Tile Update; Cabinets, Counters In

As I arrived at our house late Wednesday evening to compare the sample master bath floor tile from Rusmur to what was installed, I was rather shocked to see the cabinets and counter tops were all in!

Espresso cabinets - butter rum granite (it's laminate; don't be fooled by the name, LOL) counter tops

Pass through from morning room into kitchen

Somehow I had forgotten if I had a single or double bowl sink. LOL. It's been a long summer.

The wall where our refrigerator will go.

Espresso stain on hand rail

Thanks to a photo I took pre-drywall, they finally found our data cable that was dry-walled over.

Powder room towel bar

More powder room - I was even excited to see this, ha ha.

Glass detail above study entrance - doors weren't in yet. Something to fix up on the left, eh?

Okay, so as soon as I picked up the Fresco Cream tile from Rusmur, I was pretty sure I was wrong. Remember this pic:

When I saw it inside our friends' house, and also outside, I realized Rusmur's fluorescent lights were really playing tricks on me. Here it is on top of the tile in our master bathroom:

Same. Dang. Color.

So, since I don't plan on putting fluorescent lighting in our master bathroom, I'm kind of disappointed to not be getting the cool toned, grey/white look I was going for. I'm hoping once we paint/decorate that I won't really care that much. Still, something to be cognizant of when you are making flooring selections!!

Since I was running into the house really fast (I was so shocked to see our driveway was done that I completely forgot to take a picture of that), I just grabbed my camera out of the bag and forgot I had my portrait lens on it. So I couldn't zoom out any farther than my feet would take me. Better pics to come, I promise!

My special master bath single sink/dbl vanity - the other side is for my make-up/hair. We don't use the bathroom at the same time, so this will work nicely for us. Espresso cabinets. Standard counter top.

Maple Cognac cabinets in the other upstairs bath. Double sinks for our girls.

One side of the master closet - again with the portrait lens limitation, sorry!

other side of the master closet

Almost out of the house before I noticed the trim was up.

My husband stopped there today and found even more done, including the toilets and dishwasher installed. Did he take a single picture?? Uh, no.

I'm still waiting to see the shutters and other finishing touches out front - especially the front porch. So excited to see the finished look with the grey siding/stone/navy shutters and door/front porch.

Our final walk through is scheduled for Friday, Sep. 13... that's good luck, right? ;)

Tile Mystery and Appraisal In

So, to remind you of my master bathroom tile drama...I've been trying to figure out since Friday night whether this...

Is what is installed in our master bathroom here:

And here:

It was just so hard to tell with the dim light of early evening. I had tried to rub off the top of the tile in case it was dust or dirt but it didn't rub off.

So I tracked down the new Rusmur Floors Ryan rep (the one we originally met with is no longer there) and she was extremely nice and helpful. She first checked all three orders (original selection, purchase order, work order, etc.) and the name appears the same throughout - Travata Fresco Cream. I anticipated that since we never changed the master bath selection.

So then she said her theory is that it is grout haze from the "haystack" colored grout they use, which has a brownish tint. She mentioned that you can see it up on the wall in the first shot (which is of the linen closet.) She said it would wipe off with water.

She said the other possibility is that the boxes were actually labeled wrong and it's the wrong tile. She offered to send someone over to investigate or let me pick up the sample tile myself and go look. What can I say but that I like to be in control, LOL, so I opted to pick up the sample (this evening) and take it over and look again. She said if I feel it's definitely the wrong tile to call her immediately and she'll put someone on it. I am happy with that response.

We also got word today of our appraisal, which was slightly nerve-wracking given the handful of bloggers who have had issues with theirs coming in under the purchase price. Ours came in exactly $990 over our sale price. WHEW.

I'm trying not to be overly irritated with NVR, but of course, our LP is on vacation and apparently will be until our close (I think??) and now suddenly everyone else is confused and asking for documents we already gave them. They also want to know why our old mortgage hasn't shown up on our credit report as closed yet (Um, b/c our closing was like 2 1/2 weeks ago?). Then they are asking for statements showing our deposit from the sale, which was totally in the stack of papers we gave them. How about LOOKING THROUGH THE STACK FIRST? Really, it's a lot of annoying phone calls for my husband who is at work, you know, trying to actually work?

