The countdown begins

So it's a week tomorrow that we are moving to the new house. This seems to have come about far too quickly. The past year has been consumed with decision making, running around and generally fretting about the house and the end is now, most definitely, in sight.

I don't want to fool you though. We are moving in a week, but the house is quite a ways from being complete. Currently the "deficiencies" include the lack of a counter on the vanity in the ensuite, the lack of taps in any of the bathrooms, the absence of a backsplash in the kitchen, the non-working lights in the kids' rooms, incomplete painting and there is no railing on the deck off the living room. It would certainly have been nice to be moving into a finished house, but I have learned that when you are building a custom home that is certainly a pipe dream. All I hope for now is to not have to make any of the guys breakfast next week!

Kitchen Wonder

As the end of this process nears, things are really starting to come together. I suppose this is what is supposed to happen, but it's still really quite amazing to see all the ideas we formed on paper and in our minds coming to fruition. While I don't think I would ever recommend this process to anyone, much of the pain is forgotten as we're starting to see the final product.

The kitchen is my favorite example of this. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

The ground around us

I know, I know. No postings lately and there has been significant progress. We're moving in 2 weeks!

We have chosen a landscaper, but what we can afford at this point is some topsoil and grass seed. We're going to prepare the base for the walkway this fall, and install the walkway in the spring. The thought there is that the ground and house need to settle over the winter before we spend money on any hardscaping. Justifiable cost diversion at work.

The bulldozer has been on site now for 3 days and there's been a bunch of dirt being pushed around. The side benefit of this has been the disappearance (at least for now) of the weeds. Very exciting!