Dry warm walls!!

Its about 65 degrees in the house right now.
Just balmy, as far as I'm concerned.
In fact, it almost feels like a real house.
You might remember that our house before this whole whirlwind of gutting and rebuilding had some serious insulation problems (namely that there was very little of it!) and often had ice forming below the windows INSIDE the house.  So, walking into a nice dry, warm, tightly sealed, no drafts home is just pleasant. It puts a little feather in my cap for the day.

We're getting closer. I'm starting to think about moving things back in (a little premature I know, but still exciting!). This week is drywall. Lots and lots of drywall. The drywall makes everything look quite a bit more complete, but it also makes it harder to take pictures because now they all look the same.
So, here's another tour, the abridged version.

Inside the loft bedroom. We're still trying to figure out what the bed situation is going to be in this room. Its sort of a conundrum. Its probably going to have to be some weird custom think that Drew builds. One more on his list (did I mention he's also building all the closets in this room and the barn door that hangs over the balcony?)

 This one is from the boys room, standing near their window/window seat. The boys twin beds will go on either side of the doorway. You can see through their door all the way down to the nursery on the other side.

 This one is from the upstairs playspace looking back into the boys rooms. You can see Collin's closet and the window, as well as the spot where the window seat will be.

 This is the bridge looking at the nursery and linen closet.

 This one is in the playspace. Thats my laundry chute. I love the laundry chute a TON already. Its huge.

 This is the master bath shower. We were at the tile place today trying to decide what to put in here. We're hemming and hawing over two different looks, dark tiles (like slate) or very light tiles (marble and white subway). Oh decisions.

 This is one of the vanity locations in the master. They are his and hers right across from each other.

 This is back inside the nursery room. You can see one of the closets and out to the bridge.

 Here's the master again, with the lovely vaulted ceiling. I love that part.

 Now we are downstairs. This is basically at the bottom of the main floor stairs. We are in the corner of the dining room near the main floor bath looking in toward the kitchen.

 There is the balcony from the living room.

 The kitchen! Lots of outlets!

 More kitchen, and the pantry.

 This one is from the french doors back toward the stairs (if you visit our blog often I bet you could do this tour yourself. Sorry for the play by play if its annoying).

 Another shot of the peek through.

 The office.

 On to the reworked basement. This is the doorway into the new mechanical room. Its going to be staying just they way it is, colorful collection of old paint and bunker in the corner. It will just be storage in here, so we don't really care. The deep freezer will move into this room as some point.

 Here are the stairs in to the basement. The room on the right, which is hard to see, is our new laundry room.

 Again, sorry for the lack of definition here, but this is the basement bathroom.

 The basement bathroom is nestled behind the new downstairs playroom, which we recently decided won't have a door. Originally it was going to be a solid wall with a door to function like another bedroom when needed, but we wanted to let the light from the stairway in, so now on the side of the stairs nearest the old furnace (which you can see in this photo) we'll have just have a railing and no wall. That way the light can shine in. Dear family, if you want to take dibs on this room when you come to stay you should know it will be a little less private now (you know, only 3 walls and no door, but workable nevertheless since we'll still likely put the daybed in there).

 Here's the new rec room area. We're going to be putting our current living room furniture down here because its too big for the main floor living room. This is such a nice big space. I'm sure as the boys age they'll love it.

 Here's another view of that side- on the other side is a bank of three windows, so there is ample natural light.

 Okay, back up stairs we go. This is the mudroom. There are three closets in here for all the winter wear, coats and such.

On this side we'll have cubbies for the kids day to day stuff. Drew's going to make those too.

So, this week things are progressing nicely. Our builder is on our case to make lots of decisions so in the past 10 days we've decided on appliances, most of the tile and floors and sort of on the countertops and sinks.

I have to say though, our builder is pretty amazing. He gives us his total discount at the vendors and doesn't take anything off the top for himself, which is really really really nice.  I'd imagine most builders pocket those discount differences, but not Jim, which gives him an A+ in my book :)

Thats all for this week. Next week we do an electrical walkthrough in the basement and they finish wiring and drywalling. After that its on to mudding and taping. Then we have to pick paint! Yikes! A lot of decisions to make in the near future!

Insulate my heart

Hiya.
Two weeks makes a world of difference folks.
Sorry for the delay.
You know, we're all busy around here raising kids n stuff'

Last week (2 weeks ago?)- I think. I can't really remember, things have been zooming along! They started to insulate the house.

Hallelujah!

Now, with any luck, I won't swear a lot when I see the EXCEL energy bill.  For the record, it was pretty awful when there was a gaping hole in the roof, -12, and we needed to keep the house at like 45 or something so the pipes didn't freeze.

Now its nice and toasty (comparitively speaking).

Anyhow, as an added bonus, Nana and Papa came to visit this weekend! Such fun. It always goes by too quickly though and then the boys are heartbroken for about 3 days later asking for them, inquiring why they just can't turn around and come back like they live down the street or something. Its nice to know that my boys adore them so much though. That part makes me smile.

Okay, here we go. Another walk through.

 The lovely living room, with lovely pink accents. Imagine if we painted the ceiling pink!

 Standing near the fireplace, looking into the kitchen. My dad is practing standing at the island. Can you tell? The loft bedroom is above and the peek through from the play space is on the far left, upstairs.

