More Pictures

Dining Room is all painted (minus a few touch-ups)

The Great Room is all painted (again minus the touch-ups) and we textured the staircase tonight.

The deck is all ready for the decking material, which hopefully will arrive tomorrow.

After tonight, we have almost all of the upstairs painted. We have a few more places to finish with texturing touch ups, but hopefully by the end of the weekend we will be close to being finished with painting in the whole house. Travis is also hoping to start laying some hardibacker so that we can get started on the tiling. There are lots of projects that we want to start, so we may also attempt to rock the fireplaces. We are excited watching the votes come in on our rock competition...only 4 days left to vote and then I will let you know the winners:)

Rock Competition

If you know Travis and I, you know that we can't do anything without making it a competition. So, when the rock was delivered we decided to have a competition on who could put together the best sample of our rock. Even though Travis has done rockwork before, I agreed to the competition because it sounded way better than painting.

Travis gave me a quick lesson and held up the tips to a successful installation.

So we purchased two types of rocks. The next two pictures are the rock that will go on the outside of the house and on the upstairs fireplace and dining room columns. I did a sample and Travis did a sample. You can vote on which one you like and after the poll closes, I will tell you who did which sample! The nice part about this rock is that some of the pieces are huge which will definitely help it go up faster.

Sample A

Sample B

The next two pictures are of the rock that will go on the downstairs fireplace and bar. This rock will take longer because the pieces are not perfectly square and they are smaller. I think they come in 1, 2, and 4 inches. The same voting goes with these pictures...

Sample C

Sample D

Rock Delivery

The rock was delivered last week. We purchased it from a store in Bozeman and then ended up having to make two trips. There were 19 pallets of it between the fireplaces and all the exterior parts. It was exciting getting the rock, but after seeing all of the pallets, I came to the realization that there is a lot of work ahead of us.

Deck vs. Gravity

We were promised that the deck would be finished by Monday. Needless to say, my luck with contractors has continued and our deck is still not completed. It is still standing, which seems to be a miracle judging by the few pieces of wood that are holding it up. They were going to deliver the actual decking materials today, but changed their mind due to the winter storm warning. I don't get it...they know Montana weather and it's not like the deck can't get wet...it's an outdoor deck. Give me a break, I think they were LAZY! Okay enough of my ranting. Hopefully I will have a deck by the end of the week. Then all I need is warm weather and it's time for good old BBQs!

More Painting

We went out to the house after work today to paint again. We were both really tired and needed a break. We painted just the one accent wall in our master bedroom. This picture looks towards the master bath. The color is called pine needle. It looks good, but we are so hesitant with paint colors. Even though the color is almost the same everywhere, it looks completely different from one wall to the next. It's hard to picture what it will actually look like especially since it will change as we add the flooring and trim.

On a separate note, right after I signed off the computer I realized I didn't update you on everything yesterday. The rock is supposed to be delivered this week and we will also be getting our water line put in. We won't have running water until the plumber comes in to hook everything up, but it is going to be so nice to have water accessible at the house. Lately we have just been bringing out buckets of water, so it will be really nice to have water especially when we start with putting up the rock. They were going to install our septic system around the same time as our water system, but we are going to wait until after May 14th. They checked with the county and the ruling that we had to get a fancier septic system goes away on May 14th. If we wait until after then, we would save $7000!

As for the deck, not much happened today. They brought out two saw horses and put two pieces of wood on them. What a successful day. Travis has the next two days off and we are hoping to finish with the taping, texturing, and start painting some ceilings.

Product Deliveries

Some of the deck materials were delivered today. None of the actual decking, but at least we know they didn't forget about us.

Since we only wanted two pillars, they had to use a big beam to support all the weight. Mocha did the initial testing and the beam was able to support her weight:)

The cabinets for the garage entry and laundry room were delivered on Tuesday (even though the multiple phone calls confirmed Wednesday). We went with a lighter cabinet because there isn't as much natural light and of course we went with another glaze.

Hopefully this week we will have lots more changes with more paint, decking, and gutters...

Paint Practice

So this weekend, I recruited my parents to come help paint. What I didn't realize is that we were going to get a lot of practice...a lot! We painted 15 gallons of paint on Saturday and Travis came out after work and noticed that the colors didn't look like what we picked. I was so concentrated on not leaving streaks that I didn't even think about the color. I learned quite a bit about paint this weekend and apparently there are different bases that the color goes into. When they mixed the paint they used too light of a base and the colors were not what we picked. We got reimbursed for the 15 gallons and my dad and I got the pleasure of repainting everything on Sunday. Travis and I were satisfied with the color throughout the main areas but thought the master bedroom color might be too dark.



Travis found some lighter colors and we decided to use the dark color just as an accent wall. With some help, we found a different color that we wanted to use as the accent for the master, but we will still use the original master bedroom color as an accent wall in the office. After work today, we painted another 8 gallons (I think...after awhile I start to lose track, especially since they can't mix in 5 gallon buckets; it's one gallon at a time). Almost all the walls are painted upstairs and a lot of the walls downstairs are primed. It is really nice to have some color on the walls, but I forget how hard it is to pick colors. Here are some pictures from the past couple painting sessions:



Dining room/Front entry

Great Room/Nook area

Kitchen cabinet and flooring with the new wall color

We were all decked out in gear so the only thing showing are our eyes and hands. One of us would spray on the paint and the other would follow with a roller. The sprayer sure puts a lot of paint in the air, but there is no way that I would be sane if I had to hand roll this whole house. I think I am going to start a new fashion trend though. Do you think white mascara is in?

