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!