Stone, and Last (almost) Day at Village Floor

Sara and I had a 6pm appointment with Shelly at Village Floor to wrap up much of the flooring selections we've spent hours choosing. We're nearing 20 hours at Village, and I'll repeat this several times, Shelly has been absolutely amazing. The level of customer service and care she has provided throughout this process has been more than we expected. This evening was no exception. She has consistently stayed with us past the store closing time, and has truly gone above and beyond the call of duty to help us with all of these selections.

We were meeting Mary Arneson at Village as well. Mary has been great. She has a very good eye for color, and is good about helping us make decisions. Interestingly enough for the story line with the stone, Mary helped us take the stone we wanted, and coordinate it with the siding and all of the other exterior "stuff" to get the look we hoped we wanted.

We had just enough time to go look at the house together before our meeting at Village. Sara made it to the house first, and went inside to look around. They had started with a primer coat of paint, which is another component that is coming quickly. With just one coat, it is really hard to tell whether or not it is going to look like we hope. With the stone issue hanging over our heads right now, I think we're starting to second guess a lot of stuff. That isn't particularly helpful, by the way, the evening you are going in to finalize carpet, wood, tile, sink and other selections.

We had the same gut "eiwwwww" when we were out there Wednesday as I had Monday. The stone looks a lot darker than we thought we had selected. We showed this first picture to Mary, and she couldn't even fake it. I recall her reaction being something along the lines of "oh my, that's really dark."

Did we pick the wrong stone, or did we pick the wrong siding. We knew at this point we did something wrong.



This picture, with the light where it was, makes it look far closer to what we anticipated. But the photo doesn't include the siding, so the stark contrast isn't as visible.



We were at Village with Shelly and Mary from 6pm to 9pm (they close at 8pm) walking through all of the components for nearly the last time. Shelly had ordered in several larger carpet swatches from the selections we were considering off of the smaller sample boards.

With the exception of the design of our kitchen hearth and back splash, we left Village Wednesday nearly done with all of the products we'd purchase from them. Shelly needed to get her estimator out to the house to finalize the measurements, and she needed to get us the exact numbers we were looking at since we've selected a handful of upgrades from what we have in the spec book.

As you can see below, Belle sure seems to like at least one piece of the carpet.

We're very excited about how we've put together the inside of the house. Mary has been great helping us mix and match all of the selections to coordinate the colors and designs. And again Shelly has been wonderful to work with.

But. . . What are we going to do with the dark stone that we simply don't like. . .

Starting the Stone

The whole point of this blog was so that Sara and I could document and recall the construction of our new house. Our plan was to be able to look back after we've had a chance to make our house a home, and recall the construction path we took along the way.

There is a week long lapse between when either of us last posted anything, and we've been out at the house between the two of us a half a dozen times.

The reason for the delay, is that we thought we might have made our first really serious, difficult to change, mistake with the design of the house. It is easy to paint over ugly paint. If the carpet isn't right, we'll be able to change that too. But what if we messed up when we chose our stone? Both figuratively and literally, the house we designed has tons of stone. As we've driven through the neighborhood recently, we've began to notice that we selected to design our home with a larger stone to siding/etc. proportion to many of the homes in the lakes.

In order to document this right (no sense in rewriting history), I'm going to pretend I'm posting these pictures on the day we took them. I'm even changing the post time and date on the blogger program.

For anyone who is visiting the blog who is looking ahead, we think it ends up just fine. But that doesn't change the semi-panic we'll always recall from this process the waning days of March.

Sara's Mondays right now are long. She has her last MBA course EVER on Monday evenings, which usually wraps up Monday nights a little after 9pm. This week, Sara has a couple of colleagues in town from the San Francisco office, which will definitely add to the busy nature of life as she/we currently know it.

We went out to the house together this morning to meet up with Ardeen (the owner) from Condor Stone. We had our struggles picking out the stone because we picked a combination of greys and black that they don't usually do. It took involving Ardeen weeks ago to finally get the stone we thought we wanted (not that it is something exotic, similar stone is on a house just several blocks away).

