Hardware In

This place is almost done. There is still cardboard on the floors and a whole lot of little things here and there (and everywhere), but we really are very close. They've been cleaning windows and fixing nail pops this week. Yesterday, they installed most of the hardware on the cabinets. It looks great.

Sara and I were out at the house for a while last evening with my parents. I forgot to bring the camera, so cell phone pictures will have to do. My parents had brought a nice little table with a couple of chairs for our front porch. I didn't take a picture of that, but it will be nice for coffee in the morning.

We measured up the hearth so that we could be absolutely certain what we wanted to do for the back splash and mosaic in the hearth. I think we're 99% there, and in fact will probably have Village place the order today.

We have the same knobs and pulls throughout the house, so here are a few decent pictures of what they look like.

This is a picture of the lockers in the mudroom.



These are the upper cabinets around the boarder of the kitchen. I think we're going to have more places to put stuff than we have stuff to put in places.


This is on the island. We have a big roll out drawer here for garbage and recycling.


The dishwasher, which for some reason was ordered late (after most of the rest of the appliances) has arrived and has been installed.


We showed my mom and dad around the house. They hadn't been in it for months, and although I know they follow this blog religiously, the changes since they were actually here are dramatic. We got some more good advice and a few things, and they helped us mark where we want the shower rod in the guest bathroom.

We have a few items that we now know will NOT be done on time. We have a vessel sink that didn't take the sealant well (and I guess has been ruined as a result). The replacement and the ring which is used to mount the sink on the cabinet are both on back order and won't be here until mid-June.

Our pendant lights aren't here yet, but we do expect them to be here before we close.

I'm anxious to head over there tonight or tomorrow during the day. It's actually nice and sunny out today (first day in a week), so hopefully they've poured the patio, and maybe they pushed it and poured the sidewalk too.

Lots of tours this weekend, which will be fun since it is so close to being done.

Driveway, Carpet and Closets

We started out the day today going out to the house in hopes that they would be able to pour the driveway, sidewalk and maybe the patio today. They were supposed to pour it yesterday, but it was raining intensely and they weren't even able to start. We're hopeful that they can get this done soon as it needs several weeks before we can drive on it. At the same time, we don't want them to rush it and pour a driveway that breaks up in a few years.

They felt like they could get it done today, so we had them move the flow of it a little bit and said "have at it." I've got pictures below of what it looked like when we arrived, and what it looks like now.

Before going into the office, I swung down to Edina to pick up all of our closets from The Container Store. I had written before that we found a system we liked that is apparently very user friendly and easy to install. We'll see this weekend when friends and family are helping us put these up :)

You can see here the pallet of stuff they somehow fit in my truck. They seemed to do a nice job coding each closet space, and they confirmed several times that all of the components are there. Somehow I envision the stereotypical install where we get to the end and have seemingly important, but small, parts left over. I guess we'll see six months from now when all of the sudden all of our clothes fall from the walls.


It was a hectic day for both of us. Although more so for Sara. We're a few days out from graduation, which is nice, but she's still doing the work for about 12 at work, and we're still not done building this house.

I came home after work and shortly thereafter we went back out to the house. We had a detour at Home Depot to pick up another light, and replace some bulbs that I purchased incorrectly. We also returned some mudroom locker hooks that we didn't like.

They did a significant amount of work on the house both inside and out today, which is always fun to see.

You can see from these next two pictures that the carpet up and down the stairs is now in.



Here are the double doors between the foyer and the office. This picture was actually taken this morning. They are in the mudroom and have a coat of stain on them now.


They took the cardboard and tape off of all of the granite. It is dusty, but now you can start to see what the counter tops look like. We signed off officially tonight on a back splash around the counters and glass tile in the hearth. I hope it turns out as cool as I envision it because it was something I really wanted to have in the kitchen.



The carpet in the great room is all installed. I hadn't thought of this before, but an apparently frequent blog reader (I'll call him "Mitch Odland" to protect his anonymity) suggests maybe a flat screen television in the space above the fireplace. Here I thought the space was way too narrow for a television and that we'd have to set my old boom box there and just listen to music. Props to "Mitch" for the idea. We're on it.


Here are a few pictures of the non-driveway from when we arrived there this morning. They were pretty well set up to pour it, that is until we changed the direction and slant from garage to street. It didn't take them long to design it as we wanted.




