The House: 31 Weeks

To kind of mix things up, I thought I'd talk more about what life is like while building a house.

Cody and I usually go out together every Tuesday and most Thursdays, thanks to my mom babysitting for us. *This week, mom had surgery on Wednesday, so I didn't go out obviously. My mom is a-MAZ-ing!* All the rest of the days (Wednesdays and Saturdays) Cody goes out by himself. I try to bring lunch out to Cody on Saturday, mostly so I can make sure he eats a good meal during the long 12 hour workday. When I have the energy or the time, I also like bringing out treats for my group. I've made cookies and brownies and soup and bread and all kinds of goodies, but my most famous treats were either the hamburgers, the biscuits and gravy breakfast, or maybe the cinnamon rolls. All were a huge hit. I really enjoy taking out a little goodie to remind my neighbors that we care. :)

Cody and I always drive our black Honda Civic to the build site. Cody thinks it is a pickup. What good is building all night alongside your hubby if you can't flirt a little bit? I may or may not have gotten a leettle bit excited with the vacuum while cleaning the window sills and baseboard...
I love bringing out dinner on the nights we work together. We used to bring out sandwiches or stop by the store to buy something, but since we discovered we could take out a microwave, I've been getting more inventive. Of course, it's normally a Tupperware container full of leftovers, but we've also made microwave popcorn, warmed up chicken nuggets, etc. This week was my most exciting (and delicious) adventure yet: fresh salmon, which I prepped at home with butter and lemon, and pine nut couscous, also prepped at home. Just boil the water for the couscous, and then the salmon cooked for about 4 minutes. YUM! I served it along with some oranges, and some shelf stable chocolate milk that we stuck down in the snow for a few hours to get cold. Mostly, though, we work, and we try to work hard. We of course love a little chit-chat time, but it's always with work. Here's my he-man now, lifting some mighty heavy shelving. I told him, "Wait, I can help you with that!" but he was still too quick for me.
This week we got spend the whole time doing finish work at our house. Aah, so much fun to be in our own, warm home! It really is starting to feel like a home too. We put in closet shelving, baseboard, stair runners and window sills. (woops, I forgot to take a picture of the window sills... hm, I'll have to get that later.) We chose to put a 1 1/2" lip on the edge of all our shelves to add stability and a really nice finished look, and we are really happy with the result. Here's the kitchen pantry, all done! (See our little microwave set up right there by the air compressor?)

Here's the linen closet in the kids' bathroom. Remember when we widened it by 3"? I'm so glad we did that. :) This one was kind of an "aha" moment for me. Ever since choosing our floorplan, there's been a few things I've been really worried about storing. #1, we have no coat closet. #2, we have no mud room. So where can I keep things like my vacuum, coats, cleaning supplies, etc? Then it hit me--I have a linen closet in each bathroom! I decided to convert the linen closet in the kids' bathroom into the cleaning closet. So I left a large empty space at the bottom, tall enough (I know--I measured) for our broom, mop, and vacuum. There was still enough space above for cleaning supplies and extra soap/shampoo. And where will I keep my linens, you might ask? Well, that bathroom already has extra storage in a cabinet that will be installed above the countertop. I love brilliant moments like that.And, to solve the lack of coat closet, we asked our building manager if we could build a shelf and bench. We got the approval to build it now, but install it after the open house. Hooray! We can use the materials available now, and then it will just hang out in our basement until after we move in. We started the bench. It's not quite done--we ran out of the trim I want to use around the top--but I'd say it's looking mighty fine. It has 2 spots with boot trays on them for shoes, and I'll make a little pad for the top. The shelf is also being built, but isn't quite as far along as the bench is. You'll just have to wait until next week for that picture.
Here's some more closet love. Master bedroom, before it was all done. It is done now.

Lee's closet:
Anna and Katie's closet:The rods will be installed after we paint. And here's the Master bathroom linen closet:So that's our house. How about the others? You may notice... we started painting this week!
House 1: Caulk, Spackle, sanding, and extensive cleaning all done. Primer applied. Gutters on.
House 2: Caulk, spackle, sanding, and cleaning going on.
House 3: Caulk fixed and done, spackle and sanding done, cleaning done, primer done.
House 4: spackle and sanding started.
House 5: spackle and sanding started, caulk started.
House 6 (ours!): shelving done, baseboard on all carpeted areas done, bench built, window sills and stair runners done. Just need another delivery of some trim to finish off a few places and we'll be ready to spackle and sand!
House 7: Inside, not much has changed--just waiting to spackle and caulk. But outside, most of the siding has been put on. They got held up by a big wind and snow storm.
House 8: Trim, baseboard and shelves done; window sills and stair runners and all that jazz done. Ready for spackle and caulk.
House 9: Interior doors installed and closets being designed.

Wow, this post is getting LONG! It's been a busy week. Nearly everyone has come out during non-required work hours and we are all very excited about what is going on. It's so invigorating to get so much done and to be getting close to the end. Mostly, it's just a lot of fun to work on our own house and see our dreams come true!