We've expressed to TJB our thoughts on Condor, and it seemed when talking with Ardeen that he was there to make sure we were happy (ironically). He showed us the stone in the bins, which were separated into the proportions we selected. They had a whole team of people out there ready to start putting up the stone.

Ardeen said before we left to be aware that the stone might appear dark when we first see it up on the house. Turn out this is a very very important point. I guess the stone is wet/saturated as they put it up, and it takes a while to dry up and take on its intended color.

We left for work, and the stone guys started putting up the stone. You can see some of the Condor crew here, and you can see Ardeen giving with the black jacket looking at the house as they prepared to start.





As I wrote, Sara has class on Monday nights. I had a hockey game Monday night, and had to be out at the house we're at in Blaine at 3:30 to meet with the landlord and a city inspector. I also drove to Hirchfield's and Sherwin Williams to get more paint and stain samples. Both of us really liked some paint Parker and Todd used in their home in DC, and we wanted to see if it might work in our new house.

I stopped by the house to see how far the stone guys got in a day and get some pictures to share with Sara. When I arrived, I didn't have the excited first reaction I sincerely hoped for. We had picked out a fairly light grey Hardi siding and shakes for the front of our house, and my initial reaction was a sort of "eiwww" thinking either our stone was way too dark or the siding was way too light. They got a lot done, but I wasn't sure I liked what I saw. Sara and I talked between then and when I went to the hockey game, and when she asked what I thought, I hesitated and tried to recall for her that Ardeen had told us it was going to be dark.

Sara was able to make it out briefly before it got dark, and she had the same reaction. We didn't really talk much about it after I got home. I think we just nervously said, "let's wait and see." Privately, at this point, I think we were both really nervous we made a huge mistake on one component or another of the house that we'd just have to live with. But coming home to an exterior every night that we truly didn't like wasn't something we were excited about. And it changed the mood of the construction process.







It is kind of neat that they were able to install the address stone. For anyone looking to update their books, that's our address on Aspen Bay. You can see they got a lot done, but the grout is not yet part of what they completed.

Siding, Stone and a Basement Floor

It has been over a week since I've been able to go out to the house and check in on its progress. Sara and I were there a week ago Saturday. I left Monday for a work trip to Dallas, and then Sara and I met up in DC on Wednesday for a long weekend.

Wednesday we spent several hours walking around Washington and checking out the cherry blossoms. It was great to introduce Sara to Brock's new fiance Niki Thursday night. We spent the weekend we our friends Eric, Nicole and EJ. Saturday I got to see Evan, and then we went out with Scott, Brock and Niki, Meghan and Manny, Parker and Todd, and the Hoplins. It was a great night.

We got back home today and headed out to the house while it was still nice and sunny out. I was able to watch the progress while I was away via a couple of great blog updates by Sara. Still, it is amazing how much things have changed in just a week.

These first couple of pictures are of the whole house from the front in its current state. You can see that much of the siding on the front is up. The black around the bigger garage, on the wall under the two windows, and the two columns is where they will be adding stone starting this week.




These are a close up of where some of the stone will go. There is some sort of metal mesh and then cement here now in preparation for the stone. Sara and I are meeting the stone people from Condor early tomorrow morning to go through a few things so our vision of how this is supposed to look is clear before they start. It turns out its a little easier to change paint and lights if we don't like it than it is to swap out huge pieces of rock.




Not a whole lot has changed inside other than the fact that the whole place is now sheetrocked and mudded. They are getting pretty close to being able to paint.

The biggest change inside is that they installed the tubes for the Wirsbo in-floor heat and poured the cement in the basement. You can see here that the basement floor (which was dirt when I left for Dallas) is now all cement.


They made a lot of progress on the siding since I was last out here. They had done much of the front with the Hardi, but hadn't yet started on the back. You can see that we have a little darker shade of grey around the sides and back compared to the Hardi that is on the front. I really like the way it has come together. I think they will finish all of this up this week.



