Hi everyone! Its Sarah, filling in for Brett today.
Here is our house as it looks currently. What you're seeing below is our basement. Our basement walls have now been sitting over a week, which is a good thing - our basement walls support our home, and they want the concrete to be as solid as possible. The difference in these pictures versus last week's pictures, is that now they have pushed all the dirt back up around the side of the house. They do this when they consider the walls strong enough to begin bearing support.
The little box popping out is where our stairs will be, exiting the walk-out pit. Hard to imagine at this point.
Above this NW corner of the house will be the front bedroom - still undecided whether we're going to use that as a guest bedroom or an office. In the basement, this corner will have our sump pump, air conditioner, humidifier, etc.
The white piping going up the wall is the location we chose for our bar downstairs.
After speaking with our superintendent last week (I have been calling him every other week to get updates, as they encourage us to do; will begin calling weekly once framing starts) it sounds like the slab - i.e. basement floor and garage floor - will be poured early this week. Because the floor does not support anything immediately, they don't really wait on this to start the next step - FRAMING!!
Framing is when our house really will come together. A house down the street is being framed currently, and its so fun to start seeing defined rooms. My dad will be down to visit next weekend for 2 nights and we really hope to have a partially-framed home to walk him through.
Today, we also went to Star Lumber for a two-hour appointment. We made selections on the following:
Carpet (bedrooms, living room) and carpet mat
Wood floors (kitchen, dining, walk-in pantry)
Vinyl (laundry room)
Countertops (kitchen, bathrooms)
Tile flooring (entry way, bathrooms)
Tile backsplash (kitchen, bathrooms)
This morning's appointment was a total blast. Brett and I are SO decisive, and like EXACTLY the same things - thank heavens!! We both lean to dark neutrals with a rustic or unique pattern. Our sales person was also extremely knowledgeable and not pushy whatsoever, so we never felt pressured to spend more money than we were comfortable with.
We started with carpet and carpet pad. We had SIX types of carpet pad to select. I figured there was one type used worldwide and thats it! Anyway, it was fun to throw our shoes off and try out different things. We ended up selecting a neutral carpet color with a 10-year warranty, and the 3rd carpet pad out of our selections which has a 15-year warranty.
Wood floors - we chose the basic 3-inch pine floors. Our only upgrade here was a sealant/protectant. We will choose stain colors once our cabinets are in. We'll go 2 shades lighter than our cabinets (which are somewhat dark.)
Vinyl - not much to say. We did the prettiest vinyl we could find (dark, geometric pattern.) Entry and bath tile flooring were easy to choose, as was bathroom tile backsplash.
Because the kitchen is a huge deal to us, we upgraded both the kitchen countertops and tile backsplash. Once we put all kitchen selections on the table in front of us, I was literally hopping up and down with excitement (imagine that.) We cannot afford granite countertops at this point, so we are installing formica, however we chose a textured formica that is a decent upgrade from our standard choices (of which there were about 60 choices - so seriously, I'm picky about my kitchen.) To tie together our counters, cabinets and tile backsplash in the kitchen, we opted for a "deco" to go into the tile backsplash. You can see below, the sheet of little colored squares. Placed sporadically through our tile backsplash will be little diamonds of 4 of these squares - the squares are rustic looking, yet there are also little green glass pieces that are a perfect contrast.
Clockwise from the top - the creamy colored basic tile is the bathroom tile backsplash. The darker, large tile is the bathroom floor tile. The little tiny pieces on top of this are our bathroom countertops. Looking down, to about 3 o'clock, you see the sheet of little squares - this is our kitchen tile backsplash deco. About 5 o'clock is our kitchen tile backsplash, and the little square on top that's dark greenish-brown is our countertops. About 7 o'clock is our carpet, above that is a picture of our cabinets, and just above that is our entryway tile. This photo is reflecting somewhat of a greenish hue, just FYI. So everything is a bit less green (and more brown) in real-life than it seems here.
Overall, we think we have a very cohesive look that is contrasting in just the right places. We both left Star Lumber feeling great about our choices.
We have also selected the Whirlpool Gold appliance line for our kitchen, in stainless steel. We'll put that order in this week. So far, we are well under our overage allowance - thank goodness!!
Sorry for this ridiculously long blog post. This is what happens when Sarah finds out Brett's password. HAHA!