This is what I saw when we went back out to the house this evening. It had been solidifying and curing (or whatever cement does once it is poured) for five or six hours. When we arrived, it started raining. We're going to assume (since this is what we've been told) that it had plenty of time to sit and dry. I guess the rain at this point isn't going to do anything to hurt it. Assuming all that is true, we're very happy with the way it turned out. As you can see off to the right between the edge of the driveway and the pillars, there is no sidewalk yet. I guess that's for another day. The patio isn't poured yet in the back yard either.



Thank you sweetheart for heading over to the house while the driveway was still soft to memorialize our build for years to come. This was an important piece. We may sell this house many years from now. But it will always be the house we built together, and subsequent owners can't make that claim.


We spent some time at the house tonight putting blue tape on the walls where we want mirrors, towel bars, robe hooks, toilet paper holders and other hardware installed. We expect most of that will be done tomorrow, and that they'll also at least start installing the knobs and pulls on all of the cabinets.

They're fixing all of the inevitable nail pops right now too. I guess we can anticipate more of that for at least the first year. They also placed the plastic over the insulation in the unfinished basement today.

We officially ordered 5 bar stools that should be ready for pick up yet this week. We're pretty sure they will match the floor, granite and paint very well. And we know they will be a comfortable place to eat at least until we are able to get a dining room table.

We're excited to be able to show the unfinished house to a lot of family this weekend descending upon Blaine for Sara's MBA Graduation. Looking forward to lots of advice, and maybe a little help for the few remaining things we have going on.

This is the point where we're so close, but yet there are limitless little things that seemingly will never be done on time. Of course almost all of them will. More importantly, those that don't will get done shortly there after.

Carpet and Land Grading

Today Village starting laying the carpet and Justin graded the whole lot in advance of them pouring the driveway and sidewalk which is "scheduled for tomorrow." By "scheduled for tomorrow," of course, I mean sometime later this week or next after it quits pouring rain.

On the way home tonight before I stopped out at the house I swung by Sherwin Williams to pick out a few different options for the color of the front door. We have to decide on that sometime later this week. We're looking at a red potentially, or maybe black. I think we're looking to have some accent on the front of the house aside from flowers and landscaping, so it is likely we'll go with some version of red.

They moved the boards from the street to the smaller garage door today and put the lock box on the door inside the garage.

As I wrote, Village started carpeting today. Most of it is at least set in place. Some is cut, and some is even cut and stretched into place.

The great room is really coming together. This carpet is so comfortable. The cats are going to love it.



We have a very short, tight carpet here in the office. It will accommodate a rolling office chair and is supposed to be fairly durable.



The steps heading up to the second floor is the only area where they didn't lay the carpet today. As you can see, they did get the pad down. Up the stairs and into the hallway we got an upgraded, supposedly very strong and durable carpet. It's also pretty comfortable.



Our bedroom is the only room where we switched up the color scheme from the browns/tans that are in the rest of the house to a grey that fits the theme of the paint and the master bath. This, like the great room, is very comfortable and warm.


The carpet in the two guest bedrooms upstairs and the bonus room are the same.



The land looks significantly different today than when we were out there yesterday evening meeting with a potential landscaper. Justin said he was grading and moving dirt for about three hours today. Here is two pics from the front of the house.




This picture is out the front door.


They are scheduled to pour the driveway in the morning, but it looks increasingly unlikely that they will be able to because of the rain. We probably should have had it poured last week as they recommend a couple of weeks before we drive on it (and certainly before we park on it). My guess is it will be later this week or maybe early next before they get to it.

I'm going to head out there in the morning just in case, but I doubt they'll be doing any outside work. Village, however, should be able to finish the carpet tomorrow. Also, we traded emails with Shelly today and placed the order for the final back splash and hearth in the kitchen. I'm hopeful they'll be able deliver and install the product before we close.

A Quick Look Back 2.0

On June 15th, our friend Kevin Huntington put together this huge memo for us on market analysis and homes available in the area. We were hoping for a couple ideas for homes available in the Eagan/Apple Valley area, and he went above and beyond.

Since I don't do a good job ever deleting emails, I was looking back at the email from that day. It was funny, he started the email "Hey Tieds and Tieds." (Kevin was an usher in our wedding).

He wrote about how the market had fallen in the area, and what might be available if we chose to stick around that part of the metro area. He told us at the time that "while there are super bank deals in certain parts of the metro, (in which you probably don't want to live), the crazy good deals around your area aren't always as common." That's all very technical stuff from my lawyer/Realtor friend.