Our understanding is that it won't take that many days to get the stone up on the front of the house. I'd guess that by mid-week they might even be done. We're going to pull the trigger on our flooring and paint selections the first part of this week, and after that we will have made most of the remaining decisions.

We arrived back to our town home to have a box of cabinet hardware in the mail. Sara has been amazing about finding our selections either on-line or at a variety of stores and has been able to drive down the price of these little selections each step of the way.

Cabinets that will use these knobs and handles will be done and installed over the course of this week and next as well.

Less than two months!

Hardi Siding and Shakes

The house is really coming along and tonight was just beautiful to take some good pictures before I'm gone for the rest of the week.

First are some pictures from Sunday when we were there and the guys were working on the ceilings.  I think it was Adam that told us they walked around on stilts so it was fun to see them in action!

And the front of house is really coming together....

Tomorrow they start the Wisbo in the basement and then pour the concrete on Thursday so here's one last look of the basement floor in the current state:

Our siding looks like it is two different colors here but it's just the way the sun is hitting it (I promise!)

This is what the ceilings look like right now:

And a close up picture of the two different gables:

67 Days and Counting Down....

Chris and I got to go to the house together this morning.  They have the first part of the Hardi siding up on the front of the house.  We spent many hours picking out the colors for the front of the house and it was fun to see what it's going to look like.

As you can tell it was a beautiful day today.  We were excited to see that they had broken ground on the other house in our circle.  Our new neighbors will be in shortly after us this summer.  Our builder also just started another house down the street from us and the framers were out all day today framing up that house.  We're hoping that we'll get to close on our house right before Memorial Day - which really isn't that far away!

I'm not exactly sure what these are for but I'm guessing it's for something to do with the siding that will go on next week.

The garage:

The living room/kitchen:

The living room windows:

The dining room windows:

We spent another four hours at Village Floor tonight.  In the past seven days that brings the count up to about 13 hours (not that we're counting)!  We had a pretty good grasp of our selections before today and were thankful to have Mary along with us to help finalize some decisions.  Shelly from Village has been helping us thru the process and has been very patient.  Having both of them together today was very helpful.

We had many, many different samples of carpet, floor tile, wall tile, subway tile, mosiac tile, grout, cultured marble, laminate and paint out today.  Here is a picture of Shelly and Mary looking at our options.

Are we there yet?

I have to be honest here....this process is long and hard and I'm ready for it to be over.

I do love day light savings time since it means we have more opportunities to see the house in the day light.

Justin is awesome and we now have a easier and cleaner way to get to the house.  Sorry to Stacie, Dee Dee, and Kathy for making you trek thru the mud last weekend!

Next is a good picture of Chris admiring the progress of the house.  It looks like siding will start tomorrow based on the materials on site tonight.

We decided to invest money in our unfinished basement in anticipation of using it down the road.  Below are some pictures of the tubing that is being installed into the ground (aka mud) for the Wisbro system.

Tonight we spent time in the model look at different styles of base and casing.  Then spent more time at home discussing the change order for the cabinets, plumbing, doors, etc.  Each change order = more money  -->  I'm tired of change orders!

Sorry for not having more fun news to report tonight.  Being the detail person that I am, I tired of dealing with all of the details.  I guess I need to be careful for what I wished for.  We wished for a totally custom home and that is what we are building.  Hopefully it will turn out ok.

Sheetrock, Flooring, Cabinets and Fortunes

I can't believe it has been a week since we've been able to update the blog. Both of us had a chaotic week at work. And this was State Hockey week, so I spent a little time at the Xcel on Thursday and Friday. In the meantime, a lot has happened at the house, and we've spent a lot of outside time with the slew of decisions we're going to have to make in the next couple of weeks.

Sara was at the house one evening this week to check it out. On sight, it was primarily sheetrocking this week. They've completed a pretty significant chunk of the sheet rocking, which you can see from the pictures below. The yard is like walking in quick sand right now because it was raining all week. I wasn't sure we'd even be able to get in.

We had our first extensive meeting at Village Floor on Wednesday evening after a series of meetings downtown. We had a pretty successful first round of looking at tile and wood. We set up four more meetings in the next week or so so that we can try to complete all of our selections from Village before we go to DC on the 24th.