Anyway, 19 days to go!!

Flooring Surprise

So, on Friday night we got to enjoy a date night out thanks to our friends who are hosting us in our homelessness. We started out the date by heading to the house, which we had not checked on all week. We expected to see the stone to grade almost done:

The blank space is where the stairs to the porch will go.

Lots of stone around the garage

We walked in the garage and surprise! There were our appliances:

Then we walked upstairs and were shocked to see the hardwood floors down. The PM said they were doing stone and shutters (those weren't up) this week so we had not expected to see the flooring in.

Hardwood floors on 1st floor (except family room)

The kitchen cabinets going in here are espresso - we picked the natural wood look to contrast.

Vinyl floor in laundry room

The bathroom tile was in upstairs as well. Honestly, I was a little perplexed by the master bath tile. It looked like it had brownish tones but it was hard to tell with the dust. My question is does this:

Look like the tile in the middle (in between the hard wood and the brown tile) under the Ebony handrail stain sample??

The girls' bathroom tile looked right to me:

So, I don't know. I'm not sure who to even start asking about it. I think we packed away a lot of the order form paperwork in one of our storage units. I need to cross check the names of the tile first I think.

The stone is almost done going the whole way around...I'm very pleased with the way it looks with the grey siding.

Our navy blue shutters were on site:

Ok, this cracked me up. We knew the "stone" to grade was the lick n stick variety, but I guess I still thought it was real stone. Um, no. It's stone product. But, it's get this... inspired by nature.

Good grief.

It looks good though, so I will just laugh at the irony that they busted up tons of actual, legitimate rock to pour our foundation, to put up fake rock all around the foundation.

Our closing date is officially set for Sep. 16 at 9am!! That's 3 weeks from tomorrow!

Siding, Stone and Closing Date

So much has happened in the last week that I'll probably forget some of it.

First - siding is done!

August 18, 2013 - Can't wait for shutters, trim, etc. to get the whole effect!

And they started the stone to grade - I LOVE the stone. We will end up with stone all the way around above the spray painted line on the foundation. They will fill in the yard up to that line. With our front entry, integral garage, we end up really getting our money's worth from the stone upgrade.

Love this stone!

After taking yet another load of belongings to our overflowing storage unit (downsizing crap we took to the friends' house where we are staying), we took the girls over to the house. Our youngest was NOT happy to have her car ride nap interrupted. Our oldest appreciates any opportunity to pose like a diva.

The family (minus me) in the kitchen/dinette

The girls had yet to see the house dry walled, so they were anxious to see their room. The walls appeared to be primed now as well.

Heading upstairs to find her new bedroom

The #2 bedroom in the house is just humungous, so the girls are going to share it while they are young to allow us both a toy room and a large guest room.

Charlotte still not awake enough to appreciate her new room.

We are thinking we will put their beds on either side of the double windows.

This was fun.

 The ceilings were all textured. This is the best shot I could get of them, although the color is way off. I don't love them or hate them.

Textured ceiling pattern

Since we are all four used to sharing one bathroom, we are ecstatic that the girls will have their own and my husband and I will have our own. Ahhh...

Trying out her new bath tub.

The PM updated us that our final walkthrough will be Friday, Sep. 13 (ha ha) and that the closing will be the following Monday or Tuesday. 

Family room

 We had really hoped to be in sooner than that, since our initial closing date was Sep. 3...then end/middle of August...now Sep. 16. But I'll take it. It means 5 weeks living with our overly generous friends.

Kitchen view of family room and morning room

Trying to convince Charlotte that this new house thing is pretty cool.

All of our cabinets and counter tops are in the garage/basement. The kitchen counters don't look like what I remember. Granted, we were just picking a laminate with the intent on putting in Quartz counter tops ourselves, so it doesn't really matter that much. But, they were too pink for my taste. I'm hoping it was just the bad light.

