is looking in from the front door. The dining room light off to the right is going to get raised a bit more still. The ceiling fan in the great room is pretty heavy too...I'm guessing about 65 pounds.

The office room ceiling fan

Picture from the dining room. Travis was also able to put some sills on the column too. Pretty hard because they didn't seem to want to stick.

More dining room

The great room ceiling fan and recessed lights. The remote is like a light switch on the wall and can turn the upper light on and off, the lower light on and off, and change the speed.

This is from the kitchen. We are bringing out the lights for the pendants tonight, and once those are on, the cord will straighten out more.

Picture from the kitchen/nook

The Bar

A couple of weeks ago we worked on the bar a little bit, and I never posted pictures! Cabinets will go on the other side of the wall and will house the kegerator, dishwasher, sink, microwave, and wine fridge...so who's ready to belly up to the bar???

The "Modern" Bathroom

I was able to get all the tiles cut and set in the downstairs powder room on Wednesday night and cleaned them up a little bit last night. This is the polished and honed slate that I was talking about in earlier posts. You can sort of see from the pictures all the variations in the tiles. The tiles are still a little wet in the pictures, but that is probably what it will look like after I get them all sealed. I posted three pictures because they all showed the tile just a bit different.

Lights...Sort of

So as promised, the electrician and a buddy of his were out hooking up the electricity today. They got almost all of the recessed lighting installed upstairs and almost all the outlets and light switches hooked up. There were having problems with all of our 4 way switches towards the end of the night, so hopefully it all works itself out tomorrow. I wanted to wait to take pictures until after the hung the ceiling fan in the living room, but I promise I will post pictures soon. It's amazing how much difference lights make and how complicated wiring is!

Electricity...

Much to our disappointment the electrician didn't start on Monday. We still managed to get quite a bit of work done on Monday. Travis was rocking more around the front door and I started tiling the powder room downstairs. We are going for a more modern look in there, so the tile we picked out is a polished and honed slate. It is really cool and each piece is so different than the next. I'll post pictures later this week.

As for the electrician, Travis talked to him today. He was out at the house and spent 4 hours trying to figure out what all the switches were for and all the 3 way switches and then came back into town to get all the supplies. He said he was hoping to be done by Friday or Saturday. Hopefully he keeps his word and totally redeems himself...

Paint and Tile

Over the weekend, I did just a little bit of touch up paint. I painted the ceiling in the hallway and the triangles next to the fireplace.
I also finished setting the master bathroom tile, with the exception of one piece around the toilet ring and the row in front of the tub.

We need to finish up the tub deck before I can do that last row.

Our electrician brought his trailer over on Saturday, so he should be starting on our house on Monday morning. I can't wait to have lights!!!

Front Entry

We have been getting a lot of questions as to how we were going to finish the ceiling portion of our front entry way, so here's the answer. Instead of doing it in rock, we decided to do it in wood. So, we stained some boards over the weekend and will hopefully get them put up early this week.
We tried to get the color as close as we could to the stain on the front door.

The boards will go across the curve.

As you can see, Travis got quite a bit done on the front entry way rock. He is now on working around the front door and had to hold off across the top until we get the boards put up.

Master Bathroom Tile

After another coat of thinset and ripping up a few tiles because I had the design wrong, we finally are getting the master tile how we like it. Most of the pieces haven't been set yet, just cut, but hopefully it will all be done in a couple of days. It took learning the hard way to know that the outside square tiles should be put down first and then the tiles in the diamond pattern. Oh well, now I know:)

Rock Pictures

I think that working on the smaller rock downstairs made the progress on the outside rock go so much quicker. I was out of town on Sunday and Travis and his dad were busy working away on the rock. They put up a lot of rocks on Sunday and Travis got off early today and put up a whole bunch more. It looks great and has started wrapping around towards the front door.
They even planned out where the steps would be. So exciting...it makes the house feel more and more complete!