Long Week, Flooring Looking Great

This has been a long week.

Sara is working longer hours while showing just how amazing she. I've been traveling for clients around the Range and down to Kansas City, getting into a hotel room late at night just in time to talk to Sara as she arrives home from the office at 10 or 11 at night.

Sara and I were able to get out to the house this morning to see all of the incredible progress.

First though, Sara did have a chance to see the house once or twice while I was away this week.

Here, you can see that the doors are hung and the hardware has been installed. We're very happy with the way the doors and hardware turned out.



They've installed the railings on the stairs as well. The piece that connects to the top of the railings are not affixed yet. The pieces that look out of place down from the top of the railings will be affixed shortly to the railing.




Sara sent this picture to me two nights ago when I was in KC. It doesn't exactly do total justice to what it looks like, but this is the counter top in the laundry room.


As with any big project, there will be details here and there that are wrong or need to be tweaked. You can see here the picture of the front window and the window box. When they installed the window box, part of the window was visible between the bottom of the box and the stone. It looked awkward. Justin had them fix this yesterday or the day before. It looks great.



Likewise, on the arc above the front porch steps, there was a seem that was disjointed. The part that stuck out stuck out so far that you could see it from the street. The siding guys came back and did a very nice job tightening that up.


We were excited this morning to see that the granite had been installed on the island, the other kitchen counter top and the little desk off of the kitchen. It is covered, but it looks great! The island in the kitchen is big and we're so excited at the way it turned out.




The small sheet of subway tile will be around the fireplace once it is installed. We got took this idea from one of the other new neighbors. Because the mantle has the legs coming down, it will be less tile than we originally intended, but nonetheless, we're excited to have this little accent around the fireplace in the great room.


Unfortunately, the camera battery ran out after these pictures. They have installed tile in the laundry room, master bath and guest baths upstairs. They have installed sinks in the bathrooms upstairs as well. We'll snap some more photos of those later today or over the weekend.

We spoke with the guys installing the wood floor, which will be mostly done either today or tomorrow. He talked to us about how happy they are to be doing a bunch of work right now. He also talked with us a little bit about care for the wood floors and the level of humidity we should monitor to make sure the wood doesn't contract and buckle.

This week has been an exciting week. We received our appraisal, avoiding a potential hiccup as the mortgage company looks at comps in the neighborhood during the downturn. We adjusted our closing date by a day (30 days from today).

Almost a year ago, Sara had the opportunity to travel to California for work (unexpectedly) the week of our wedding. We should have just anticipated it, but Sara now has the opportunity (unexpectedly) to be in California again, this time the Thursday we scheduled to close. So we've adjusted, and will close that Friday when Sara gets home.

We're both looking forward to the weekend. We're excited to see all of the work they complete today and tomorrow.

More pictures to follow this weekend.

Starting the Flooring

It was a little late Friday get out to the house with good daylight, so we had decided to spend some time there on Saturday.Early Saturday afternoon, we had our first chance to meet Mike and Erin's little Nils Krueger, who is just a week old. Very cute kid. It was fun to see Mike and Erin in their new role as parents.

Afterwords, we headed down towards Edina and the Galleria with the intention of looking at some closet and pantry options again at California Closets. We're still not sure the direction we're going to go on closets.

On the way, we (Sara, who was driving at the time) decided to stop at "The Container Shop." Little did we know that we'd spend about 2 and half hours there designing a Master Closet with a "closet consultant." They have a system called Elfa. It is somewhat custom, while generally less expensive and conveniently adjustable.

We now have three distinctly different options to choose from. I think we are pretty well set on setting up our master closet, pantry, mud-room closet, office closet and guest coat closet and dealing with the rest of them when we get in and settled.Today, Sara and I went out to the house to figure out exactly what size bar stools we're going to want around the kitchen island. We're going to wait a while before we get a nice kitchen table and chairs, so for the foreseeable future once we close, we're going to eat at bar stools when we get into the house. We'll probably do that frequently anyway even after we get a table, so we're looking for nice bar stools that go with the look and feel of the kitchen we're putting together.