Here's a picture of the infamous paint sprayer.

and the sprayer in action...

Decisions, Decisions

I think Travis and I change our minds on materials for the house at least once a day. Travis has been second guessing our kitchen tile choice for the past couple of weeks, so I finally gave in and said we could look at our tile choices again. Our house is very neutral, but we were afraid that we were going to have too much brown. We had a really hard time finding a tile that would go with everything else that has already been ordered up to this point. The white cabinet has a brown glaze and is going in the entry way as locker style cabinets and in the laundry room. The brown cabinet door is obviously the kitchen cabinets. The tile in the center is what we decided to go with (for now) in the kitchen and entry way from the garage. There will also be a tile accent within the hardwood when you walk in the main entrance with the same tile and with the accent tile to the left as a border. That border has little hints of red which ties into the hardwood flooring. Then we are doing rock pillars in the dining room in the rock sample shown at the top of the picture. There is also just our tiny paint sample sticking out of the rock. So what does everyone think of our new decision???

Cabinet Features

The kitchen cabinets are the same color as the master bathroom with the same glaze. The glaze was still not completely like we were hoping for. It shows really well in some parts and not so well in others. Here is one of the wall cabinets.

I know this may be boring to some, but it is the little things that make me happy. There are some features on our cabinets that most think are unnecessary, but I think they are so fun.

The base cabinets have drawers that pull out. That pan that I could never reach in the back of the cabinet (even with my long arms) will no longer be.

And the best feature of all, which I know my mom really appreciates too, are drawers that cannot slam shut. You can push as hard as you want and the drawer will just glide closed. You can thank Travis for the wonderful demonstration!

Prime Time

The picture is of the kitchen...all primed. You can also see that our kitchen cabinets also arrived today. We had to bring a couple of the cabinets in just to see what it looked like. Sunday was a very productive day. Travis and I were able to prime almost the whole upstairs. We went through about 23 gallons of primer. It has got a light tan tint, which is a couple shades lighter than what we are actually using throughout the house. We did buy a paint sprayer which made the work much easier. Can you imagine rolling on 23 gallons of paint? No thanks! I did not get a whole lot of pictures of the paint because it isn't the actual color. It was definitely nice to see a different color on the wall though. I was nervous getting primer on the wall because that is when all the taping imperfections would show. We were pretty satisfied with our taping and texture. There are a couple spots here and there that we want to go back and fix, but overall I think we did a good job. We have a couple more areas to texture downstairs still but we think we may be able to get back on schedule just by judging how quick priming went.

A Non-Texture Update

Our master bathroom cabinets have been delivered. I got a sneak peak of them at Lowe's the other day. We got a chocolate glaze on them to add some more dimension and we were pretty disappointed in the amount of glaze on our cabinets. We talked with the cabinet company and we have to send them pictures, but they may have to replace all the door fronts.

The kitchen cabinets get delivered on Monday which are the same style as the bathroom, so hopefully they have more glaze on those. The remaining cabinets are being delivered on Wednesday. It's really exciting to get the cabinets in, but I think I would be a lot more fun if we were ready for them.

We also have been talking with a contractor from the home show who is going to put up gutters and our deck for us. I think they are starting with the gutters next week and the deck the week after. Our house needs a lot of gutters...554 linear feet of them. The deck is going to look really cool too. We only wanted to have two pillars, but it needs to span over 20 feet. The contractor found a beam that would hold the weight and span that stretch. The two pillars are going to run up to the railing height and we are going to rock the pillars. We are going with a composite decking called Rhino Deck. I'm excited to see the finished product and I'll be sure to take lots of pictures because decking pictures are way more fun than texture pictures.

Speaking of texture, we are hoping to be done this weekend. We are so sick of taping and texture that we can't get motivated to do anything at the house right now. We did the great room ceiling last night and today we just need to do the bathrooms and a couple more stretches of walls. Then we have to do a quick sand of all the textured walls so it isn't so scratchy then it is time for a major cleanup before we paint. There is so much dust and dried clumps of mud on the floor.

We think painting will take at least a week between priming coats and then actual colors. We checked out the cost of renting a sprayer and it is going to be cheaper to buy one. We are behind the original schedule that I put together, but I had us finishing before July, so I think we will still be on track to move in for early July.

Oh So Close

Travis' parents were up again yesterday to help us texture. We got almost all of the basement textured. Most of the bathrooms still need textured as well as a couple ceilings here and there. After a very accomplishing day yesterday, Travis and I went out today to finish up. Unfortunately all the mud we put up yesterday hadn't dried yet today, so we couldn't finish today. We are just using the torpedo heater for heat right now and it puts out so much moisture that the mud takes forever to dry. It made a good excuse for us have a day to rest and relax though:) While we were out today, we did take measurements for how much rock we would need. We are in the process of trying to decide which rock we like best and what price we want to pay for that.

Also on another note, we were out looking at houses under construction and a lot of the newer houses are putting red windows in. I would just like to note that we were on the forefront of this red window fad!