Early Friday morning, Sara and I drove up to Ramsey to TLM Cabinets to go through all of the work that they've done on the design of cabinets throughout the house. This includes everything from the lockers in the mud room, to the desk, to the island and walls in the kitchen, to all of the work in the bathrooms. After our electrical walk through (TLM was with us), we got virtual pictures of a first draft of what they envisioned the cabinets looking like. For a first stab at it, they were very well done. We literally sat down with them for three hours Friday morning and moved doors and drawers, staggered kitchen cabinets, and adjusted sizes. The guys had some awesome advice, and I think when we get the next set of drawings, we're going to be very happy with what they come up with. Our hope is to get the final drafts in the next week so that they can start building them (which will take at least a week). In the meantime, we're going to have to decide on all of our hardware so we can bring it out to Ramsey to be installed on the cabinets.

Saturday morning, Stacie came over to spend some time with us looking at tile, carpet and other flooring options. This is the next big set of decisions we have to make, and Stacie is awesome at bringing styles and colors together. I think the last time Stacie was out at the house, they had just started digging. Obviously, what she saw was dramatically different.

Before we went to Village Floor, the three of us went out to the house. I didn't think we'd get in as the first path we took would have put is in mud up to our knees. We did find a path that worked, and we saw a huge change from the last time I was able to walk through the house.

This is what the main wall of the kitchen looks like. You can see all of the outlets that are up high, some of which will be over the counter, others will be behind appliances.



Here are Sara and Stacie at the top of the stairs. Behind them are the doors to the laundry room, and our future bedroom (with the window visible).



Here I am looking at where the fireplace, television and bookshelves will be. The first drawing of the cabinets here had the shelves entirely enclosed by doors. We changed that to have some of it closed for components and storage, but much of it open for pictures and books. The actual fireplace is already installed below, and the space above in the center that you see is where a TV will go eventually.


This is the vaulted part of the ceiling in our master bedroom. We added a sofit around the vault where we will put some sort of rope lighting. That opening you see is for an electrical outlet for the lighting that will be controlled by a switch on the wall. It was supposed to go in the vault. We're in the process of getting that fixed. It will be incredibly awkward if we have to run a cord out from the vault to plug into that outlet. Justin is going to get that fixed for us.




This is the master bath. It is incredible how much they've been able to sheetrock in a week.


This is the office off of the front door. They are storing all of the mud for the sheetrock in here.



This is one of the windows in the other bedrooms upstairs. We're really going to like these double hung windows.



As you can see, the basement is still a disgusting mess. They are running heat into the basement because they are going to be roughing in the in floor heat for when we finish the basement down the road sometime.


After we left the house, we spent a few hours at Village Floor in Blaine where we will be getting our flooring and a few other items. It was incredibly productive. We basically decided on all of the tile, carpet and other flooring for the entire first floor and the steps and upstairs hallway. We also picked out some very cool tile and glass for the back splash of the island, and the hearth behind the stove. It took a little mixing and matching, and some advice from the Village staff, but we are seriously very very close. There is going to be some awesome tile and a glass mosaic used in the kitchen with some greys, blues and blacks. Everything really came together nicely, and we basically stayed at or near all of the standard selections except where we knew in advance that wasn't going to be possible.

You can see here Sara and Stacie hard at work with samples.




Dee Dee and Kathy were over last night for dinner with Sara and were able to go out to the house for the first time. I was playing hockey and then watched the Sioux game and the High School Championship game out with my team, so I wasn't at the house with them.

After church this morning, Sara and I took a trip to Sherwin Williams to look further at paint. As I wrote, we came to conclusions on the main floor and up into the hallways upstairs. We're starting now to look at trying to do something unique or fun for our master bedroom and bath. We have another meeting with Shelley at Village scheduled for Monday (and again Wednesday and Saturday), so hopefully we can pull something together over the course of this week.

We went to Home Depot in Maple Grove after that to look at more cabinet hardware. Today, and earlier in the week we purchased some knobs and handles so that we at least have some options at home with us. I think we are very close on finding what we like for hardware as well.