Much of the flooring for the house is in boxes in different rooms around the house. They didn't quite finish painting Friday, but I suspect they will the first part of this week. Village starts laying tile tomorrow. This picture is the office, but the tile in there is for our Master Bath (the boxes in the back) and the other bathrooms upstairs (towards the front).


This is the small glass tile that will serve as a back splash around the tub in our master suite and an accent around the wall in the master shower.


This is some stuff that they'll use when they lay the tile (at least that's what someone told me).


This is a little hard to see because I didn't take them out of the box, but the black rod in the middle of this photo is one of the railings for the stairs (the rest of which are in the box)


This is one of the materials used in the master bathroom to install the wire mesh in floor heating. We're really excited about this.


We left the house and headed home after measuring all of the closets and the pantry to take back with us to The Container Store next weekend. Both of us really like the tree below and as we look towards the landscaping, we'd like one of these in the front yard.

Anyone know what it is?


Oh yeah, remember how the whole purpose of going to the house was to make sure we had the right measurements for the bar stools. That's the one thing we didn't do.

A Quick Look Back 1.0

Sara started writing this blog on Wednesday, October 21st 2009 shortly before we finalized our plans to go forward with building a house, and just days before we signed the first paperwork and wrote the first check.

But the story behind the house that we are hoping to move into in just over a month started well before October 21st. In between the next few posts on the progress of the house towards completion, I'm going to try to take a look further back and record some of what happened before we arrived at that Wednesday meeting with TJB.

Sara and I arrived back in Minnesota on Friday the 12th of June 2009, just short of two weeks after our May 30th Wedding. We had spent the prior 12 days in paradise in Bora Bora. Because we had given ourselves a full weekend to get back into "normalcy," we accepted a short delay in Los Angeles getting bumped from a full flight and in return getting flight vouchers and nice first class tickets a couple hours later.

Our plan was for a relaxing weekend, unpacking and getting ready to go back into work on Monday.

The last thing on either of our minds was house hunting. I'll take that back. The actual last thing on our minds was starting the process of building a house from scratch two weeks after getting married.

While sitting around on Sunday the 14th of June, I was looking at the Housing Section of the Star Tribune and saw a foreclosure property that had just gone on the market not too far from our place in Eagan. They were having an open house that day.

Sara owned a town home (still does) in Chanhassen. I owned (still do) a town home in Eagan. Both of us knew we weren't going to grow a family in either of those homes. At that time, we hadn't even started talking geography for the time when we did consider a new place. Of course that was going to be quite a while down the road.

For the fun of it, we drove down the road and checked out the property being foreclosed on. It was a nice home, pretty big and in a nice neighborhood. There was another home next door that was also on the market. That one was very similar in size, with a price that was obviously not in the cards for the owner with a similar property under foreclosure right next door.

That was really the day that this whole process started. If you do the math, that will be less than a year before we're scheduled to close in Blaine.

We ended up driving around a little bit more in Eagan that Sunday. It was pretty clear at the time that we were in a window of a down turn where it made sense to take advantage of a down market.

Certainly that day we didn't envision being where we are today (neither geographically nor conceptually). But it got us excited to start the next chapter; to figure out where we were going to live and grow a family.

We started blogging on our house as it started to develop physically. It's kind of fun to take a little step back and glance into how it really started, which was months before any sketches were made or dirt was moved.

In fact it started when we thought sketches and dirt moving weren't going to be parts of our housing search.

Finishing Painting?

We'll probably get a chance to get out to the house yet tonight or certainly tomorrow sometime. Supposedly they were going to wrap up with the paint and stain today, and Village was supposed to be in the house starting the tile.

Yesterday I was there for a little bit and saw the last of the three colors we're using in the house at this point. Most of the rooms will be a taupe. We have grey in our Master Suite. And the power bath, laundry room and study are a blue that both of us like. How the sun is coming through these windows doesn't really do the color justice (and the different angles make it look totally different), but it should look pretty cool when it's all done.

These first two pictures are of the laundry room. You can see that the color looks very different depending on the angle.



They've painted the upstairs interior doors and stuck them in the Master Suite to dry.



These next two are of the study on the main floor. The transom above the doors are where the stained glass from our meeting the other day will be placed.

Garage, Lights and Stained Glass

Sara worked late last night, so I checked out the house again at the end of the day.

