Hardwood Floors and all Cabinets are in now!!!

Barney's side of the master bath...of course it's a little smaller than mine. We still have to get the countertops figured out--but I'm pretty sure I know what I'm putting there, if only my granite guy has enough of it.

This is my side of the master bathroom. I have a sink area and a drop down make-up area. Maybe I could use it as an office desk...or not (I need my make-up area!)




Val & Dave came to Omaha last week! It was fun to see them and their little guys, Kahle & Isaac, running all around the house! When they came earlier in the day, the flooring guys were hammering the wood floor down. It was C R A Z Y L O U D!!!!! I am surprised they weren't driven totally nuts!





The start of the installation of the hardwood floor.











Here's our flooring guy from Dale Ocken Floors (part of Consolidated Kitchens & Floors). We're having hickory floors in all of the main living areas.









Another photo of one of the flooring guys.












Installed floors--not finished, but installed. Not sure what the whole process is, but they need to be sanded a couple of times and then I think 3 coats of finish. We're not going to leave it a natural finish, but put a coat of stain on it--still working on the exact color.

More pictures and finishing choices

Wow, selecting final finshes is somewhat stressful. It's so permanent. Here's one of my slabs of granite that finally arrived. All of the other slabs are already sold out again. Fortunately, this time, I have my slabs tagged for me. These slabs have a little less variance and are a little more golden brown, but I think overall it's the best choice. Now, to select paint... oh, the paint... millions of variations of brown/gold/beige, etc!!!

Trim, baseboard, doors, and drywall are done!!! Yea!!!

Drywall, trim, baseboard, and doors are in! Here I am thinking about how much I am going to love my new closet! I get 2/3 of the closet and Barney gets the other third. I love the stair ballusters (oil-rubbed copper). They're not quite finished (they're double nuckle and the collars have to be raised to the top of the railing yet). I LOVE my doors!!! They're double raised panels, with rustic bead board lines in them.

Getting testy now!

Remember when I said Barney and I weren't even getting testy with each other? Well, scratch THAT!

We've started drywalling!!! Yay!!!

When you're building a house, verything is exciting! Even drywall! We hired Perry Storm to do our drywall. He's Ben Brush's father-in-law. Ben's mom is my good friend, Maureen Brush.

Every weekend Barney is out at the site working on something. Here, he's putting the OSB board around the fireplace area for the stone to adhere to.
























Dining room (looking out the windows to the driveway). You can't see out of the windows because of the plastic film on them.

Sawing more OSB board.

I love the master bath! (This is looking toward out master bedroom.)

Driveway is poured and garage doors are installed!!!

I love our new curvy circle driveway! We have to wait 2 weeks to drive on it. We bought our garage doors from Terry Rave. He and his wife, Brenda, used to go to church at Bethany. Our kids were about the same age.

Timbertech deck is almost done.

No more power spraying and restaining! I actually like power spraying; it's the restaining that I detest. I can never get the stain evenly distributed. But, no matter now!!! We put in composite decking, which needs so much less maintenance. (P.S. You can see Lindsey & Rich's dog, Adam, through the sliding glass door.)

Stone is installed around the front door.

Can you believe they told us there was a glass shortage?!? That's why the sidelights around the front door aren't in. The front door in these pictures is actually called a "bang door"--one that can get beaten up a little bit while all of the workers are moving things in and out. The real door will come later.

Finally deciding where to put the fireplace. It's between the living room and kitchen.

Adding the stone to the pedestals

Getting the front entry design figured out... was a challenge!

After much discussion and a few changes we finally decided on 6" posts (two on each side) on top of two stone pedestals (which turned out a little big bigger than we thought they would).

Repurposing some of the windows!

We took the 3 double hung windows that were in the hearth room and put them in the garage. We LOVE them in the garage! We separated two of the other windows and put one of them in the master closet. It lets in a lot of natural light so we think we're really going to like it even though it takes some of our closet space away.

The Big, BIG windows are finally in! :-) Yay!!!! And the bathtub is mounted!!!