We have a house!

The house is here!  It's finally here!

It arrived on Tuesday, but they didn't get it set on the basement until today.  Looks pretty good so far, doesn't it?  There's still a bunch of work to be done.  The builders need to finish the roof and siding, and build temporary steps to the front door.  It seems there was a misunderstanding about the master bathroom; there's no shower, and there was supposed to be one.  So they'll take care of that too.  I have a bunch of light fixtures to wire up; pendants for the kitchen island, chandelier for the dining room, bathroom lights, and ceiling fans for the living room, library and all the bedrooms.  I'm going to do that myself, no matter what anyone else says.  We need to put in the kitchen and dining room flooring; I might not do that all by myself, though.  Hubby is being a butt.  He thinks we need everything done "professionally".  And of course, there's a lot of painting to do, which I can definitely do on my own.  Anyway, we also have to have a plumber hook up the plumbing, and an electrician to get electricity into the house.  And then there's the septic system and the geothermal heating/cooling system.  And after all that, we need a garage.  I'm hoping the carpenter will let me help with that.

So...it might be a couple more weeks before we are able to move in.  But it's getting so close!  I'm so ready to be in our own place and using our own stuff.  Being a guest in someone else's house for this long is exhausting.  Even if it's family.  Or maybe because it is family...

State of the House

Our house was supposed to be on its way here by now.  But it's not.  The builder called today while I was out and told my father-in-law that the house isn't done yet, and that it will be at least next Monday before it arrives.  Oh, well.  I'm disappointed and annoyed that we didn't know this sooner, but whatever.  It's really a good thing I'm such a patient person.

Anyway, the site is basically ready.  The basement walls have been poured, and the basement plumbing has been roughed-in.  The basement floor is still not poured.  Because of the oil boom happening in this area, concrete is a hot commodity, and is a little hard to come by.  But now that we have this delay, I'm going to call the basement guy and see if he might be able to do it this week or weekend, before the house comes.  I'd much rather have the  basement completed than have to get the floor poured through a window.  Anyway... the dirt has been backfilled around the basement, except the areas right around the windows; we're waiting on the windows and window-wells.  There's still a huge pile of dirt in front of the house(or rather, where the house will be when it arrives).  I'm going to talk to the basement guy about getting that moved also, since we have the delay.

The local building center tells me our kitchen flooring is in, so I'll pick that up once the house is here.  We picked DuraCeramic, but the builders wouldn't put it in; they don't do tilework.  The reason for that is simple; bringing a house cross-country on trucks.  You don't want to have to worry about whether the tiles, grout, or thinset under it all might crack on the journey.  So even though DuraCeramic is not a traditional kind of tile, it was not on their list of options.  The nice lady at the building center said that it's so much simpler to put in than ceramic or porcelain tiles, so it shouldn't be a problem for me, since I helped with the ceramic tile at our old house earlier this year.

The light fixtures arrived last week, and they all look terrific.  I had ordered ceiling fans for all the bedrooms, the living room, and the library; a chandelier for the dining room, and pendants for the kitchen.  Fortunately, I've had some experience changing light fixtures, so wiring them up will be a cinch for me.

We're going to have to find someone to build the floor-to-ceiling shelves for our library.  I had thought of doing that myself, but I know enough to admit I'd be a bit out of my depth in that project.  I'll settle for helping with it, if they'll let me.

I've got a recommendation for a carpenter to build the garage, so hopefully he'll be able to do that quickly once the house is in place.  And hopefully he'll let me help.

So anyway, there's the State of the House report, such as it is.  I can hardly wait for the house to be in place so I can get all these big projects done, so I can do the little projects like painting walls and making curtains.  I think it'll keep me busy most of the winter.