The paint and stain is nearing completion, and every coat they put on obviously makes it look better and better. We're going to be pleased with the colors.

Here is where they'll be installing an outlet for us on the front porch. I think we did a pretty good job adding more outlets than we needed. everyone said you can never have too many outlets, so hopefully we have plenty.


They are almost finished painting the Bonus room over the garage. It's looking good. We had contemplated doing something way different in this room, but never came to a conclusion. So we're going with the taupe for now and will likely change it down the line.


The stain, after several coats, really looks awesome on the cabinets.



They are getting ready to pour the garage floor in the next few days. We decided to go with two floor drains in the garage for all of the mechanical work I do. I have one of those shirts with the arms torn off now so I can really get into the engine and fix stuff.

Ok, that's not true (except for the floor drains part).



I arrived home last night to a nice surprise. These are most of the remaining lights for the house from Lighting Direct.com. We have just a few pieces left to either order or purchase.


Sara and I are meeting at a little after 5pm with the Stained Glass people to start constructing the glass that will go over the doors to the study just inside the house. Obviously, the hole house is a reflection of our personalities and we put it together to fit our lifestyle and needs. The stained glass is something that TJB does in all of their homes that gives the homeowner a chance to put an accent piece that reflects their personalities. I have no idea what to expect or how customized this will be. But I'm excited for Sara and I to sit down and design this in a way that hopefully reflects us and the things that are important to us.

Closing, Closets and Stain

Closing:

Last night, Sara and I spent a couple of hours with Nate who has been helping us wade through the Mortgage process. Nate just had his second daughter last week, and we are thankful during this time of sheer exhaustion (he's apparently pretty tired too), he was able to spend some time with us nailing down this obviously critical part.

It felt like we were at a book signing or an autograph session (or what I imagine that might feel like) as we signed form after form after form. It was an exciting evening, and we've now handed over this part of our journey to unknown underwriters, appraisers and probably some bureaucrats/regulators looking to keep busy.

Not all that long ago, we' had renters extend their lease because they arrived at the 11th hour of their own home building process only to learn the rules had change and they had to start over to get into their new home. While this is something we are well prepared to avoid, the fact that it "can happen" is certainly something we're cognizant of as we sit down with Nate. On top of that, Nate talked about the paper chase that takes place in the last 72 hours before we actually close. Vendors seeking payment, underwriters looking for confirmations of payments and the like. It sounds like we can anticipate several hours with Nate, TJB and others on the 27th signing papers and waiting for wire transfers to hit. Exciting and nerve racking at the same time.

I asked Nate if he is worried, or if he could foresee any worst case scenario in which we'd get to that 11th hour and have this fall through. Understanding that the very definition of "unforeseen" is that it is unforeseeable, it was nonetheless comforting for him to say firmly, "no." I pressed him further as to why he believed that, and he simply said, "because I've never had one fall through yet."

Nate has been great to work with throughout and all indications are that he has been a creative advocate to get us the best possible rates and options.

Closets:

Early this morning, Sara and I met with a recommended closet vendor out at the house to discuss options for all of the closets and pantry. This is something we're going to take the time to get right even if it is after the fact. We're going to have more space and more storage than we've ever had, so putting up shelves just to have them isn't something we're particularly interested in. We had a nice walk through where we went through some good options throughout the house. We're expecting some actual photos based on our meeting sometime on Thursday. Here are a few photos of their work from their Website.


Stain:

The painter and his crew were out working at the house when we were meeting with the closet vendor. We learned from him that they are scheduled to finish all of the painting and staining on the 22nd. For anyone keeping score, that's THIS WEEK! He said that they had even planned on finishing on the 21st but that it would likely be the next day and they'd run into the next set of vendors who will pick up and start their work yet this week. With several coats, the stain looks really good. While it is still difficult to see or envision how it will all come together, we're pretty happy with the selections we made. I'm anxious to visit the house tonight or tomorrow as they are going to be painting a few of the rooms where we really changed things up from the taupe and grey we've taken pictures of thus far.





It is hard to believe all of this painting and staining will be done in a couple of days.