The Spring Parade of Homes has started, so we took in about seven houses out in Maple Grove that we hadn't been to before. Our real goal was to see some cool bedrooms. Most of the Parade homes are pretty neutral. I guess they have to keep it pretty boring to be attractive regardless of the clientele. We did learn that our gut feelings on our carpets we looked at Saturday were correct and that we can switch it up a little between the office and the stairs and the great room.

Sara met up with Angie, Alicia and Kate tonight back out in Maple Grove. Before that, Sara went to Costco and was able to pick up some cool lights for the bathrooms above the vanities.

Sara and her friends went to PF Changs for dinner, one of our favorites. I wish I could have staged this because it would have been incredible to pull this off. But I didn't, and what Sara read as she opened up her fortune cookie brought a smile to her face. It wasn't even the cookie that was placed closest to her. Which makes it even more incredible.



Sara and I are heading back to Village tomorrow late afternoon and are looking forward to making further progress with the flooring.

Plumbing, Sheetrock and New Neighbors

It was a nice little Saturday today. I went to Home Depot. No time for Bed, Bath and Beyond however (That's an allusion to a movie. If you didn't catch it, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to explain it).

We got a couple of packages of plumbing supplies the other day and I just got around to opening them this morning. You can see the interest that Belle is showing. This boxes constitute one of the shower heads for the Master Shower, several toilet seats (you will recall that we made the toilet decision early on), some hooks and towel holders. I/we still have to inventory this, and we are anticipating another shipment or two, but its kind of cool to start getting this stuff shipped to us.


I went out to the house for a while this afternoon to see what they did with the sheetrock delivery that was made yesterday. I have the code now for the lock box, so I was able to go look around.

This is a picture of the ceiling looking from the kitchen into the dining room in the back of the house. I took this picture because you can see the insulation that was blown up into the corners and other recesses of the house (as opposed to that which is rolled between the studs.


There are now stacks of sheetrock in the rooms around the house. They moved a lot of material into the house yesterday.



I'm not exactly sure what this stuff is, but there is a lot of it.


I hadn't noticed this when I was out at the house last night, but they've installed both garage doors, the garage door openers, and the wall units outside the garage entrance to the house to open both of them. I think the plan is probably to leave them white, but that will be a decision we finalize in a month or so. This was one of those areas where the upgrades were actually really unattractive to us. Many of the new, "trendy" garage doors look like weird barn doors with crazy hardware that is purely decorative. We liked having some windows in the doors, but I'm really glad we kept these simple.


The immediate next door neighbor (Eric) who I spoke with last night, and the neighbor two doors down from him around the cul-de-sac (Tom) were out playing in the snow with their sons. I spoke with them for a little while. The lot next to Tom is the last lot on the cul-de-sac and has been sold and now surveyed. You can kind of see the steaks out in the yard (one of them, presumably mistakenly, was almost right up next to Tom's driveway). This is the home that is being built for a couple moving (or moving back) from New York. Word on the street is that they'll be moving in sometime in July. So we won't be the new kids on the block for too long in our little corner of Aspen Bay.



I spent time the rest of the afternoon at Home Depot, Menards and Lowes looking at sinks and hardware. We are likely getting this new granite composite sink for the kitchen that is pretty cool. But we chose a granite for the counter tops that has a lot of brown in it. So the grey eGranite sink we were looking at won't work with this counter top. There is a particular vendor that the plumber is requiring us to get the sink through, but I looked at the retail stores anyway to see what the sinks in shades of brown look like up against our granite sample. It actually looks pretty good, and I think it is going to work just fine.

The cabinet hardware we've been looking at at Home Depot is on sale right now fur most of March. That was one of the other reasons I went to the stores today, to see if they have any sales that aren't listed in the paper. Sure enough. Assuming we can't find out that they are having a similar or better sale in a month or so, we'll probably try to estimate how many knobs and handles we need and purchase them sometime before the sale ends.

All in all a pretty good day today running around.