 More kitchen. See all that lovely spray in insulation. Owen though it was fun to try to put his fingers in it and the surrounding caulk, which wasn't dry yet.  Owen+caulk= MESS.

 This one is of the boys room. Its a pretty adorable room if I do say so. Very "cozy cottage"

 They each have a closet. Collin chose his right away.  Until one of them decides they don't want to share a room anymore that is. Then one of them has two closets.

 The peek through and loft bedroom from upstairs.

 This one is from in the boys room looking out.

 Peek.

 In the loft bedroom.

 At the balcony.

 This is the upstairs play space all blown-in.

 Master hallway. At this point Owen had stuck his fingers in the caulk so many times he had to be carried so as not to be near walls. That giant blob is one of us holding him.

 This is the office. Ah, I will spend lots of time here.

 This one is from the master bedroom.

 More master.

 Nana and the boys daydreaming out of our master bedroom about summer.

 This is the new space in the basement.

 That hole is where the stairs will be down into the new space.

Another shot of the new space from the other side.

And there you have it! Insulation!
It makes the walls much more real for me, which is good!

But you know whats extra special about this week? This week I'm finally seeing how this house will be the place that our family grows and our boys enjoy. This week I can see where the toys will be strewn, how they'll roll out of bed and come running to our room with the pitter-patter of little feet. I can see now how it will all unfold and it makes my heart smile.
So this lovely insulation is not only warming our house, it has helped me see the first glimpses of how our house will be, how our home will grow and for those reasons, its also insulated my heart.

Panic in the Pantry

Fun in home renovations! This week: our first real, blip in the design. It was bound to happen, and here we are. Today, Drew ran over to the house and took these pictures. When you read the rest of this post you should pretend you were me seeing them on the camera for the first time. Here's how it went:

Ooh! Look, stairs again. They make me smile. Upstairs they put the rafter things in, so the hallway/play space is coming together.

Walking down the stairs. This is what it will look like when you come down the stairs and head toward the living room and kitchen. This is our dining room. Oh look, a nice dining room.

Hey, wait. Thats my favorite part of the house on the left. You can see the doorway, and wait. hmmmm... what is that? What the F*** is in my pantry?! Why are there two HUGE ducts taking up the total east wall of my pantry?!?! Why don't I know about this? Who the hell put that there without telling us about changing the plans.

I need my whole pantry. Not half a pantry.

UGH!!!
(Imagine me getting progressively angrier and angrier as I try to fathom why NO ONE from our build team let us know about this change or asked us what we wanted to do....)

Okay. Relax. Enjoy the pictures. Calm down. Look, we have a fantastic new house. Okay, here's another view from the bottom of the stairs on the main floor into the dining room, but you can see the bathroom on the right here.

Small devil on left shoulder: BUT WTF!!! MY PANTRY!

Okay, flipping back to my calmer side. Here's my fun office! (to the left). That silver thing, its just some sort of insulation stuff covering the door to keep the heat in. Its like -20 here.
Seriously.
Freeze the snot while its in your nose cold.
I'm not joking about that either.
It really happens. Come to Minnesota and see for yourself.

Anyway, moving away from the pantry panic, here is the office again, but you can also see the stairs going down to the basement a bit. They are covered with insulation too, but at least they are there now.

Never mind. I can't take it. I have to look again. WTF. Why is that giant duct work in half of my pantry. That far east wall was supposed to be all open cupboards in the pantry. Now its 3/4s duct work and will be 1/4 cabinets. SO IRRITATING. On this side its a closet into the dining room. Its possible that closet will be removed now to make the pantry bigger. I'm not really sure.  We'll see what the builder (Jim) says when we meet on Monday. About 15 minutes after seeing this monstrosity I sent a brisk email to our builder Jim, who normally we love, and who we are giving a break, because his mom just got put in hospice. But, nevertheless what he said was "that was the only place for the duct work to go." Not exactly a satisfying answer.

Okay, calming down again. Here we are next to those giant awful ducts in the pantry. At least I'll still have the full pantry on the right side (west side). When you walk through the pantry you meet our lovely kitchen. It takes me to a happy place. I can almost forget about the disaster in the pantry.

Just kidding. I can't forget about it. Its KILLING me.

Hi again, now we are in the kitchen. Standing over in the south east corner. Looking toward the living room (you can see the new fireplace) and the open space into the dining room.

Look! our new fireplace!

Now, from the southwest corner (standing sort of next to the fireplace). If you look up you can see the spot for the balcony and where the peek through and door for the upstairs bedroom over the kitchen is. The balcony will probably be open often (it will have a railing), but when someone is in that room we'll have three big barn doors on a track that close over the space to make it a closed room.

On to the basement. Notice I didn't stop to be miserable about the pantry. BUT I'm still really mad about it. Just so you know.  The basement is a disaster. We have stairs that go down and then you can see what the plumber has been up to- putting in all the main lines. Drew is standing in the new mechanical room to take this one.

Thats a giant hole where the old bathroom used to be.

This photo is taken from where the new opening into the new basement will be, next to the new bathroom.

Speaking of bathrooms, here we are up on the top floor now. You can see the boys bathtub in the boys room. It doesn't belong there, but they seem to have left it there for the weekend. Hopefully next week it will end up in the bathroom where it belongs.

Okay, so all in all, lots of new improvements. But I am panicking about the pantry. With any luck, we'll be back on a road to happy house renovation next week!