3 months later...

...and we are in our house! It has been a WHIRLWIND, and I told myself plenty of times, "I should really get back to this blogging thing I wanted to try..." but somehow never got around to actually doing it. Well, now I'm back! And a lot of happened in the meantime.

Closing was thankfully uneventful. It rained cats and dogs the week leading up to the closing, so the exterior of the house was behind. The crew was still doing punch-out stuff during our final walk through, and even after we officially signed the paperwork, but our builder was really responsive and had workers out non-stop until everything was done. Whew! We closed on a Friday, and moved in the very next day - we were ready to get out of our rental as soon as possible. 

Us in front of the new house! You'll notice a few exterior items missing paint, and a cleaning lady walking out the front door... maybe we should have timed it better?

After the move in. Stuff. EVERYWHERE. 

The countdown begins: 4 Days to Close

We close in four days.

FOUR DAYS.

Blows my mind. Our builder and his crew is knocking is out out though, everytime we go by the house there is something new, big or small, and all is amazing to us. It makes me a wee nervous on much needs to be done before we are good to go and ready to move in status, but our builder is confident which helps dramatically. 

Bathroom vanities and tops are in. Our builder accidentally ordered the same white cabinets we had in our kitchen, but caught the mistake and switched it to the dark brown like we wanted. I'm really glad we went for a contrast, and love the way it looks.

The upstairs bedrooms are all painted "Sea Salt" by Sherwin Williams. It's a soft greenish gray that changes a lot with the light, but is still neutral enough to match everything we have. 

The downstairs and hall are painted "Light French Gray" by Sherwin Williams. We compared all the grays our builder offered and opted for this one. I was nervous that we had made the wrong choice at some points, but now getting to see it on the walls I absolutely love it. It's neutral enough to match our eclectic collection of art and furniture, rich enough to make the trim look amazing (if I do say so myself),  but not too dark to make the room cavernous. Woo hoo!

One thing that took us by surprise was the sheer size of the island. It was framed out before, but has a huge overhang that you can see here, and is truly massive and amazing. I can't wait to cook on this sucker. 

Brad showed me a picture he took of a test stain of our floors and I swooned, and subsequently asked to ogle it multiple times throughout the day. Like the paint, at times I doubted our wood stain, but man alive, seeing it in person made all the difference. 

The downside of wood staining? You can't walk on the floors. I'm pretty impatient, and have a terrible insistent desire to touch wet paint/caulk/stain, so the tape X was definitely necessary. Smart builders. 

The upside of wood staining? It's freaking GORGEOUS. Can you hug floors? I want to try. The floors have been drying (and un-walked upon) all weekend, so I can't wait to trample them and run all over the house this afternoon. It's been a few a days!

So what's left?

• Toilets installed
• Downstairs pedestal sink
• All plumbing fixtures
• Mirrors in bathrooms
• Grout around the tub
• Front shutters 
• Water treated porch
• Painted porch
• Painted crawl space/foundation
• Finish concrete on driveway and back landing
• Sod & landscaping
• Kitchen appliances
• Kitchen backsplash 
• Wire racks in closets and pantry
• Carpet installed
• Quarter inch rounds installed on the floors

Look at all my [stuff]

The post title comes from the movie Spring Breakers, it's terrible, but I still want to quote it... a lot.

We have hardwood floors!

They have installed cabinets!

We have a tin roof above the porch!

They finished the cabinets!

We have a built in bar! (they must know us well)

We have most of a driveway!

We have TILE!

Clockwise from top left: master shower, guest shower downstairs, guest shower upstairs, master floor, guest floor. 

Because I love it so much - we have another view of the master bathroom!

We have fixtures and a ridiculously huge air conditioner!

We have a porch!

And we are so freaking close to having a house. FIVE DAYS TO CLOSE. 

Keep your fingers crossed for us, please.

Side Note about Spring Breakers: I don't recommend the movie, at least not because its a good movie, but I have told people to watch it because it is so ridiculous it is entertaining. You can blame me later. This particular quote? James Franco. Cornrows. Grill. Dark tanning oil. 

Moving right along

Things are going fast and we are so excited! After the home inspection we got windows, insulation, walls, siding, and a roof! It was good timing too, because Charleston had a monsoon over the weekend due to hurricane Joaquin aftermath.

It's so squishy looking, like a wall I want to hug.

Basking in the magical glow of INSULATION. 

Windows and doors

Walls and our island all framed up.

Master tub. The window in here is smaller than all the other ones in the house, and they ordered the wrong size, so this is the only window we're missing. Well, was the only window we're missing. Apparently glass breaks easily, so we are now down two. Whoops!

Master bedroom! Love the windows and light in here.

Siding! Starting to look like a real live house!

Starting to look good!

Mr House Inspector

In late September we hired an inspector to come look at the house. At first, we were planning on getting an inspection done right before we moved in, but we decided to do it during the building process since this would really be our only chance to have the bones and guts of our house looked at before the walls went up. For the stuff on the surface, we could always do another inspection later on.

