Garage Demo, Back Deck & Driveway - Week 12, Wednesday

Riley and I popped by the house today and found the team working away in the basement. The basement windows are now in and the driveway has been filled where the old basement entrance was. 

Basement windows & filled driveway entrance

The garage demo has also begun. The center & side divider walls are going to be removed (to the left and right of the ladder) to have one large open garage and there will be one double-width door as you can see from the cutout on the front. On the side of the garage, we are taking out the windows and putting in one man door.

Garage & Driving

Front garage door opening

Side of garage with framing for man door

Another big change is that the back deck framing is complete and the deck roof is up. It looks really great now that it's the smaller size. I felt pretty bad for the framing crew when I visited the house last Thursday and saw them taking apart the original larger deck. It was totally worth the change though and we really like the new set-up.

Back of house with roofed back deck
(The shadows make it hard to see. I'll put up new photos next time I'm over there)

Exterior Doors - Week 11, Tuesday

We picked out our exterior doors today. We decided to go with a paned glass solid wood stained door for the front entry and full glass solid wood framed french doors in the kitchen.

Front Door image from the manufacturer's website
The panes on the top window match the 6-pane windows on the front of the house

Back French Door images from the manufacturer's website

We went for the solid glass to avoid the inevitable dog paws scratching the wood surface

Framing Completed - Week 10, Sunday

My parents came to the house Saturday and Riley's parents today. It was pretty fun to give the tour. We also met a few of the neighbors. Everyone seems really nice and a little curious about our house transformation. So far everyone we have met seems excited about what we're doing and pleased with the direction of the house. Glad we're going to be welcomed to the neighborhood!

It was pretty neat to go to the house Saturday and see that the stairwell to the basement is in and that the basement is framed. It's going to be a great space down there!

Up next on the to do list: We are meeting with Oliver this coming week to do a walkthrough of all the wall placements and to discuss the general progress. We're also going to chose placements for all lighting fixtures. The plumber and electrician will be starting their work after they return from holiday vacation. From here on out, we will be meeting with Oliver once a week at the house to keep on track with all the decisions to be made. It's going to be fun to start designing the interior finishings. I have a lot of ideas :)

Here are some photos my dad took on his visit. They are taken with a REAL camera and a little nicer than my phone pictures :)

Front

Front Right

Right Side

Left Side

Original Built-ins in Living Room

View from Kitchen into Dining Room

Open Stairwell

Showing Mom the Master Bath - We make the ceilings look really high :)

Kitchen Appliances & More Windows - Week 10, Thursday

We had a little surprise today. Apparently the prices on appliances are going up about 10% after the new year. In order to avoid this price increase we have to order our appliances by noon tomorrow. Yikes! That's one way to make a fast decision though; we got our order in with a few hours to spare. Every penny counts and we can't afford to pass up any opportunity for savings. 

At Ferguson's showroom, we priced out a few different scenarios with both the GE Cafe and KitchenAid series. We had a GE Cafe range in our last house and loved it, but we were disappointed by the design of the matching refrigerator so we decided to give KitchenAid a try. KitchenAid came highly recommended by both Oliver and our contact at Ferguson's showroom. Once we decided on the brand, we had to pick which configuration of cooktop/range/oven to go with. After much debate, I decided to go with the KitchenAid double convection wall ovens with a separate cooktop, dishwasher, and counter-depth french door fridge with bottom freezer. With the builder discount on the KitchenAid appliances and opting out of the built-in microwave we were able to have enough left in the budget to upgrade the gas cooktop to a Dacor from another store. Below is a photo of the one of the Dacor cooktop models we like. What sold me, was the scratch-proof finish that Dacor uses. There is nothing worse than cleaning a new stainless steel appliance and putting a big swirl or scratch in it!

Dacor gas cooktop

We're back in Portland and it was great to see the fully windowed house in person. Framing upstairs is complete and the windows are in. I'm very happy with the black exterior windows and they will look great inside as well when they are painted. Currently, they are primed white.

