We Have a Kitchen (Mostly)

Just 2 days after the tile was installed, the tile has now been grouted. Not only that, but all the trim work throughout the house has been completed, and all the cabinets, doors, shelves, etc. have been installed as well. On to the pictures. 

Here is what the kitchen looks like now.

Emily approves. 

Here is a view of the island from within the kitchen. You can also see the wood mantle in the background. 

The nice large pantry. All the doors in the house also match the door in this picture. 

This is the vanity in the master bathroom (extra tall). 

The 4th bedroom (master closet). 

Crown cap over the front door. 

Last but not least, cabinets in the laundry room.

Tile, More Cement

Q. How many men does it take to tile a bathroom?

A. Depends on how thinly you slice them. 

Ok, enough humor for today. They have mostly finished tiling the house today. There are still a few areas left to complete. They also still need to grout. Here are a few photos.

Looking toward the back of the house from just inside the front door.

This is a view from the back door. Well, technically the back door was locked, so I popped open a window on the back patio so Em could take this picture. Where the electrical cord is coming out of the floor is where the kitchen island/eating bar will be. Hope to see that by the end of the week. We'll see. 

Opened up another window on the back of the house to take this picture. Master bathroom - can can kind of see the tile in there. 

They also poured the driveway and porches, yesterday I'm assuming. Garage doors were also installed last week. We also have a huge mountain of dirt in the front yard, only partly visible in this photo. 

Back porch. We decided to add an additional 10' by 10' section of concrete to have a larger place for patio furniture, etc.

Daisy also enjoyed checking out the backyard today. 

Really. Dry. Walls. No, wait. I mean we have drywall.

The drywall was delivered to the house on Wednesday the 11th of August and mostly completed by Friday the 13th. All they lack is mud on some joints on the ceilings as well as putting mud over all the screws to hide them. 

So we went from the living room looking like this on Wednesday...

...to the living room looking like this on Friday. You can see the guy on stilts to the far right side of the picture. Emily and Daisy are also checking things out through the back windows.

Here is a view into the kitchen from the living room. That's the pantry there on the right. The kitchen sink will be directly underneath the window. 

This view is from just inside the front door looking toward the back of the house. Just to the right would be the dining room/office. The doorway on the left leads to the 2 guest bedrooms, guest bath, the laundry room and the garage. 

The dining room/office. You can see a bit of the archway.

This is the master bedroom. 

She's a Brick.....House!

That's right, as of Monday, the bricking of our house is now complete. Keep in mind that the following photos represent 25 days since footings for the house were poured. 

Overall view of the house. Lots of equipment, sand and extra bricks still in the way. They still have to brick around the wood supports on the front porch.

Close up view of the front porch. The 2 wood posts will be bricked about 40% of the way up.

Rear view of the house.

Side of the house. This is the best representation of what the brick color is like. It's meant to look like an antique/recycled brick.

Drinking on the Job

Pedro and his construction buddies apparently aren't afraid to throw back a few cold ones while in the process of building our house.

Count that as one very distinct advantage that a career in construction has over a career in banking (banker's typically will be required to leave the jobsite in order to grab a beer).

Let's just hope that whoever was drinking that beer wasn't part of the electrician crew that installed all the wiring in our house. I would think that sobriety would be an advantage when working with electricity. On the other hand, I would think alcohol on the job would almost be a requirement if one were a plumber (no offense to plumbers, its no wonder they charge so damn much). 

Anyhow, here are some pictures of the progress that has been made in the last week or so. The first picture is of the breaker box in the garage. You can see the yellow wiring leaving the box and heading out all over the house. 

This is the master shower. Emily declined to pose for this picture. 

Ductwork. We decided to go ahead and have air conditioning installed in the house, which seems like a wise decision, considering its been about 105 degrees here for the last several days.

Brick has been delivered. I expect within the next week the house will be fully bricked. Stay tuned. 

We also have a nice giant pile of sand in front of the house now. This will be for the masons (awesome vocabulary) to use when mixing the mortar. 

Lastly, we have Daisy checking out some leftover wire left by the electricians.