Friday, January 21, 2011

January 2011 Update #3 - Door, Floors, Faucets, and Winter

The move-in date of end of January/Early February continues to remain on track.  We had electrical, tile, finishing, central vac, and security in the last couple of days.  Many of the purchased lights and fans are now up, the central vac unit is ready to go, grouting of the downstairs and the kick-plates in the kitchen and baths are complete.  Trim work and painting continues in many of the rooms.  Next week (January 24th) we will get appliances, downstairs vanity, laundry room, and continue work on inside trim and outside soffits.  Now for pics of the of the above subject matter:

A peaceful scene around sunset after the light snow on January 20, 2011.  This picture is looking at the lake from the deck.  It gets cold in a hurry when the sun goes down and the yard is covered with snow.


Welcome back to the inside of the house.  This is a picture from near the door to the deck looking back to the front entrance.  Well, how do you like the floors?  This is the first coat of stain.  They will come in and buff the floors once more and then apply a polyurethane finish to really shine them.  We think they look great.


A view of the family room with the semi-finished floors.  The darker stained wood is the heart-cut material and the lighter is the more traditional hickory floor.


Dining Room


Master Bedroom.  We used the same stain in all rooms, but the lighting and amount of heart-cut can make the floors look different.


Sewing Room


Office


Special order doors for office and sewing room.  Notice they are the same grill pattern as the windows. Pretty neat don't you think?  The doors will be painted white.


This is the faucet in the Master Bath.  Each sink will have this style faucet.


Last photo, this is the faucet for the sink in the kitchen.  Well we have had an exciting week of change at the house and helping my Dad through knee replacement surgery.  He is home and mending and now I get to go to Waco/College Station to practice my moving skills as Ann and Jared leave for their new home in College Station.  Jared got a nice promotion and Ann gets a brand new house to decorate.  Hopefully she will update her blog with her new home pictures.  Well, we hope to have a lot of new items to report at the next posting so stay tuned.  We should be open for business (receiving guests) by March 1 so make your reservations early.  

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Update #2 January 2011 - Cabinets, Vanities, and Granite

Well, let's start this posting with perhaps one of our best bargins for the house.  This is a very exotic piece of granite that the supplier had left over from another job and it just fit the vanity in our master bath.  Remember that the master bath has a different tile than the rest of the upstairs and it was chosen to compliment this special piece of granite.  The vanity is made from hickory, just like the floors, and was custom made by a very gifted and talented cabinet maker in Mountain Home.  The company has been around for 30+ years and he has recently finished an entertainment center and kitchen for our daughter in Springfield, Mo.  We will be doing the kitchen, sewing bathroom, laundry room, downstair bathroom, small kitchen downstairs, and an entertainment center in the downstairs family room. 

Staying with the granite work, this is our selection for the kitchen.  The granite is called Ornamental and it is a mixture of brown and gray spots on a white background.  It is very complimentary to the floor tile and the cabinets. 


This is the raised bar behind the sink.  This is some of the cabinet work I mentioned earlier.


This is the long counter with the stove and the upper cabinet for the microwave (see opening at left ).  This gives you a good view of the tile, cabinets, and a little of the granite in the kitchen.


This is the small counter with the opening for the ice maker and the slot for the refrig at the far right.


This is the vanity in the sewing room bathroom.  The counter top will be white  marble.


These three pictures are the buffet and china that Steph designed and our cabinet maker was able to produce.  The kitchen is a dream and is everything we hoped it would be.  We are very pleased with the
quality of the work by Staley and Sons Cabinets shop.  Well this will get to the latest stage of the house.  We will update on the sealing and staining of the wood floors very soon.  The week of January 17 will be busy as we get all outside metal installed, connecting water to the house, install all plumbing, lighting, ceiling fans, and tile for the downstairs family room.  We needed to have extra heat in the house for the wood floor work so the geothermal unit was turned on to help dry the floors.  I think we are going to be very happy with the geothermal system as it was able to warm the house to the low 70's even though we have not completed sealing the house from the outside.  Stay tuned for another update very soon.

Happy New Year 2011 - Update on Floor, Ceilings, and Outside

Well the new year is here and we received a little dose of winter.  This is a picture looking out to the northwest of the back of the house.  Our land runs down to the tree line and that's the lake in the upper right corner of the picture.  The trees are virtually bare of leaves and we can see completely through the woods.


Moving to the inside of the house, the wood ceiling in the upstairs family room is finally complete.  The work was more involved than originally expected, but Pat and Niles stayed with it and the result is outstanding, in our opinion.  The wood is pine and the stain is a light cherry.

Well, let's start showing off the floors since we have the ceiling all finished.  This is the master bedroom with the hickory floor installed.  Installation is just step 1 in a multi step process.  The next step is to sand, then stain and seal, a coat of polymer, and then a final polyurethane coat right before we move into the house.  The hickory was grown,  milled, and made into flooring all in the state of Arkansas.


Continuing with the floor theme, this is Steph's sewing room.  Like the master, this is just the installation phase.  Notice the light and dark shades in the wood.  We have selected a mixture of hickory heartcut (the darker pieces) and regular grade hickory (the lighter material) to give different shading when stained.


This is the family room with the flooring and the wood burning stove  under the wrapping on the brick hearth.  We have peeked at the stove and it is as pretty as the picture (see earlier posting for website).  We have kept it covered to avoid any accidental damage with all the work on the floors and ceilings.  We hope to unwrap it soon and season it with a big fire while the nights are still cold.


Another picture of the wood floor in the family room and my office.


Back outside, a very important part of the house was recently completed.  We now have a state approved septic system.  We have a large holding tank in the ground behind the house and it drains to the septic system in the above picture.  We have 6 lines and a water curtain to divert run off from the house and driveway.  Well that's it for Update #1 for 2011.  The exciting news is we are on track to begin moving-in by the end of January.  Keep your fingers crossed all goes well and on schedule from now until the end of the month.