Stain 2.0

After a long week of work out in North Carolina, Sara had the opportunity late Thursday afternoon to sit on the tarmac confined to an airplane in beautiful Detroit for a couple of hours after her plane was scheduled to take off.

Wonderful way to spend Tax Day 2010.

After Sara made it back to Minnesota, we went to the house for a little bit before going home. It was the first time she'd been able to see the place since they began staining. So there were some significant changes.

I've included a few pictures from what they completed Thursday.






I spent a little time today starting on the landscaping project (we're going to get bids in the next few weeks). Sara saved us a bunch of money on fireplace tile just by paying attention to the bills. She's caught a lot of minor errors that have added up to some nice savings throughout this process. Awesome accountant!!!

We're going to try to take a little break this weekend and head up to the lake and then to Crookston for Peyton's Baptism.

Monday night we meet up with Nate the Mortgage guy to lock all of that into place. Will be very good to get that part done.

Stain and Paint

Sara and I signed off on colors for the interior the other day and yesterday they started staining and really got going on the paint. Sara is traveling much of this week for work in North Carolina and having to deal with any issues that pop up from afar. We're at about 42 days until our planned closing, so it is really coming soon.I met yesterday with Justin after work to talk about landscaping, cabinets and a few other items. He has been awesome to work with throughout this and has gone above and beyond, even when we've had frustrations with other parts of the process.

The house definitely smelled of fresh stain and paint yesterday. They had warned us that this week would be the week where spending time in the house might result in a headache (or buzz I suppose). We selected the stain over the weekend, and I think it is really going to look good with the rest of the colors and selections.

Justin helped me look ahead to when they pour the driveway and sidewalk, and we talked through how we should approach the landscaping.

Sara and I are scheduled to meet Monday to finalize some documents with our Mortgage guy Nate. Nate and his wife are having their second daughter today (Congrats Nate!). He has been very good to work with as we are a pretty unique case under the new world order the Feds have imposed on responsible people in their attempt to protect the irresponsible (darn, I'd done such a good job keeping politics out of this :) )

We're excited to get the financing locked, and I'm excited to go over to the house with Sara when she gets home from North Carolina so we can see all of the changes inside the house together.

Cabinets and Neighbors

Saturday morning was really nice. That's a commentary on the weather, but more importantly, it was a nice morning at the house and around the new neighborhood.

It has been a long long week for both of us. I've had clients in town and have been up in Duluth and here in the Twin Cities doing events for AT&T. Sara, while still working through the final weeks of her MBA program, is insanely busy at work. In fact she was at the office Friday night until well past 9pm. I suppose I was technically working prior to picking her up, but my work involved an event with wine and desert and speeches by two prospective presidential candidates. So don't feel sorry for me.

After the long week, Sara and I got up relatively early and went over to the house. We parked the car and took a nice long walk around the new neighborhood. It was gorgeous and sunny out. And there were others either walking or running around the neighborhood.

We had a chance to check out that last house in the cul-de-sac that is under construction by Accent. That is the couple from New York that is hoping to close before the expiration of the tax credit. They are moving fast on that house. It is basically all framed up and it looks like they are getting ready to insulate soon.

We walked around a lot of Aspen Bay where we will soon live, getting ideas for landscaping, talking about picking up a kayak for the lakes and looking ahead at more walks and bike rides around the series of lakes.

TJB started construction recently on one of the lots that we had considered at the beginning. They are flying through the construction of that house too. It isn't at the point where they need to lock it up, but it is nearly totally framed.

We spent a little time walking around in our house and checking out the cabinets. They are all in place now and are ready to be stained and then affixed with hardware. Most of what is done with the cabinets can be seen in prior posts. However, a few of the items have been completed since our last visit to the house. (at least since my last visit, Sara had a chance to go there with Melissa on Thursday evening).

We've purchased all of the knobs and handles for these cabinets and at some point after they stain them have to bring the hardware for them to install. We walked around to all of the cabinets to get an accurate count of how many of the knobs and handles we need to leave at the house.

Here, Sara is looking at a desk just off the kitchen and writing down what they'll need of the hardware we've purchased. The cabinet on the wall wasn't installed last time I was in the house.



