Somebody pinch me!

The day we've been waiting for has finally arrived, we got the ok to move into our new house!!!! I still can't really believe it. I feel like I'm dreaming. A different inspector came out and she was great! She saw the grass seed, the hand rail, and the finished basement, and just signed the final approval. She didn't even come upstairs. Which was probably good because there was a hole in the roof where they were putting in the stove pipe, which is also done. I can't wait to go home and start a fire. We're going to spend the night over there on one of the new airbeds we got for our guests, and then this weekend we'll move in the bigger furniture. AHHHH, I can't believe it, I'm just soooooooooo excited right now. I have hardly stopped smiling all afternoon!

Still no certificate of occupancy :o(

Ok, so these are pretty boring pictures, but they're all I've got :o) We were able to finish 3/6 closets with organizers, and hopefully will get the rest done this week. We spent a fortune on the materials buying them on the island. Literally double what we would've paid at Lowes. I didn't want to make the trip to Seattle Sat to get the stuff, 'cause I really wanted to get the organizers up (in case we could start moving in this week). However it was a lot of money and I should've just made the trip to town! Oh well. If you couldn't tell I'm a "get it done, want it done, NOW, kind of person" (not much patience).


I'm pretty annoyed because I haven't heard from our contractor since Tues (he left on wed to got to a wedding in Mexico), so I have no idea if he spoke with the inspector, and whether we'll be able to be re-inspected this week. He was suppose to call me back wed, urgh!! We've only got 1/2 the yard seeded because the excavator never came back this week either to level out the dirt piles in the yard, which means we didn't plant grass on that side yet. It is just pure tortue to have this big, beautiful, new, warm home sitting there and no one living in it! On a positive note, the wood stove installers are finally coming on Tuesday to put in the new stove, yay!!! Oh, and we got a call that our furniture is ready at Macy's too, yay!! SO when we do finally get that occupancy we'll have our furniture, and be able to curl up next to a warm fire, plus space in the closets to organize everything! If only the inspector was from Vashon, right gals!

Thanks for all your encouragement and support. I need it. I really appreciate it. It helps me from not going totally nuts to know I have friends who empathize and see things as I do. Love to you all!!

Minor fixes

Here's a couple of the "fixes" they did today--handrail, and arrows highlighting where it says tempered glass.


Cabinet pulls went on today. I love the cabinets even more now. The electricians came and installed the undercabinet lighting, and the door bell as well today. It's killing me that EVERYTHING is all set to move in and we can't.


I know, it's totally ridiculous all the stuff this new guy had a problem with. Marty will be out planting grass this week or weekend. Trace has never had an inspector say you have to have grass. Hopefully the final grading can get done before then, if not we'll just have to re-seed everything again after the final grading. I want to move in too, Hailey :o( Trace will be talking with the inspector tomorrow. We may not be ready for re-inspection until next Tues. :o( Guess that gives me more time to clean & pack :o)

Almost able to move in

Here's a picture of one of the finished rooms in the house. Actually, everything on the main floor is finished now except for putting up closet rods/organizers. We're still waiting on the basement flooring to arrive and Marty plans to work on trim in the basement this week. The painter Trace hired to do our living room couldn't believe how quickly we got the trim done. It seemed like it took forever to me. I'm just glad it's done. Oh my what a pain!! All the steps of filling holes, sanding, dusting, vacuming, taping, priming, painting, sanding, dusting, painting again, and then pulling up the 8 rolls of painter's tape. But its over, it's done, and I think it looks pretty fantastic. It makes each room look complete. Now if only we could move in....

Today we had a brand new inspector do our final inpsection. He seemed to find fault with the most ridiculous things--a finished basement (the plans said it would be unfinished--but you don't need a permit to sheetrock and paint a basement so he was totally wrong), not seeing the bolts that attach the deck to the house (which are totally there), no grass (didn't know it had to be planted), and a 2nd handrail on the front steps. Anyway, Trace plans on talking to the guy and taking care of everything, and hopefully on Thursday we'll be able to get the final inspection approved!!

Asphalt apron

Here's a picture of the asphalted driveway apron. Not too exciting, but since nothing else happened on the house today, except for some more trim being primed, I thought I'd post picts of the driveway from last week. I hope the guys come back and finish the little projects they have left. I'm getting cabin fever, meaning I'm ready to move out of the cabin :o)

baby steps...

So I'm pretty stoked about the tub going in since its been sitting on the back patio for at least 4 months! It's what has motivated me to put in all these long hours on the house. I just think about a warm bath, scented candles, a good book, and I can go on another day sanding, painting, tiling, cleaning, or whatever the task is. Still no hand rails :o( Funny, huh, Hailey how times have changed. But the painter started on our living room trim, and the heating guy came to hook up the heat pump, which supposively was hooked up already but I couldn't get it to heat the house. I thought I was an idiot, not able to get it to work right, turns out the guy that came out before just didn't finish the job, and so HIS boss had to come out and finish it. Hopefully we'll have a warm house soon. It's no fun to work in a cold house. Up until this weekend it hasn't been that cold, but the weather is DEFINATELY changing!!