 We used the same gentlemen who did our home inspection on the first house we were going to buy, Chad from Cardinal Home Inspections. He did a great job on the house before, and we were not disappointed this time either, he was great to work with!

We did the walk through with the inspector and Nathan, our builder, and it worked out well as Nathan answered a number of questions as we went. There were a few things he pointed out that needed adjustments, and Nathan marked me as we went.

They forgot to frame in a linen closet upstairs, so when they went back to do it, the vent that was supposed to be in our walk-in closet was instead in our hall closet - whoops!

This wall was free-floating and wasn't secured to the beams above.

There were 2 studs that were a little warped, so our walls weren't flush.

The great news is that we went back about a week later and everything we could see was fixed already! Our builder tacked a to-do list up in the house, and was very receptive to everything the inspector had noted, which we appreciated. The even greater news was that after the inspection, Chad told us overall, he was really impressed with the the house and the build, and we had some great  things going for us. Hooray!

Here is a picture of our house around inspection time.

You can't resist it, it's electric!

Whoops, where have I been for 2 weeks? Not updating, obviously!

We did our walk through of the electric plan on Thursday and it was SO EXCITING. I feel like a broken record, but really everything moving forward with the house is very exciting at this point. The water lines and most electric has been run, and they have boxes where all the electric and cable outlets are going to go. We were able to add a few boxes where we plan on putting night stands and maybe hanging a TV, so I'm glad we were able to be there. Plus, they'be framed out the island, so it's feeling more and more like an actual house.

Per code, there are plenty of outlets in each room, but we still shifted some things around and added a few extra. For example, there were 0 outlets originally in the his and hers walk in closet, and we thought that was kinda strange. 

We also caught a few changes. They forgot to frame in a second hall closet upstairs (they're already working on correcting this one), the attic acces is now in the hall rather than the closet, and we now have a mini wall between the shower and tub in the master bath. Originally they abutted each other, but I think that plan included a humongous tub, so our builder changed it to a 5-footer (still plenty of space I think) and there is a wall that will have some exposed shelves in between. I like the shelves so we were ok with the change, but it would have been nice to get a phone call before they went forward with it. 

After speaking with a few friends that are building/have built (thanks, sister!), we also have scheduled a pre-drywall inspection. We originally planned to do this before closing, but we realized that this was our only shot of getting the 'guts' of our house looked at, and we could always schedule another one later. For first time home owners, we want to make sure we have good bones. The next week most of the tradesmen will finish up their work, so the house will be inspected wither late next week or early the week after. We payed extra to have the inspector check out the crawl space, because no lie, crawl spaces are CREEPY and I doubt I will ever be brave enough to go in there. 

The BEST news is that the house is on track for a November 1st close! Once the walls are up this will become even more secure, but we were thrilled to get this news. 

A month and a half to go. 

the right stuff

We went through our selections! ... A few weeks ago... still struggling to keep up :)

One of the things we really like about our builder is that while our choices our limited, our choices are all high quality, so while we certainly not interior designers, everything is good looking to begin with.

I returned back a couple weeks early to snap pictures/learn of all the options we had, so we had plenty of time to Pinterest the hell out of things and discuss what we wanted. We thought we had a great plan coming in, but I was surprised at how much much we changed in the office, it makes such a difference laying everything out together!

Starting with the outside, the outside of our House will be Sherwin Williams's "Eider White" with black shutters. We opted to go white with the door rather than black in case we want to paint it a fun color down the road.

We hope it looks like something like this (thank you Pinterest and Google image search):

For our interior paint colors, we were given the choice of 2, in whatever rooms we wanted, in varying shades of grey and tan. Here were the options, along with floor and some cabinetry options (the blank one is Benjamin Moore's Moonshine).

We ended up going for Light French Gray and Sea Salt paint, Kona stained white oak floors, and a  neutral carpet.  I loved the "Sea Salt" for some interior rooms, and we were torn on the middle row for common rooms, but liked the way the French gray looked the best. Carpet was pretty much between brown tan, middle brown-tan, and variety brown-tan, so we went with what we thought would be neutral and hide dog hair the best - strategy!

All the bathrooms have the dark cabinetry and white top. The common ones have this neutral tile, and our master bathroom is a grey tile. The tile on the sides are the linings for the showers. The brown-ish tile was one that we had initially vetoed, but it ended up looking great with everything else we wanted (and we thought for a common bath it would hide dirt), so it ended up being the winner!

The color scheme of our kitchen: white cabinets, uba tuba granite (I may have been sold on name alone), white subway backsplash, and the paint and floors of the first floor.

Most hopeful it looks along these lines:

All the light fixtures and other selections were pretty standard and not super exciting, but we love them none the less! Now just patiently (ha!) waiting for the house to be built...