Where is the lady who's supposed to keep up this blog anyway?

I mean, it's been a while...shouldn't she update a little?

Oh. Yeah. That's me. So here's the big news -

WE MOVED IN!!!!!! And we LOVE IT.

I was pretty busy with the house, and I kind of thought that finishing it to live in  it was a little higher on my priority list than keeping the blog up. :) And so here I am. Now, I don't have any pictures because my camera died from taking so many pictures, and I haven't gotten any new batteries yet. :)
The house isn't totally done yet, still a few things on the to-do list, but hopefully they won't take long. The exterior still needs painted, which may take a couple months, just because the painter is scheduled out that far. :/ We are really hoping to have it painted before the end of May, though. Hopefully that works out!
We also have to finish grouting a decorative brick wall in the kitchen, paint and hook up switches and plugs in the garage, and finish the porch handrail. It's mostly done, but we ran out of material :( Oh, we also need the final grade done on the yard. But it's looking pretty good!
I will update w/ pictures as soon as I can :)

Woops

This is an un-advanced ventilation system :( 

We had stored extra pieces of plywood in the attic and while getting them down Josh stepped through the nursery ceiling. So we have a nice big hole to patch! Any volunteers?? :)

Finally Here: Spiral Staircase

The staircase is in!!! It is so awesome to have it in, I'm really excited about how it turned out. I was originally kind of nervous, because I've never seen a spiral staircase in a house before, (other than in the movie My Fair Lady and I don't think that counts) and especially not one in a house with eight foot ceilings. But I was pleasantly surprised and pleased with it :) The Frogges came over and it took the guys about 7 hours to build and install it. I think it went fairly smoothly, no major hiccups, but just time consuming. It's super nice to be able to just run up the staircase and not have to climb up a ladder and then kick the freshly painted wall as you haul yourself up to the floor. We are making so much progress on the house. It's great to see it all come together.

Stair treads, though I think they look a bit like flippers. Maybe a little heavy for that purpose though. ;)

Marking the four "corners" of the staircase so they can center the pole.

 Putting up the pole

 Looking a little short...

 Putting the aluminum handrail on.

From above

Lol, this one is a little out of sequence! This is what the handrail looked like before it was installed, the guys had to unwind it form a circle and then twist it up the staircase.

Until the next update,

Josh and Rebecca

Paint, Flooring, and Deck

I have been so busy this last week I haven't even had time to blog about the house. A week and a half ago, the sheetrock guys finally finished texturing, and I broke out the paint buckets with great enthusiasm on Saturday, the 1st . With the help of a lot of friends, we were able to get the entire house primered, ceilings painted and all the rooms almost totally done in one week! I have to do one more coat on the office walls, and I haven't even started on the garage, but we have made a ton of progress.
The weekend I started painting, Josh started working on front porch and it looks awesome!! He has five more boards to lay down, and steps to build, but we will be concentrating on the inside for now and do those in a while.
This last week and weekend we started laying down flooring, and we're almost done. Hopefully we don't run out of flooring, but it's looking like we might. :( It's pretty unfortanate, because for one, the place were we buy it is an hour away and we have to borrow a truck and trailer to pick it up, but it also took us a month and a half just to get the thousand square feet we have gotten. So waiting another month and a half sounds kind of grim. :/ But it's still great to see progress and we will stretch those floor boards we have as far as we can :) 
This week and weekend are going to be great... once we finish the floor or run out of boards, we're going to start installing electric fixtures, switches and plugs. Also, this weekend we hope to start installing the spiral staircase.
I'm a little nervous about how the staircase will turn out, but I'm sure it will be pretty cool. Enjoy the pictures!

I couldn't find a finished picture of the porch, I'll have to take one later. It's looking cool though!

 

The house from the side. I love how it looks :)

 

 

Trying out paint, stain and countertop samples

 

Whew...sheetrock dust! The stuff hangs around forever! But beneath it all is an installed floor :)

 

Our bedroom. The angled wall is our closet, and the room on the left is the sitting room. It's impossible to tell in this picture, but the ceiling is the same color as the sitting room.

 

The office

 

Until the next update,

 

Josh and Rebecca

 

 

 Trying out paint, stain, countertop samples and colors. The brick is one of the ones we are going to use on the dining room wall.

 

 

 Sheetrock dust and saw dust everywhere, but a picture of the installed floor.

 

The office

 

Our room. The closet is the angled wall, and the blue room on the left is the sitting room. It's impossible to tell in this pic, but the ceiling is the same color as the sitting room.

 

Until the next update,

 

Josh and Rebecca

Insulation and Sheetrock

 I cannot believe we are finally to this point! Insulation guys came on Friday, Sheetrock was delivered Friday, and they started installing today! This week Josh and I will be going to to town to pick out light fixtures so that as soon as they're done and I paint the ceiling we can install them! It's looking awesome!!

The office front

The back of the office, the opening in the floor will be a fire pole. Haha, just kidding, it'll be a spiral stair.

One room partially done

Main room from the front door

Hallway

 Main room from the laundry room

Our Bedroom

Until the next update, 

Josh and Rebecca

Deck Troubles

This last weekend, my little (or not so little) brother David came down to help us work on the deck. We had great plans...sleep in a little Saturday morning, eat a nice big breakfast, hit Lowes for the lumber and then build that baby! Ha. The best laid plans of mice and men often go  often go astray (I've never talked to mice about it, but that's a very old and reliable phrase so it has to be true). The first part of the day went fine....we had a nice breakfast (though I burned some of the cinnamon swirl toast :( ), David and Josh went to the house to measure for front porch materials while I cleaned the house for a showing later that day. We ended up spending two hours in Lowes picking out materials, then headed home....And that's where it started going down hill...literally. Going down a big hill with a little truck and a heavily loaded trailer didn't go as well as we planned. We're very blessed to not have flipped our little truck or taken out any other vehicles,  the trailer had a mind of it own and truck and trailer swerved wildly over both lanes of traffic, until the trailer jack-knived and the tire decided it couldn't take it any more...which brought us screeching to a halt in the middle of the road. We were able to limp the trailer to the side of the road and called a good friend who said he had a spare tire and would come rescue us. Unfortunately, that tire didn't fit, so Josh and I took the friends car to the nearby Sam's Club to have it replaced....unfortunately, they didn't have a tire that fit either. So we drove all the way across town to a tire shop, where a nice manager squeezed us into their very busy Saturday evening schedule and fixed the tire. So...by the time we got home and unloaded the materials it was well, dark. And time for dinner. A good note of the day was that our good friend and cabinet maker came over to measure for cabinets, which we designed that night. They're going to look awesome and I can't wait to see them!!

Until the next update,

Josh and Rebecca

Paint samples

I had a lot of fun yesterday in Home Depot...though I can't say the same for the poor paint guys. They were very nice as I handed them paint chip after paint chip and bought out all their dark base samples. :) Finally one of the guys decided I need to take a behr paint sample home since I seemed to have trouble making up my mind ;) I am seriously looking forward to painting these on our sheetrock whenever that arrives. 

Until the next update,

Josh and Rebecca