We spent a little bit of time over the next few weeks driving around and checking out what might be available. There was a house or two just blocks away that we often saw out on walks that we really liked.

At the time though, just a couple of weeks back from our Honeymoon, we really had no plans to move.

On June 23rd, Kevin put together a matrix for us on homes in Sara's association in Chanhassen and my association in Eagan. After all, if we were going to move into a new home, surely we'd have to sell our two homes. That was a no-brainer.

I remember looking at the comps in our two neighborhoods wondering how we'd swing selling either of the two townhomes let alone both given the current market.

We decided at the time to keep in touch with Kevin and continue to see what's out there. We were in no hurry and were in the middle of Summer hopeful to spend time at the lake and just generally have a relaxing Summer.

Closets and Landscaping

Sara and I spent a bunch of time today working on closets, kitchen bar stools and landscaping.

We drove down to the Container Store late morning and spent a few hours there working on finalizing designs on most of the closets in the home. They have a system called Elfa that is totally adjustable, and is somewhere between the fixed wire closets, and a fixed system that California Closets design. We have a few little tweaks here and there, but have ordered a great system for all of the closets except for the two guest bedrooms. They are scheduled to be ready for me to pick up early Wednesday morning. They will come packaged by room, and will be ready for us to install before we move in.

On the way back to Blaine, we stopped at Hom Furniture in Coon Rapids. Getting furniture in the house is going to be a process, and what we have will suffice for a while. The one first exception is a place to eat. At some point we're going to get a nice kitchen table and chairs, but for the time being we're planning to do meals around the island. So we went shopping at Hom for medium height bar stools. Sara had found some at Crate and Barrel that are very nice. They will take weeks to get in, and are a little more than we wanted to spend. We happened to find some at Hom that we really like that are on sale right now. We put in an order, which we'll probably execute early this week. They also have matching chairs we could eventually purchase for the dining room.

On the way out, Sara saw a recliner that she fell in love with. I think it is likely we'll purchase it as well (if not now, sometime down the line).

We met with a potential landscaper this evening to start the process of getting landscaping bids. Kevin with B&D has done work for a couple of neighbors in the cul-de-sac, and came as a recommendation of Tom three houses down. Kevin seems like a great guy. He was very honest (maybe overly honest about how everyone in the field is chasing down work). He surveyed the land, gave us some homework (books on trees, shrubs, rock and retaining walls) and is going to get back to us with a menu of options and prices. He said they are working a couple of weeks out right now. We've come to the realization that we probably won't have grass when we move in, but we're in a pretty good spot to get it done shortly thereafter.

We took Kevin over to our mortgage broker Nate's house to show him an example of what we like. I think Nate's wife considered calling 911 as we haven't yet met her, yet we were poking around their front yard.

Anyway, we look forward to seeing what Kevin comes up with, and plan to get at least one, and probably two more bids.

I think we decided over the weekend which glass mosaic we're going with in the kitchen. We're going to work with Village to try to get that ordered and installed before we close. It is a chocolate/caramel color.

Tomorrow they start the carpet, and Tuesday the driveway and sidewalk will be poured.

We decided definitively that we need to get gutters installed now, before the landscaping goes in. So my next task is to get a couple of bids for that project.

Sara leaves for Fresno in the morning for her first of three trips out to California before we close. That means I'll have to write our name in the wet driveway cement Tuesday without her.

Let there be Light

If everything goes as planned, three weeks from right now I'll be waking up and enjoying my first cup of coffee in our new house for the first time.

More importantly, three weeks from today Sara WON'T be at a coffee shop doing homework. I'll hopefully be preparing an omelet and strawberries for her, maybe to eat on the front porch if it's nice out (we won't yet have a deck).

Sara and I went to Gaytee Stained glass yesterday afternoon for our second trip. TJB puts a piece of stained glass in all of their homes. It's one of their trademarks and part of the deal if you want to build with them. We'll have a custom designed stained glass window in the transom between the foyer and study in the front of the house. It's an odd place (maybe that's to be expected at a stained glass store in Uptown), but the people are very nice and they had our design all sketched out and ready to go. We picked out the pieces of glass we're going to use for different components. It took us all of 20 minutes and we were on our way. I didn't take pictures of the sketch to add here, but we're going to like it. It is simple and reflects some very important values of ours. The types of glass we were able to choose fit the theme too, which I think will really add to that part of the house.

