It finally feels like we are moving! I have 8 days of work left counting today, 13 days until our closing date, 12 days until we are completely moved out of our house, and 26 days until Baby 2 due date!
This weekend we are headed up to a UND hockey game. Next weekend, we plan on completely getting out of the basement so we can clean it and have less to do on moving day. Hopefully we will be able to throw some things into our garage if they are done taping and texturing that. If not, we have our storage unit. We have decided to use the 26th as our moving day. We will pack up a U-Haul in Fargo that day and then stay over night in Fergus Falls to make it to closing at 8AM in Fergus. Then, let the unloading begin. We will officially "own" our new house!
As for where the house stands right now... Everything that I had them paint is painted and it turned out great. Our kitchen and bathroom cabinets are all installed and look awesome. Lovely Menard's screwed up a couple of our kitchen cabinets, but they won't do anything to "fix" the problem. It's basically our word vs theirs. They just screwed up a couple cabinets and it's something we think we can deal with, but it's not what we wanted. They put our spice cabinet in the wrong spot and we wanted a different slide out cutting board than what they ordered. Oh well... It sucks that they won't make it right, but I don't think it's worth the hassle to send the cabinet back in and reorder it especially with the time crunch of us wanting into the house before the baby comes. Our flooring is all down. We love it! We've already had compliments on our laminate flooring in the kitchen. Our lighting is all installed. Countertops should be installed next week sometime and then I think it's just trim and doors. They are also going to make a locker system in our mud room. The end is definitely near!
Once I get over to take pictures, I will post some to share! We will still have our builders coming back this spring to finish the stone on the front of the house and the screened in porch on the back. I think Nate will do the deck, but who knows. Then, this spring/summer I will be painting the kids rooms and ours hopefully. We are excited and ready to move!
I am getting more nervous/anxious/excited about putting my career on hold and staying home with two little ones. For some reason, I like packing life changes on top of each other. Five years ago, I graduated from college, got married, moved/bought a house, and found a "big girl" job. Now I am moving, quitting my job to do something even harder and more time consuming (full-time Mom), and having a second child. If there ever is a next time of big changes, maybe I can learn to spread them out a little bit!
If it wasn't for this move, I would be ready to be done with this pregnancy too. I'm starting to have the regular aches and pains that come at the end of a pregnancy. I have to say I'm less achy this time than I was with Jade. My back is stiff and sore often, but I don't have the pain in my pelvis I had last time. I can also feel the weight of baby a lot more now than before. It actually feels like I'm carrying the extra weight now. This child also likes to move a lot more than Jade ever did which can make sleeping difficult at times. Baby likes to move right before I go to sleep so I have to either fall asleep with my tummy moving or wait until baby has found a comfortable spot. Baby also thinks it's great to move early in the morning, which keeps me from falling back to sleep. By that time in the morning my back is achy from laying down all night and then I have a baby with either hiccups or ants in his/her pants. Still, I am very thankful to be pregnant for the second time with what so far seems to be a very healthy baby! We can't wait to meet the little one and see how Jade interacts and helps Mom with Baby!
Friday, February 14, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Building the "Dream House"
I just looked back to my previous posts about our house and realized I haven't really said a thing about the process we've gone through. Since I'm so far behind, I don't know where to start...
Originally we were hoping to be moved in around Christmas, but thought January was a more realistic time table. Our builder was even happy with that as a completion date. But, things didn't go as planned as I guess they often don't when building a house with a deadline and we currently are still renting our house from the new owners in West Fargo. The upside, we have a closing date set for February 27...just 13 days before Baby 2's due date. Yikes! What was the hold up? First, it was the trusses. There was a mix-up and the wrong trusses got ordered so we had to wait for OUR trusses to come in. Then, when they came in, the weather turned bad! It was too cold and snowy to work, so our builders were out a few days work due to weather. Once this happened, our move-in date was changed to January. Two more smaller things that have gone "wrong" have turned out to be things we both think we'll like in the end. Our roof line in the back was measured wrong and we will now have a covered deck in the back. I wasn't excited about that to begin with, but now that it's there, I think it will be great. We are putting a fan out there and it should provide some shade and shelter on those warm summer days. We also originally planned on having the corners of our house be the same color as the siding, but they didn't get ordered and the only color they had in stock was white. We have white trim and garage doors too, so we decided we didn't want to wait any longer and that we'd make white corner pieces be fine. I actually think it looks awesome and breaks up the green color of our siding.
