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.