Occupancy permit

Our contractor gave us a faxed copy of the occupancy permit for our new house today.

Not everything is done yet, but she said that we can probably start moving into our new (completed) house by midweek next week.

Yeah.

Driveway, sidewalk, hardwood floor

The window well covers are completed, as well. They ended up costing us about $500 apiece.

The infamous sidewalk is in. The County really didn't want us to put a sidewalk in: they just wanted the money to spend elsewhere. Given our situation (likely to be pulled into the City), we knew that money was just going to be gone -- so we put in a sidewalk, for less than what the County was going to extort from us anyway.

Oh, yes, here's some more time-reversal. Above: the completed driveway. Below: in progress.


Our Ipe' flooring is done. It looks pretty nice! Our floor-finishing sub was taking photos of it as well -- I think he likes how it turned out, too...


This Friday we will be doing a walk-thru with our contractors, so we really are nearing the end of this part of the project. Then will come the move-in, landscaping, etc. The grounds around the place are a disaster so it will take some work there. We probably will hire some help for assistance on that end.

House update (what else is new?)

The upstairs fireplace surround and mantel. We went with more of a minimalist approach here. The rainforest brown marble looks pretty good!

This is the powder bath, showing the lights and just a little bit of the shower stall on the right. The mirror has not been put in yet.

This shows the master bath shower. Oh, by the way, we have learned that the shower doors have been installed. More photos on that later this week or weekend.

Our kitchen backsplash above the range. The range and hood are functional!

Finally, a photo of our 2-tier dining room lamp. It's up and wired in.

The final inspections for the electrical, plumbing and HVAC have been completed, with no problems.

Coming up: the last of the exterior concrete work, driveway/sidewalk paving, finishing the hardwood (Ipe'). We have decided on the bathroom accessories (towel bars etc) and are going with Kohler "Devonshire" stuff, in oil rubbed bronze. The best prices we have found for this kind of thing are from FaucetDirect.com (no $$ for this plug, oh well ;).

Resources

I thought it would be good to list some of our favorite places we have shopped at for various parts of our house project. We're not getting any endorsement $$ for this, just want to give credit for some good businesses that excel in customer service and in many cases are just good people. In no particular order:

Wood/ceramic/stone flooring and accessories: Stone-Wood Outlet. We bought our Ipe' flooring there, for $2.99/SF, and paid the same price for the 12x12 glass mosaic stuff we used for the upstairs bathroom vanity top; and also bought our Baltic Brown mini-slabs there for a good price.

Good products, very helpful/knowledgeable: Emser Tile. Natural and ceramic/glass tiles and accessories.

Lots of natural/ceramic surface material, helpful: Portland Direct

Used/surplus building materials and antique/funky items. Great folks: Building Material Recycling This is where we got our fir doors! They also sell new doors with manufacturer warranties for about 75% off list, and can get the doors pre-hung for a pretty good price too.

Lighting: the Globe outlet store in Portland. That's where we found our nice art-glass lights for a very deep discount. They were very helpful, despite the fact that they weren't making much money on that part of the job.

Metal fabricator for the window well covers: Alameda Metalworks

Stone for the exterior and fireplace: Avison. They are now owned by Weyerhauser. Maybe they were amused by our toiling over the "pit run" for our rock, or just took pity on us, but in any event they would often bring up some good stuff to make it easier for us.

I'm sure I will think of more but these folks really stand out. YMMV but that's always the case.

House progress report

Here's a photo showing the wet bar upstairs. The Baltic Brown granite is installed, along with the sink, faucet and backsplash. The under-cabinet lights are there, waiting to be installed. We bought the granite in 18" x 26" "mini-slabs" from our favorite local flooring surplus store here, for a little over $10/square foot.

Another photo of the upstairs shower-bath surround. The Marmoleum flooring has been installed, and you can see the toilet has, too.

Upstairs vanity, plumbing and backsplash completed.

This shows a bit of our Rainforest Brown marble we got for the upstairs fireplace surround. Some of the pieces turned out to be book-matched and we will take good advantage of that.

Here's another shot of one of our nice ceiling lights. This is over the Nook.

Finally, here's a photo showing the state of the kitchen backsplash. The area behind the range is being worked on at the moment. The vent over the range has been installed, too.

Lisa took all these photos.

Things they be a happenin' !

Yet to be done: More concrete work. That includes the front steps, a set of steps from the master bath rear door, the steps from the garage up to the utility room, and a small 3 X 3 pad for the side garage door. Grouting the floor slate. Installing the stair steps and risers. Finishing the floors/stairs and sealing the slate. Paving the driveway and sidewalk. Moving in (?)...maybe in early June...party!

We did run into a small "gotcha" regarding the downstairs Fir doors. Lisa and I hunted those down and got them hung; but apparently that didn't include routing out all the recesses for the door hardware. So that needs to be done before the door hardware can be installed. We definitely revealed our "newbie" status there when it comes to housebuilding....

Family; house details

Our mother, age 83, died a about 1 week ago. Her passing was very quiet and easy. Breast cancer had spread too far in her body and precluded any remedy. She won't see the house in person, but we did make a video walk-through of the place and were able to show it to her before she died. My wife told me not to give up my day job, but I thought the video came out OK for an unscripted piece. It won't go on YouTube though.

This photo shows our wet bar countertop and backsplash in progress. The tile backsplash is Pratt & Larsen handmade tiles we bought at their outlet store for $1.50/lb. We had thought we would use a nice brown and white marble called "rainforest brown", but it didn't work well with the Baltic Brown granite we are using for the countertop. However....

The rainforest brown marble does work well with the Ipe' floor. So we're going to use it around the upstairs fireplace and trim it with a rust-colored 1/2" X 12" ceramic tile we got from Emser tile.

This is a photo of the marble and a dark glass tile. Taken at the Emser show room.

And last in this series, a photo of one of the chandeliers we purchased. This is a very nice art-glass and bronze piece. It may not be obvious from this photo, but the piece has oak leaf details. We got this, and a matching ceiling fixture for the master bed room, at the Globe outlet store in Portland. The chandelier originally sold for about $500 but was marked down to $160 because it's on closeout. We also got a 2-tier version for the dining room with a similarly great discount.