Got a Plumber!

Getting him registered in Rockwall! Here we go!

Round and round we go....

You probably can't tell, but the house is painted. Cream trim and beigeish everything else.


Ah, that's better. See it now?

Erik tiled like a maniac this weekend. And without running water! Good looking travertine if I must say so myself.

Bill's out and we're working on another plumber. It's not the easiest thing to find someone to pick up where somebody else left off. But it will happen. We bought a dishwasher and the cabinets are fixed. The counter guy was going to come tomorrow, but looks like it will be next week as we need sinks so he can cut the holes for them. Counters are exciting! Electric wants to wait till the plumber's done, so hmmm... We have all the lighting fixtures bought and the faucets ready and waiting. Carpet and wood is the last thing to go in. The yard can't happen until the plumbing happens. Got a recommendation for a new construction plumber in the Dallas area? We'd love to hear it! ;) Until then, a little bit of cutting in left and lots of tiling. My brother in law says builders use countertops as a 45-day mark to finish. We'll see how that works out!

Thanks for the Help!

This past week has been nothing but painting! I even found time in my week to go out and help Erik pain the 2 "kids'" rooms. Mom and Dad went out Sunday to help cut in the corners and around windows. We're sooo close to being done with paint! The exterior painter is supposed to come this week, too!

Some news...

Erik was able to "rush" order the new cabinet, so it should be here in a week. Since neither salesman nor customer knew what they were doing, we missed the corners overlapping the angles on the computer print-out that we now discovered after the fact. Que sera. We were also able to rush order the rest of the stuff we need to finish out the cabinets. Erik has decided to use the sink base we already have and refabricate it to fit in the "hutch" area in the kitchen to make it a built-in china/linen storage rather than go buy something to fit there. Dad can help with all that, so that's great.

Erik finished out all the windows and hung the last of the doors, minus the door to the garage which we'll hold off on until all cabinets are in. He started on the rest of the door casings and then we just paint.

Then there's Bill. Bill, Bill, Bill. Better get the job done, my friend! At this point, water is a bigger deal than a cabinet. Water. It's always water.

In Brief

We have to order a different cabinet in order for the dishwasher to fit. According to Seconds and Surplus, this takes three weeks. We're going to see if we can order direct (via my dad if we have to) to get the cabinet sooner. If not, Erik made a very serious announcement that this would make the move in date move to January. Hmm. I'm not exactly happy about that. Don't get me wrong, I'm so thankful to be living with my parents and it's worked out very well, but I think everyone understands that living in your own house trumps where we find ourselves right now. I'm also just ready to have my husband back. Dental school is a lot harder without him around the house. So, I'm praying that other things can be done during this time IF we have to wait 3 weeks. Not waiting 3 weeks would be even better : ) We have to have water. Bill has been out, but he's sooo slow. Erik's going to tell him that if it's not connected to the sewer by Tuesday, we'll find someone else to do it. Mind you, Rockwall did come out and mark the sewer, Bill dug 8 ft and could not find it. Hmm. We have to have water at this point. Kinda rediculous. We can't trim out electric until the cabinets are done, so that's a big bummer. They were going to do that this week. We CAN continue to paint and do molding, get cabinets in for the other two bathrooms, and tile those. The other big bummer about the sink cabinet in the kitchen is that we can't tile the kitchen until it's in. We just have to keep trudging along, do what we can when we can, and hope that the timing works out to spend Christmas in our new home. Once midterms are over, I should be able to help out more, too. That would be nice.

A Place for Everything...

A place for cars.... (in the driveway)

A place for pipes.... (in the crater in the yard)

A place for feet.... (no more walking in the mud/dirt)

A place for a fridge and pots and dishes... (what size of fridge is to be determined....)

A place for an oven and microwave.... (and pots and dishes...)

A place for a dishwasher and a sink...

A place for two sinks in the master bath...

This Week in "The House Blog"....

Tomorrow we get the driveway and walkway poured.

Angel's crew will also dig a trench from the garage side of the house to the back retaining wall and from the electric pole to the wall. Erik will then have to connect the two trenches under the wall to feed the electric wires through via PVC so we can get POWER!

The sewer is marked, so Bill can come out and connect and we can have WATER!

The exterior painter is scheduled to come in a couple of weeks.

The drywall guy needs to fix the wall in the master bath.

Erik needs to hire the cabinet installer and a tile guy to do the big jobs.

We need to buy tile.

We need to grade the yard. Big time.

We need to start painting walls in the house. Mom and I want to go out and tidy up a bit, too.

And Erik just informed me that he needs a break. No doubt!

We're Getting a Driveway

Angel's crew is back on the scene to pour us a driveway. This is the prepwork on Wednesday after the curb cutting on Thursday for the inspection on Friday. We get to pour Monday, I think.

If you're a super good observer, you might have also noticed the massive piles of dirt in front of the house. Bill dug a hole. At last. Unfortunately, he was unable to find the sewer line, so the city has to come mark it, so he can connect...and, then.....water? Maybe. Here's the hole:

In conjunction with the driveway, we also get a walkway to the front door.

Erik's been in a frenzy working every night putting up trim around the windows. He built a fake door in my parents' garage months ago to practice and what we decided on is repeated here (the door to the water heater in the garage):

Then he decided to try something simpler, and I think it looks just fine. And it's cheaper. And it doesn't take as long.

Erik bought 15 gallons of "Summertime" interior paint today, so aside from studying, you know what I'll be doing this weekend. Cabinets are in and dad gave us a name of an installer we can use. Erik hired a painter for the exterior and we are....yes, back to Sherwin Williams because that's who he uses. At least we already have a color picked out. Ummm, what else? We're going to buy tile soon. Need to get the wet saw back from my friend Derek who borrowed it. Oh, we have to fix the door to the closet in the master because it was designed/framed/drywalled and it's wrong somewhere in all of that. Erik re-framed it and back comes the drywall guy to make it all match. That's all I've got.