After picking up Sara's graduation cap and tassels from the U (see above regarding the homework issue) we enjoyed some Punch Pizza at the U and then headed up to Blaine out to the house.

With the exception of the carpet, fridge, vessel sink, mirrors and a couple of lights (oh, and US) basically everything is in the house now. For the next few weeks it is a matter of all of the little details, and making sure there were no mistakes. We have a couple of walk throughs to make sure everything is perfect.

The lights and the water are now functional. We arrived at the house early enough that we could still look around without them, but it was fun to see everything functioning. You will recall that we did the electrical walk through months ago when we literally walked around the house with the electrician and told him where we wanted every outlet, light and light switch. Turning lights on in the house last night, I think we generally got it right.

We're still debating on what to do with the light we put in the foyer. We really like it, but it might hang down just a little too far. We still have one chain link we can remove, and it is right on the edge of being just a little too low.

This is the light in the the study with a view of the side wall. It is cool to see these up and working.


Here is the chandelier in the stairs on the way up to the second floor. You can see this is one of the little details we need to take care of. (One of the lights is out). I'm hopeful that it is just the bulb he installed and not one non-functioning light on the chandelier. Either way, it will be fixed. We're really happy with the family of lights we picked out throughout the house.



The next two pictures are in the master bedroom. We took a lot of liberties here to make it just the way we want it. There is soffit around the vault where, as you can see, we have lighting that turned out awesome. We'll eventually put speakers up in the corners as well.




The garage lights are all working too, and as you can see they built in the stairs up to the door. At the bottom of the stairs is all of the paperwork that the inspectors need to sign off on as they do their inspections. Looks like we're on schedule to have everything inspected and approved.



And this is what the house looks like from the street with the outside recessed lights in, and the chandelier on. We had purchased 100 watt "day light" CFL bulbs for the outside recessed lights. The ones that were installed are soft white and don't really give off enough light outside. We'll have to get that changed. Other than that, I think this looks great, and it is fun to see a lit up house from the street.

Plumbing and Lighting

They are supposed to be wrapped up with all of the plumbing and lighting later today (at least all that they can, as our fridge and dishwasher aren't here yet).

We've learned that we have lights we ordered that we aren't able to us. We planned to put a hanging light right inside the front door, but the light we chose hangs down too low, both in terms of code, and in terms of how it would look. We'll have to send that light back and probably replace it with one of the flush mount lights that we have all around the hallways. The electrician might have thrown away some of the links that make the light shorter and longer. If they threw away parts to our light, that will obviously be a huge problem. But we're hopeful that the parts are in a drawer sometime.

This is the light in the semi-formal dining room off of the kitchen. It is going to be above the center of a table, which we will purchase sometime in the future.



You can see here (kind of) that the bulbs are all in in the recessed lights.


This is the chandelier in the stairwell heading upstairs. We were worried about whether or not we were purchasing something that was too small, or too big. I think we purchased on that is about the right size.



I had written earlier that we wanted to develop a cool powder bath on the main floor. The tile and glass mosaic is all installed, as is the faucet. The vessel bowl was in the bathroom earlier this week and we're not actually sure where it went. But at some point it will be here on top of the cabinet.


They installed the washer and dryer in the laundry room.


They also just put in the bath tub and the faucets. This is one of the only rooms on the second floor (other than the bonus room) that has windows out to the street. This will obviously be the first set of windows that get blinds or shades.


They flipped the fixtures in the master bath to have them face downward. Under each of them we will have a mirror, and in between the mirrors we are looking to put a medicine cabinet.


While we have a few changes to make, they are basically done with the master shower, which we are very excited about. You can see the huge rainshower (we are going to raise it up a little) and the removable hand held (which has about six different settings). The glass mosaic around the shower turned out great. The only issue in the shower that we have is that the handles they installed don't match. Two of them have white handles and the other one is chrome like the rest of the shower. We're working with the plumber to get these switched out.


There probably won't be a lot of significant change today. We're hopeful the vessel will be in the power bath. But other than that, most of the fixtures that we have at the house are already in. We're still waiting on the new pendants over the island, and as I mentioned we have to switch out the light right inside the front door.

This afternoon, Sara and I are going to the stained glass place and are going to try to finalize the stained glass between foyer and the office.

We're also going to go back to the Container Store to get the master closet and several other closet systems ordered. We'll hopefully be able to do that yet this evening (since the Twins game is canceled that we were going to attend).