At the end of July, things are definitely moving forward, but there are still a number major things that need to happen.
Paint
The builder’s guys have mostly been focusing on paint over the last month. All exterior paint is done and as of this week, the vast majority of interior paint is finished (although there will definitely be some touch-up that happens as they wrap up things on the house.
We’d selected interior paint colors back in May or June but obviously hadn’t seen it all come together until this month. Luckily we both seem to be really happy with our selections.
Trim has mostly all been painted. Exceptions are in garage & workshop and a few places that will happen after cabinets go in. We also have a warping issue with the two sets of pocket doors and those will have to be replaced.
Guest bedroom. One wall is dark and the other three are a light green/grey color (actually looks a bit lighter in person than in this photo).
Utility Room (powder room is same color). Right wall will be solid cabinets
Kitchen - it’s hard to tell in photo - the dark accent color is a very dark navy. The kitchen island will be the same color. The area underneath the dark accent will be all walnut cabinets.
Living Room - same accent color as kitchen. Area under the accent will be full of living room built-in cabinets & shelves.
Primary Bath - the unpainted lower portion of walls will be tile. Vanities are on right wall with the dark blue color.
Primary Bedroom - basically same colors as primary bathroom.
Hurricane Beryl
On the plus side, the house came through Beryl with no problems at all. Shockingly, the fence that is barely standing after the Derecho storm in May didn’t fall over again. I think we lucked out on wind directions there. We definitely had some minor tree limbs down, but the house didn’t seem to loose power or internet at all. Travis’ house was without power for 5 1/2 days, but luckily we had housing options and didn’t have to stay there in the heat and humidity.
We got the debris cleaned up pretty quickly and luckily we seemed very early for city debris pickup so all our stuff was gone within days.
Gas Service
We put in a request to get gas service turned back on in late May. They told us it would take about 4 weeks. On day 27, Doug spent several hours talking to four different people at Center Point trying to figure out what was happening. On day 28, a bunch of people showed up and we ended up with a riser coming up next to the house that is connected to the gas mains. They told us we needed to call the meter department to request the meter. We’ve tried to do that and have been told they are still waiting for permit office to confirm an inspection has heppened. It has (months ago), but they don’t seem to see it. Builder and plumber are working to get that sorted so perhaps we’ll make some progress. The fear is that it’s a 4 week service level for the gas meter also.
Pretty exciting picture of our gas riser!
Front of House Updates
While the crews have been working inside, we’ve been doing some cosmetic updates in the front of the house. You may recall that the house originally had a brass mail slot next to the front door. It was a really poor design for a mail slot (vertical with a sharp bend behind it to force the mail into the storage box). We didn’t have any desire to use the mail slot going forward but we did like the design so planned to clean it up and leave it in place. During demo, the guys threw the thing in the dumpster but we were able to find it with a bit of dumpster diving. In June we started cleaning it up. This ended up being a bit tougher than we expected. It was very dark, which we thought was just tarnish. Turns out at some point it had been spray painted. Between the two of us, we were able to clean it up pretty nicely and have gotten it re-installed. Doug ended up using his laser engraver to create a sign inside the slot for anyone who might try to use it.
We also installed a new mailbox that will be used going forward. The new mailbox matches the color that we’ve selected for the front door.
Finally, we spent quite a bit of time trying to select house numbers for the house (the old ones weren’t that visible - especially at night. We finally found some on Etsy that we liked a lot and installed those. We’re thinking we may end up painting the white numbers the same color as the door/mailbox.
We ended up having a few places where we had to patch holes in brick mortar as a result of removing old door bell, house numbers, etc. We put our masonry hats on feel like we did a pretty good job of patching holes in a way that doesn’t make them jump out at you as you walk up on the porch.
The old mailbox slot and the new mailbox. If you look hard, you can see our mortar patch job two rows below porch light.
“Don’t try to put mail here!!”
New house numbers - still white.
Attic Lift
We decided to install an attic lift in the garage to make getting things up in the attic a bit easier. it’s a small platform that you can put up to 400lbs on and then it gets pulled up into the attic. We finally ordered this last month and decided to install it last week when we had an unusually mild week weather wise (highs in the mid-eighties rather than mid/high nineties.
The lift came with installation instructions, but that were bad. They look like Ikea instructions, but are much, much worse. In many places they’re missing important info. Luckily, the owner of the company also did a video on YouTube. It’s also not great, but between all of it, we felt we could tackle it. The company suggests it should take 3 hours for a professional. It took us at least 9 hrs over three days. We ended up having to call the company as we couldn’t get one of the two motors to work correctly. Turns out, customer service is the owner and he immediately spotted our issue (we were on a FaceTime call). Turns out we put one of the motors in upside down (one of those missing details).
We still have some trim work that the builders will do and then we’ll build a cover for th platform that will clean up the look on the ceiling.
August Activities
We’re expecting tile work to start in the bathrooms and utility room next week. Doug & Travis will be installing the floor heater system in the primary bath after the tiler (Carlos) installs a subfloor that looks very much like a giant Lego board.
We’re also expecting the oak floors to be ordered Monday or Tuesday. Apparently they will take 4-5 days to arrive and will have to acclimate in the house for a week or so before install. We expect the installers to sand them down and then cover them (they’ll be stained towards the end). We’re still working with builder on when we can install the closet systems we have ordered and waiting to ship (we don’t want to make floor work harder).
The cabinet maker has been busy building cabinets over the last month or so. Not sure if those will go in during August or not.
We expect that we’ll install wallpaper in the powder room in the coming weeks.
We’re also hoping to get epoxy floors installed in the garage and workshop.