Here's the hall bath mirror, pretty plain. We pretty much ran out of money by the time we got to this point. It was a major pain to put up. Funny how the expensive mirrors went up so easily, but the cheaper ones take twice as long. We only had to patch a few holes (it was suppose to sit a little higher above the vanity, but because of mis measuring it was moved down to drill new holes :0) I'd like to make a wood frame to match the color of the vanity for this mirror (someday...) since I couldn't find anything that would match within our budget (which was pretty much nothing :o)


Here's the basement bath, again, VERY simple. I'm not 100% thrilled with the mirror, but again NO $$$ left, so this will do the job. This whole bathroom is a bonus to begin with so I'm not going to complain about the mirror. It will be MUCH easier to replace the mirror down the road then it would've been to sheetrock and finish the whole bathroom :o) I can't wait to get the shower curtains and towels to go with all the bathrooms, that will really complete them. I did get hand soap and garbage cans for each bathroom, so that's a start. Though I'm sure for the family I hope to have in the future all these bathrooms, and all this space will make perfect sense, right now it seems a little silly that Marty and I will have 3 bathrooms! That's 2 shower stalls, 2 bath tubs, 4 sinks, & 3 toilets! Sounds like a lot to clean to me!! Hope those Toto's do their job!

Working appliances!!

Yesterday was one of those "jump up and down, getting excited" days. The electrcians came back! They have a few little things left to do, but the exciting thing is that we now have a working stove hood, microwave, dishwasher, AND washer and dryer. That's right, no more hauling our laundry around to get it done, we can do it in the comfort of our own home!! We tested it out with some of our painting clothes. It's incredibly quiet, as is the dishwasher and it got our 2 soup bowls, incredibly clean :o) Only thing on the loud side is the stove hood, but I guess that's what you get with 600 CFM's. We'll deal with it. We also got the rest of the mirrors and bathroom hardware up and today we'll work on prepping the trim in the bedrooms to be painted. We're still waiting on that hand rail so we can get our certificate of occupancy. I'll keep you posted.

Wrapping things up

Well the last few days haven't revealed too much progress, though there's been some. Much of the same as it has been--doors going up, trim being finished. Yesterday the trim was caulked, and we've been busy filling nail holes with spackle, sanding, and priming the trim to be painted. Our contractor called up yesterday with a "gift." He's having a painter paint all our living room trim for us (which is half the upstairs so that's great), though we had to get everything primered before then. I worked until midnight and Marty until 3 am (I started at 5:30pm, he at 10 pm). It was a long night for both of us, but it's all ready for the painters now, yay!! Now onto prepping the bedrooms!

Stairs are in

Morgan finished the stairs this weekend. They are the icing on the cake. I absolutely love them!! The boards are so unique and different, just like the floors. I love it! I can't wait to see the rest of the finishing touches go up this week.

Stairs heading up to the main floor


Stairs heading down to the basement

More progress...

By Wednesday next week, Roger told Trace he should have all the trim and doors up on our house!!! I can't believe it. Besides the painting of the trim, and the basement flooring, our house could be finished this week!! How incredible is that??? Next week we will try and get all the kitchen cabinet hardware up, along with prepping the trim to be painted. I'm heading over to the house now to finish up a little tiling, and any other little projects I can tackle. Little by little, day by day, we get closer to our dream becoming a reality. Thank you, all of you, for your encouragement, interest, love, and support. I can't wait to have you each over!!

Yay, we now have heat!! Hopefully the wood stove will be here in another week as well. I'm looking forward to curling up in a chair next to the fire. Though, I'm also looking forward to just pushing a button when it gets too cold :o)

FInishing touches

I am in love with our house. Seeing it all come together makes me so happy. It's hard for me to leave it at the end of the night. Tonight I did some touch up staining on the laundry room cabinets, and installed the drawer pulls on the master vanity. I can't wait until we're living in the house, which may be really soon. To get our certificate of occupancy, the only things left that we need are stairs (should be done this weekend), handrail (next week?), doors (this week, and next?), and a plumbing inspection (next week). We're getting so close. Of course the trim will take a while to prep and paint, but I figured we could even move in and do that. Now we just have to figure out how we're going to pay off the debt we've accumulated, make our house payments, pay our utilities, property taxes, and hopefully have enough left over for some bar stools! :o)

Laundry room


Bar style, stainless steel pulls, master bath


Our first pocket door goes in for the hall bathroom, yay!

Here's a better picture of it Hailey

My sister in-law wrote that on the screens when she was up here helping us paint :o)
Guess one of these days I'll have to actually clean all the screens and it will going away :o(