Since then, things have gone pretty smooth. I have to brag and say our house is HUGE! The square footage isn't crazy big, but it looks big with a walk out basement. We have just over 1700 square feet on each floor. Our basement will be unfurnished right now and Nate will be finishing it when he can. There will be 3 bedrooms up and 2 down; 2 bathrooms up and 1 down; a mudroom with locker system and laundry room off the garage. We have a large 3 stall garage. Our master bedroom is on one side of the house with the other bedrooms on the opposite side. We realize this means we will have to walk across the house in the middle of the night right now, but will like the separation as our kids get older. Our master bedroom leads into our bath that leads into our closet. We are not tiling anything right now, partly because of the cost and partly because we didn't want to pick our tile right now. Nate has said he wants to learn how to tile, so he will either do it down the road sometime or we will have someone else come in and do it. We wanted our TV mounted on the wall in the living room and decided to have builtins put in there around the TV so it wasn't just a big wall with a TV on it. Our kitchen has a huge, 2-tierd island that opens into our living room. We will have a screened in porch right off our dining room too. This part won't get finished until this summer.
Picking our finishes... Flooring: We are doing wood laminate in the kitchen/dining room and foyer; carpet in the living room and bedrooms; and vinyl in the mudroom, laundry room, and bathrooms. Picking flooring was pretty easy for us other than it took us a long time to find our laminate. We knew what we were looking for, just had a hard time finding it. We chose a hickory flooring that's a little darker than our hickory cabinets. It has a distressed look and looks like real wood with the cracks between the boards. Carpet: We didn't need anything special here, just wanted something with a nicer cushion and fuller look and feel than what we currently have. I don't really even know the details of our carpet, I just picked one. Vinyl: We chose one vinyl for the laundry room and a different one for all the bathrooms. Both look like tile. The one we chose for the laundry room has browns in it and the one we chose for the bathrooms is grey. We really liked the dark grey tile my parents put in their bathroom and decided to do something like that. Our bathroom vanities are also hickory, so hopefully it all goes together in the end. Countertops: We originally wanted to do quartz throughout the house, but quickly realized that once we got into the colors and "design" we liked, the price sky-rocketed. We went back to the drawing board once we figured that out. We found similar granite's to what we had liked in the quartz. We are going to do one color of granite on all surfaces in the kitchen except the upper tier of the island which will be different. We saw this done in a show room in Fargo and thought it was pretty cool. That same granite used on the upper tier of the island will also be in the bathrooms, drop zone in the mudroom, and laundry room. I think that's all the major finishes we've picked. Lighting for the house has come from a smaller store in Grand Forks and Menards. We are doing a brushed bronze finish for our sink and bathroom fixtures and cabinet pulls. We have also picked a stone that will be put on the house this spring when it's nicer outside. It will be on the front of our garage, part of our house and our front porch.
To date: The outside of the house has 3 complete sides with siding. They are waiting on some warmer weather again to finish up the siding on the front. Obviously all windows and outside doors are in. Garage doors are on. The inside now has walls that have been taped, textured, and painted. We have chosen to keep similar paint colors in this house as we have in our current house. Our kitchen will go from being red to green and everything else will be the same. I'm not doing anything with the bedrooms right now. I like painting and I didn't want to make any more decisions...just wanted to get the house done. They are putting in the cabinets today and started on the flooring today! It's really coming together and so exciting to see. Today is exactly 3 weeks from our closing day! I wish I had pictures to share, but they are all on my phone and I'm too lazy to load them to the computer.
