Siding Thoughts

So I am not so sure I like the siding on the bay window. We agreed that we would do an alternative to the wood so that we wouldn't have to paint it. We were told that it would be similar but with out the maintenance. Yea not so similar....

Then there is the window by the garage on the second floor...No idea what that is going to look like when it is finished. On the plans it looks like there is an extra two windows in the extra space above the main windows. Don't think they have plans for any new windows, so I am excited to see what they tell me tomorrow when I call to discuss it.

We have siding!

We have siding, well at least most of one side of our house does!

I know, it's been a while!

Hello Blog Friends….
Okay, I know it’s been FOREVER since you heard from me, no excuse, I know I suck….any who, I haven’t had too much to say especially since Brad is so very much better at telling stories but here I go…

I had hoped my next blog that I was going to write was going to be positive…unfortunately I am a little frustrated with our electrician….He got started pretty fast, oh wait no he didn’t…he was half an hour late to our first meeting, and then when we was supposed to begin work, his car broke down and his generator broke….wait let me step back and say our electrician is really a nice guy, once he finally showed up to our walk through, he was nice and entertaining to talk to. He kept telling us that every upgrade w

ould cost 1 million dollars. He is even throwing in an extra plug, so over all he is NOT a bad guy, but let me continue. So now it’s been weeks since he started, rough electrical has even been approved, but he still has a bunch of other outlets and such to put in, and they are not being put in and we are not sure why. Our realtor told us that he would finish the Thursday before Christmas, nope. I called him that day and it went right to his voicemail telling me his mailbox was full. Called again 2 hours later on my drive over to the house, same thing. So I got smart and sent him a text….and voila he actually called me b

ack. He said he was not going over to the house (yes this day was Thursday, the day he was supposed to FINISH) and then corrected that he would be over in the afternoon, and he would definitely be finished by the following Monday. Funny when I went over at 2pm, he was not there and no new work had been completed. So I wait. I try to call him on Monday to discuss the under cabinet lighting, his mailbox is still full….I call and text on Tuesday, no answer, I stop over today, Wednesday, no new work, …so tomorrow is will be a week AFTER when our realtor said it would be done…. I am just ready to see it all done and am very excited to see it drywalled….if the electrical work ever gets done!

See NO new work done, anyone see any plugs that would be in the cabinets?

Oh Look a sign that says put a plug here...but no plug!

On a much more positive note, Topher and the kids went over to the house with me today. Jonah picked out his room, our walk in closet, and Amelia picked the office room as her bedroom. Jonah was also nice enough to not only label the bedrooms they picked, but also the fire place and wrote “Reey” (pronounced really) where someone had left their pop on a ledge!

While we were there today I noticed the support beams in the basement. Kinda weird that they are not lined up. I wonder if I can do some research and figure out if that is normal.

It is also pretty exciting to see house fully bricked (siding was supposed to be up by now too, but I don’t see any yet!)

I am really getting excited. I keep wanting to start packing things up, but then I realize I need them, or that I have NO WHERE to store boxes. We have already bought our microwave, ottoman and a leaning shelf for our house. We also got lots of things for our new house from our families from Christmas. I can’t wait to spend next Christmas in our new house!

Brick finished

The brick was finished up yesterday and Theresa was able to stop by and snap a picture. The siding should go on within the next week or so and that will complete the exterior of the structure.

The electrician is finishing up today, so hopefully we can get the insulation and drywall up soon and move on to the finishing stages.

Siding

Earlier I had posted about our siding dilemma.   Our builder had worked with the siding supplier to secure us an upgraded quality of siding, but we weren't happy with the color selections.

The color option we liked best in the upgraded siding was a bluish grey color, and we wanted a tan/brown siding similar to what the other house has.

Well... we went to the siding place today and the supplier put the tan/brown siding from the existing house right next to the blue/grey higher quality siding... and they are exactly the same color.  So it's not so blue/grey after all.  I'm not sure how that happened... but we felt REALLY dumb.

But, at the end of the day, we get a better quality siding and we get the color that we want.  So it worked out perfectly.

Brick!

Brick was installed on the back and the sides of house this week.

 

Previously I had mentioned that we weren't sure about the brick we chose and we hoped we would like it more on the house.  The good news is that we do.   It looks pretty sharp from afar, but it's very dark, it has a lot of deep purplish red and maroon in it, and personally, I think it's a little weird looking up close.  I'm sure it'll grow on me.

We had a significant snow storm over the past two days, and Theresa drove by the house this morning and she mentioned that the brick looks really great contrasted with the snow, so there's that.

The problem with all of this snow and cold is that it makes it difficult for the bricklayers to finish up the front of the house.  Mortar doesn't set up right when it's cold, if the water freezes before the mortar interlocks, the job is ruined.   Masonry contractors can use fast setting mortar, hot water and additives to lay brick in below freezing temperatures, but that's not exactly "recommended" and I'm not sure when they'll have a chance to finish up.

Other than the brick... not much is going on.   The rough plumbing looks done, but the electrical still isn't quite finished.  In other words, things are moving pretty slowly.

Exterior and Other Thoughts

They dropped the pallets of bricks off at the house last week... so that's some progress.  The only problem is... they don't look like we thought they would.  

The brick color we got is called Mulberry and we really liked it when we saw it on two or three completed houses.  But the bricks we have at the house don't seem to look like that.  We even went so far as to call the brickyard again to verify that the houses we looked at previously did, in fact, have Mulberry bricks on them.   They did.

Mulberry Brick on a completed house

As you can see, Mulberry is a deep red brick color with a few blackish bricks thrown in here and there... which is why I'm confused about why our bricks look purple???

At this point we're hoping that they look better once they're on the house... which they probably will.  It's hard to get an accurate sense when they're sitting on a pallet, plus bricks age and discolor and weather and so on...   No clue when they'll start laying the brick.

We're also having trouble picking siding.  We'd like a dark brown/tan siding (similar to the picture above), which is very similar to what the existing house next door has.  However, we're actually getting a slightly higher quality of siding than the existing house had, and it's not available in that color.  We can always downgrade our siding and get that exact color... but then it's a lower quality.  We're trying to see if there are any other color options for the better stuff, but we might be stuck deciding between the color we want or a better quality product.  :(

In other news... plumbing and HVAC are (mostly) in and the electrician is getting started.   Our final electrician bill came in about $500 over budget, so... eek!  We're getting some much needed lighting and outlets though, so there is definitely value in that expense.    I'm very comfortable working on residential electrical, so I can probably add a lot of this stuff after we move in a lot cheaper, but my motivation to fish wire through drywall in a 2 story house is somewhat lacking.  That being said, there are a few areas where we backed off of adding a light fixture or an outlet somewhere that we wanted, just because it will be fairly easy for me to add them in later.  

I keep worrying about money... because that's just a thing I do in my daily life, so naturally I'm going to do it when we're spending OMGREALLYYAREALY!!! amounts of money, but everything I've read, heard or seen about construction or major remodeling projects has indicated that most people reach a point where the budget is completely shot... we're not there and it doesn't look like we're going to get that out of control.  We probably are going over our bottom line numbers, but we'll be at least close.   So we win.