Nice photos of upstairs before we moved in!

Backsplash

This is an old photo but my new computer has issues uploading photos, hence the delay. This backsplash is all done & grouted now. We're in clean-out and organization mode as I'm planning to move in this weekend and we're having out-of-town guests for Halloween!

Details, details...

Eric got our washer & dryer hooked up this week, trim on the exterior doors and I think doorbells were installed today. If you recall, ours plays MP3s, so that will be fun to play with this weekend. Our helpful neighbors Oliver & Reed are pictured here modeling what will be our house numbers! Once we get more construction materials out of the house and more of Eric's boxes organized, I will take and post pictures of everything, and I guess that means blogging is almost over!

urban camping

We made our normal trip to the dump on Saturday to drop off a load of plywood & recycling and then met with a re-upholstery gal about refurbishing Eric's 70's-vintage red chairs for our den, which I'm really excited about! We accomplished more on Sunday, setting slate over our front step, drywalling a closet for the washer & dryer, installing coverplates, another outdoor light, towel bars med cabinet shelves & drawer pulls, all the basics. Eric's helpers aren't available until late in the week so he's working on a few projects but also trying to get all of metalwork (inside and out) designed, which will have some lead time to fabricate and build.

Eric is now living in our house mid-construction, which is definitely a form of camping. Yesterday I cooked for the first time, making very simple pasta with red sauce and shrimp. Seeing as we have no furniture downstairs, we ate on the stairs, but made it work, and even enjoyed a celebratory glass of wine.

Move-in time!

Eric moved in yesterday and we slept in our house! We were giddy with excitement about it until Eric tried to arm our alarm while bypassing the motion sensor and ended up setting it off at midnight! He disarmed it in under 10 seconds but the alarm co had automatically set the police in motion and I had to prove my identity to 4 police officers shining flashlights into our windows at about 12:20am. My ID doesn't have our new address on it yet but luckily they accepted a delivery invoice from IKEA with my name and our address on it. I didn't really fit the description of their typical burgular either, so that helped. :)

There's definitely more punchlist and clearing out construction materials to do, mainly on the 1st floor, but I'm planning to move in by 10/31, yay! You can see that Bonsai is settling in just fine...

Labor of love

This staircase has required some master carpentry and has taken much more time than anticipated, but Eric and Phil got it to "substantial completion" yesterday and it looks great. Eric spent today babysitting Joshua and Ricardo, our plumbing duo who were completely stumped over why the water wasn't hot in the shower while Eric was the one who thought to adjust the HWH temperature. Why are we paying these people?

The A-team

We hired CityVista's punchlist team, Gilberto and Nacho for the entire week to handle a bunch of details while Eric and Phil continued to concentrate on the stairs. They installed all of the basement closet doors, a coverpanel on one of the kitchen cabinets, a shelf on the knee wall, the basement washer & dryer and most recently they have been sanding and painting window trim and baseboard upstairs so Eric can move in this weekend! Eric has very high standards for workmanship and I think these guys get a B or B+, which is pretty good considering...