Originally we were hoping to be moved in around Christmas, but thought January was a more realistic time table. Our builder was even happy with that as a completion date. But, things didn't go as planned as I guess they often don't when building a house with a deadline and we currently are still renting our house from the new owners in West Fargo. The upside, we have a closing date set for February 27...just 13 days before Baby 2's due date. Yikes! What was the hold up? First, it was the trusses. There was a mix-up and the wrong trusses got ordered so we had to wait for OUR trusses to come in. Then, when they came in, the weather turned bad! It was too cold and snowy to work, so our builders were out a few days work due to weather. Once this happened, our move-in date was changed to January. Two more smaller things that have gone "wrong" have turned out to be things we both think we'll like in the end. Our roof line in the back was measured wrong and we will now have a covered deck in the back. I wasn't excited about that to begin with, but now that it's there, I think it will be great. We are putting a fan out there and it should provide some shade and shelter on those warm summer days. We also originally planned on having the corners of our house be the same color as the siding, but they didn't get ordered and the only color they had in stock was white. We have white trim and garage doors too, so we decided we didn't want to wait any longer and that we'd make white corner pieces be fine. I actually think it looks awesome and breaks up the green color of our siding.
Since then, things have gone pretty smooth. I have to brag and say our house is HUGE! The square footage isn't crazy big, but it looks big with a walk out basement. We have just over 1700 square feet on each floor. Our basement will be unfurnished right now and Nate will be finishing it when he can. There will be 3 bedrooms up and 2 down; 2 bathrooms up and 1 down; a mudroom with locker system and laundry room off the garage. We have a large 3 stall garage. Our master bedroom is on one side of the house with the other bedrooms on the opposite side. We realize this means we will have to walk across the house in the middle of the night right now, but will like the separation as our kids get older. Our master bedroom leads into our bath that leads into our closet. We are not tiling anything right now, partly because of the cost and partly because we didn't want to pick our tile right now. Nate has said he wants to learn how to tile, so he will either do it down the road sometime or we will have someone else come in and do it. We wanted our TV mounted on the wall in the living room and decided to have builtins put in there around the TV so it wasn't just a big wall with a TV on it. Our kitchen has a huge, 2-tierd island that opens into our living room. We will have a screened in porch right off our dining room too. This part won't get finished until this summer.
Picking our finishes... Flooring: We are doing wood laminate in the kitchen/dining room and foyer; carpet in the living room and bedrooms; and vinyl in the mudroom, laundry room, and bathrooms. Picking flooring was pretty easy for us other than it took us a long time to find our laminate. We knew what we were looking for, just had a hard time finding it. We chose a hickory flooring that's a little darker than our hickory cabinets. It has a distressed look and looks like real wood with the cracks between the boards. Carpet: We didn't need anything special here, just wanted something with a nicer cushion and fuller look and feel than what we currently have. I don't really even know the details of our carpet, I just picked one. Vinyl: We chose one vinyl for the laundry room and a different one for all the bathrooms. Both look like tile. The one we chose for the laundry room has browns in it and the one we chose for the bathrooms is grey. We really liked the dark grey tile my parents put in their bathroom and decided to do something like that. Our bathroom vanities are also hickory, so hopefully it all goes together in the end. Countertops: We originally wanted to do quartz throughout the house, but quickly realized that once we got into the colors and "design" we liked, the price sky-rocketed. We went back to the drawing board once we figured that out. We found similar granite's to what we had liked in the quartz. We are going to do one color of granite on all surfaces in the kitchen except the upper tier of the island which will be different. We saw this done in a show room in Fargo and thought it was pretty cool. That same granite used on the upper tier of the island will also be in the bathrooms, drop zone in the mudroom, and laundry room. I think that's all the major finishes we've picked. Lighting for the house has come from a smaller store in Grand Forks and Menards. We are doing a brushed bronze finish for our sink and bathroom fixtures and cabinet pulls. We have also picked a stone that will be put on the house this spring when it's nicer outside. It will be on the front of our garage, part of our house and our front porch.
To date: The outside of the house has 3 complete sides with siding. They are waiting on some warmer weather again to finish up the siding on the front. Obviously all windows and outside doors are in. Garage doors are on. The inside now has walls that have been taped, textured, and painted. We have chosen to keep similar paint colors in this house as we have in our current house. Our kitchen will go from being red to green and everything else will be the same. I'm not doing anything with the bedrooms right now. I like painting and I didn't want to make any more decisions...just wanted to get the house done. They are putting in the cabinets today and started on the flooring today! It's really coming together and so exciting to see. Today is exactly 3 weeks from our closing day! I wish I had pictures to share, but they are all on my phone and I'm too lazy to load them to the computer.