Our Dream House: Light Switch

There is something deeply satisfying about stepping into the house you have dreamed about, toiled over, lost sleep over and poured your heart into and flipping a real, honest-to-goodness light-switch for the very first time. I know - it's weird and I'm not offended by the fact that you're laughing right now. But it hit me last night when I stopped by the house after work and stepped inside the dark house with my flashlight - which I've been doing since Daylight Savings Time took away the afternoon daylight (one of the great injustices of western civilization) and found that the electricians hand installed lights and switches! It was strangely like the first time I saw the skeleton of the house when they were framing it. It was just so REAL all of a sudden.

Anyhow, that's just a small part of what's been going on. Hoekwater's came back and finishedthe grading. The house looks so naked without piles of dirt surrounding it! But they did a great job. The front and back-yards are just how we envisioned them. Especially the backyard. They were able to grade a lot of fill and topsoil out in to the woods so that we have more backyard than we did before. It's really a nice spot now and I'm sure the boys will make full use of it as they get older.

Our garage doors have all been installed as well as the openers on the front 2 doors. They look REALLY nice. And they used good solid angle iron to mount the openers which looks a lot better and should be a lot stronger than some of the other opener installations I've seen on some houses.
The cultured stone has been installed all the way across the front of the house and it looks AWESOME! Scott, his boss, and their laborer (who is the little brother of a high school buddy of mine) did it all in one day and they really did quality work. Just how I had envisioned it. Thanks guys!

All of the doors, cabinets and trim material have been delivered...and let me tell you...that's a lot of stuff! We're having the pros install all the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms. They are also building the staircase and mantle, and they are trimming in the 3 big arch-top windows we have. My dad and I will be installing the rest of the trim throughout the house and have already started working on it. It's all pretty straightforward but we're slower than the pros and
there's definitely a bit of a learning curve to matching their quality and technique. Unfortunately, making the precision measurements and cuts is the easiest part. The hard part is dealing with inconsistencies in the drywall where it meets the doors and windows. There are a lot places that need to have the drywall hammered down so the trim will lie flat. There are other places that need shims and spacers. Finding studs is tough too. But the worst part is attaching the door and window trim to the door and window jams. There's only about a 1/8th inch target there and if you miss you either send a nail shooting through the inside of the door casing or you miss and the nail doesn't attach the trim to anything. Needless to say, painter's putty will be my best friend!
There will be a lot of hard maple trim around the staircase. We had planned to use poplar since it's usually cheaper and looks almost as good as maple when it's stained dark like ours will be. However, these days, maple is cheaper than poplar! So we get a nicer wood at a lower price!

The siding is going up too - with only a minor setback. When they were grading the back yard, the bulldozer driver snagged the neighbors cable line that was strung across the trim guys ladder and pulled the ladder over. Fortunately there was no one on the ladder, but now the ladder looks more like a giant DNA helix model than a 40 foot extension ladder! Oh well...no one was hurt, that's the important thing.

I think that's about it for now. I'm short on pictures because I'm always there in the dark and we only recently got the lights. I'll post more as I can take them!