Front of house with windows

Diningroom windows

Stairwell with windows

Looking into the basement through the new opening for the stairwell

Kitchen windows

Master bedroom windows

Master closet/dresser windows

Master bath - the low wall is the shower

Master bath windows

Master bath toilet room window

360º view of the upstairs accompanied by the sounds of sawing and power tools

Riley checking out the basement, I stayed above ground because it was quite muddy :)

Kitchen window, up close

Back of house/deck

Back of house with windows

Back corner of house, kitchen windows

 It was great to walk through the house and feel the spaces. Riley and I are totally in love with the floorplan and amazed by how much space functional we're going to have.
Our parents are coming this weekend for the tour. It will be fun to see their reaction to our future home :)

Windows - Week 10, Tuesday

Riley and I are out of town for the holidays and Oliver was nice enough to send us this photo. Windows are in and they look great! NOW it REALLY looks like a house. We can't wait to get back to Portland and check it out!

Windows are in

Up next of our to do list: picking out the exterior doors and kitchen appliances.

A Roof & Final Plumbing Fittings - Week 9, Saturday

It's Christmas Eve and we have a roof! So unbelievably thrilled to see it! It really looks like a house now.  The front supports, window cutouts, roof and framing is really giving us the feel of how the final house will be. It's pretty amazing how fast Oliver's team works. I keep hearing the next stages will have much slower progress, but I hope we can continue on this pace.

Roofed & ready for rain! It's a little hard to see the roof, but the black shingles are on. We did a 30 year composition roof.

Back deck*

Riley inspecting the spaciousness that is the deck

Deck with the roof support beam

Windows have arrived!

Kitchen

Inside roof upstairs

Upstairs framing is complete

Exterior with finished roof

*Ah, the back deck. We had no idea this little guy would be, well, not so little. It sounded great on paper to have a huge covered deck until we saw it in person and realized how much of the yard it takes up. It is also quite close to the garage which could make pulling two cars in the garage difficult. We're going to meet next week with Oliver to sort out the deck situation. We will definitely have to cut down the size.

In addition to the finishing the roof and framing, the crew has been doing a lot of work in the basement. Unfortunately, it's really hard to take photos down there and there is still no stairwell down from the main floor. The floor is all dug out and we officially have 8.5' ceilings. An expensive feature of the house, but one that will be completely worth it. The plumbing inspector came earlier this week and gave them the go ahead to pour the floor. Next week I hope to be able to walk around and check it out! They have also started to dig out the egress windows in the bedroom and entertainment area.

Away from the construction site, we finally finished picking out the plumbing fittings. Man was that a mess. I had no idea how hard it was going to be to keep on budget. It feels great to have that done and be able to move on. We decided to go all Grohe in Chrome for the faucets & showers with Speakman shower heads to stay on budget. Our original selections from Rohl were beautiful in Polished Nickel, but they landed us 3k over budget. Not ok. We're really happy with our final selections. I think we ended up with high quality products that are the perfect blend of modern and traditional.

Happy holidays!

Roof Framing Completed - Week 9, Tuesday

The roof framing is complete! We're right on schedule to have the roof complete by Christmas. It will be great to have the house dry. I'm sure the contractors will greatly appreciate it too! It's been REALLY cold and the rain is sure to start soon.

Framed roof with outer trim edge - ready for roof shingles!

A Ceiling Upstairs - Week 9, Monday

Roof framing is coming along quickly! Thankfully the weather has been friendly and we haven't been experiencing our normal wet Oregon winter. Hopefully it will hold up until the roofing is on the frame.

Roof framing

More roof framing

Looking up inside the upper story -
Pretty cool to see all the inner workings like this

Second Story Framing - Week 8, Tuesday

The upstairs framing has begun! Again, I've fallen behind on posting...so here are some pictures

Master bedroom beginnings

Upstairs framing

Upstairs guest bath

Upstairs guest bedroom

Upstairs stairwell & linen closet

Front of the house!