Butter Rum "granite" laminate

Yeah, I don't like it much. But, it's temporary, right?

Basement. Unfinished. Uninteresting to me :)

Egress window. Fascinating to a 4-and-2-year-old.

So this week we also finished submitting our updated mortgage application requirements. I'm really not sure why they make it like you pretty much have to apply twice, at least as far as gathering documents goes. I also don't understand why NVR requires copies of all the canceled checks that YOU'VE GIVEN TO RYAN. Um, you cashed them. You have the money. Why do I have to give you another copy of them? Anyways, that's all done, which is fantastic because the very next day, our friends' (with whom we are staying) dog decided to mark the cardboard box we were using to store all our financial documents. HA! One day sooner and all of our paystubs/bankstatements/canceled checks, etc. would have smelled of dog pee. I think he's kind of ticked that we have all invaded his home. Poor thing. Start the countdown, Berkley.

And the drywall was hung...

So, we're now officially homeless. :) We closed on our old home today and handed it off to a very cute, if very young looking soon-to-be-married couple. The closing was delayed TWO hours for the mere reason that the bank or title company (I forget which) was having trouble getting their computer system to actually print out the documents.

Since we had driven back from vacation (leaving the girls with Grandma) to go to the closing, we used the delay to visit the new house.

Voila - siding and cabinets have arrived!

Siding and cabinetry sitting in garage

Retaining wall block arrived

The lighting inside is so weird to figure out for this novice photographer so you'll notice I eventually just gave up, threw on the flash and succumbed to the dreaded auto setting (ssh don't tell my photography teacher.)

Kitchen (pantry in back right)

This is my dear husband trying to show me how big of a TV we now "need." Um, settle down, Francis.

Family room view from kitchen

Morning room view from family room

Back side of family room

View from family room back at morning room and kitchen

Dining room, front door to right

You can see from the photo above that I don't like bannisters so our stairs have half walls instead. I don't see this very often so I thought I'd point it out for those still making choices.

Pass thru from morning room into kitchen

One thing I don't love about our Oakmont is the framing of the above pass through into the morning room. The model in our development, the Naples, was just wide open - no beam like this. I'm not sure why it's structurally necessary in the Oakmont as opposed to other models, I just know I'd like it better wiiiiide open. Ah, well.

Study

Bedroom 2 - girls will share initially

Bedroom 3 - guest room initially

Bedroom 4 - playroom initially

Girls'/Guest Bath

I am very happy with how much space is in the girls' bathroom. There is easily enough room to add a nice bench for them to use to change/store bath toys and still have lots of floor space.

Master Bath Tub

I thought I'd show a few from our master bath as well, since we chose options that I rarely, if ever, see on blogs. We opted to spend our money elsewhere and not do the luxury owner bath. At our SR's suggestion, we did an upgrade to a larger tub to accommodate my husband's (6'3") height. Ignoring the construction crud, I'm very pleased with its size:

Non-standard upgraded master tub

Obviously, without the luxury upgrade, we will not have wall tile (it's a fiberglass surround) so I have plans to add other decor to make sure it looks "nice." :) The surround does give lots of shelf space for shampoo and the like.

Master Bath with linen closet next to tub

We do get an extra linen closet in the MB instead, which is very handy.

My pics of the master closet are dumb and dark but you can see it on the left in the below pic, which was my attempt to actually get in one of our photos. :)

Me in MB on wall where (hopefully new king) bed will go

Me pretending to open imaginary refrigerator

We thought the siding was going to be started this week - not sure why it hasn't but we have had thunderstorms the last few days. The big humidifier they told us about is going strong to air out our new drywall. It looks so much more like a house now. We are definitely super excited. It is also super weird to be leaving vacation in a few days and not have a home to head home to. We are very thankful that God has provided us with AMAZING friends, with whom we are staying. Here we come, Chris and Laura!!