This is the view of the kitchen from the informal dining room off the back of the house. They have the top of the hearth fully installed since I was here last. Of all of the selections we had to make at Village (tile, carpet etc) the one item outstanding is that to put in the hearth above the stove, and what to use as a back splash. We've picked out a few really cool options of glass tile. But we're going to wait until the cabinets are stained, the walls are fully painted and the granite is installed before we make our final selection.



The bookshelves and cabinets in the great room next to the fireplace are set as well. I'm really excited about the way they turned out. The only thing here we're unsure of is the cabinetry under the mantel that boarders the fireplace. We picked out some awesome tile to go around the fireplace and I think were planning on the mantle being freestanding affixed to the wall. It saved us a bunch of money cutting back on the linear footage of tile we need around the fireplace, but we hope we don't lose the effect we were going for.


With all of the cabinets in place and most of the trim done, they are getting ready to pain and stain, which we believe is happening Tuesday. The stairs are nearly complete which the exception of the iron, which will also come after the stain.

We were getting ready to leave after spending time at the house and we ran into Tom, the neighbor in the cul-de-sac three doors down. He had a UND sweatshirt on. I wasn't sure at first if it was Notre Dame or the University of North Dakota. It was the University of North Dakota, which just this week seemingly gave up on its last battle to have its team name and mascot (the Fighting Sioux) taken from them. I think he thought when I asked "what UND?" that I was a gopher fan. It turns out Tom is from Grafton North Dakota north and west of Crookston. As I was preparing to play the small world, who do you know game, he said he's related to most of the town. I couldn't recall the name Henry Wosick who my dad rented farm land from, but will ask him next time I see him. He did say he roomed with Ladd Knotek from Crookston, and knew Corey Sondrol who grew up on the same street as I was. He also roomed in college with Dixon Ward who was one of the hockey players for the Sioux during their Dream Team years in the late 1980s. Totally small world.

Tom and I had talked earlier about his landscaper who he was very happy with and who is apparently reasonably inexpensive. He had the guy's business card in his garage, so we walked over with him to his house to get it.

He seems like he'll be a great neighbor, and it helps to have that familiarity. He was home doing some yard work yesterday as he is on-call. He's a cardiac anesthesiologist at the University of MN Hospital who specializes in babies.

We were talking about lawns and landscaping, and he said all the guys in the cul-de-sac share a few pieces of equipment (aireator, fertilizer broadcaster, etc) that they all use. I'm looking forward to getting to that point where we have a nice lawn to take care of. It's all coming very soon.

We met up with Adam, Jes and Jackson afterwords for an early lunch, and then purchased some stuff for the bedrooms. Sara had a chance to bounce some color options off Jes and get her opinion. I think we're going to do something a little different in the bonus room to add some brighter colors to the upstairs. We'll see.

We're just over a month away. . .

Cabinets 2.0

Sara and I were able to go out to the house together Tuesday night and see a lot more movement inside on the cabinets and trim.

Sara is looking at the kitchen island here. Yesterday when I was out at the house it was in two pieces. We had them put routered tops on the backside of the island so we can use what would otherwise be dead space. Sara is playing around with the doors because we put blue motion slow close on the doors and drawers in the kitchen.



The put together the cabinets above the hearth today. The open looking doors in the center on the top will have glass. Our first cabinet drawing had all of these the same height. I'm very glad we got some definition to the kitchen by having them vary the heights on the cabinets. It is really coming together nicely.







This is a big locker area in the mudroom off of the garage. We'll have coat hangers in the open area, and will be able to store stuff in the part up top. The bottom is open for those pairs of shoes we choose to keep in the house.


The top of the stairs is coming together. This wasn't done yesterday.



They also put the laundry room together today. We'll have counter top across the washer and dryer. There is a sink next to the door, and we'll have a bar to hang close from the upper cabinets to the wall by the door.





After we went to the house, we did a whirlwind tour (actually, Tuesday AND Wednesday nights) to Menards, Home Depot, Lowes, Village (yes, after all of our selections, one of our tiles was back ordered for a few months) and Sherwin Williams. I'm 99.9% sure we picked out our stain. And we've purchased nearly all of our lights now.

We even ran into our builder Tom at the Home Depot Tuesday looking for lights for his new cabin in Wisconsin.