Just a cute picture

There is a lot on my mind, but I can't figure out how to write it down. This picture makes me happy, so that's all I will do for now. Love, Lisa

The House: 30 weeks

This has been such an exciting week out at the build site! Our "Very exciting thing" finally got started, though not our house yet: Siding! House 1 and house 7 have both got their siding this week. The rest are going to be started soon too. But let's go into detail about our house, since it's been a busy place this week. Saturday the mudding/taping guys finished the texture on the ceiling and the last coat of mud on the walls. Cody's dad was helping us that day, and asked them how they do the texture. They showed him, and let him do Lee's closet ceiling. They take a rag filled with mud and kind of squish it on the ceiling, then flatten it out with a trowel. Simple, easy, effective. It looks great too. Cody's parents also cleaned and organized our cold storage room where we've been storing our tools and extra wood, and Dad's tools that he's loaning us for painting are all ready to go. Yay!

Tuesday Cody and I spent the day at our house, getting things ready. We plugged in the construction lights. We wire them where the smoke detectors will go, then turn on the circuit breaker and voila! light!

It's been my job to design the closets. I've been thinking about this for weeks, asking for advice and looking at pictures, measuring our baskets and hampers and hangers and clothes, trying to determine exactly what will be best for our family. I had a good time with my measuring tape, level, pencil, and list of measurements laying out closets this week. It's tricky to determine exactly where the rods and shelves will go, but it's even tougher to see the 3D result from our lines on the wall. It took some tweaking, but I think I've got it figured out. One of the guys in our group came through then and put in some of the banding on the walls that will support the shelves.

Also on Tuesday, Cody and I carried all our doors over to our house. They'd been in the garage at House 3 for a week, since we were getting sheetrock while they were delivered and couldn't go directly to our house. So we had to carry them, one by one, up the street. On Wednesday, Cody and the same guy who worked on shelf banding put in all of our interior doors. Wahoo! They are beautiful.

After the doors went in, we're ready for trim! We pulled out our box of rosettes that we cut a few weeks ago, along with the bottom plinth pieces, and installed them on the corners of the doors. We made sure they were level, then nailed them in on the corners. Cody was sweet and saved me one to do on Thursday. :) My dad helped us put the pine trim around the door frames. It is pretty easy to do with the rosettes, since we just make straight cuts. After they've been cut to just the right size, Cody came through and nailed them in.

We're not entirely done, but we're really close. The result is so pretty! I'm loving it. We worked ever so slightly on baseboard, but there's still a lot of that to do.

But while we were working hard inside, something else arrived I am just thrilled with: our garage door!It was installed Wednesday morning, just before we started trim. This is so great, because we can put the saw in the garage with the door closed, turn on our little heater, and it's not too horribly cold while we work.

So that's what happened at our house. Here's the rest of the group:
House 1: Siding on! Sanding and caulk and vacuuming going on, getting ready for paint.
House 2: Stone and grout worked on some more, but there's still a section of grout that needs to be done. Getting closer on that. Also, spackling, sanding, vacuuming, and caulking is in full swing. Garage door on.
House 3: Needed some extra sanding because there were some problems in the caulk. Caulk is nearly impossible to sand out, so it's important we do it right the first time. It's been a tough week at that house, but I think it's starting to look a lot better. Also, vacuuming and getting ready for paint.
House 4: No change from last week. (waiting for spackle and caulk)
House 5: Trim and baseboard and everything finished, ready for spackle and caulk. Garage door on.
House 6 (ours!): Interior doors in, starting trim and baseboard and shelves. Garage door on.
House 7: Siding delivered and started being installed. Some vacuuming done and spackling
House 8: Doors in, trim mostly done. Baseboard and shelves worked on as well. Garage door on.
House 9: Sheetrock on, mudded, taped, and textured. Now, all 9 houses have been sheetrocked!

Exciting exciting things. Progress puts everyone in a good mood. So does sunshine. Today, we have both!

See, I still have 3 kids...

I'm sure you've all noticed what I've noticed the past few months: building our house has been pretty time consuming. But I promise we're not neglecting our kids and the rest of life!

From Lee and Anna: We love reading stories with Grandma at night and we love playing outside, especially when mom lets us go way out in the weeds. There's a big mound of dirt at the bottom of Grandma's hill that we call Turtle Mountain. We like to hike down there. And if our shoes get muddy, well, we just take them off! Of course, Daddy kind of flips out when we do that, but it's sure better than trudging all the way back to the house (about a quarter mile) with muddy shoes.

From Katie: I learned how to climb up on stuff! I'm giving my sister Annalisa a run for her money on being the best maniac climber in our family. Some of my favorite places to climb are on the fireplace mantle, on chairs (which leads to the table, if I'm quick enough), and of course my all time favorite: the tub of Legos! We call that my stage. I like to dance when I get up there.
From mommy: I'm so grateful to all the family that has helped us through these busy busy months. I love spending as much time as I can with my children and watching them learn and grow. They are truly precious to me, and I am grateful they are so patient with their crazy parents. :)

Ribbon Rose Hairbow Tutorial

How about another hairbow tutorial? Yeah, I think it's about time.

Ribbon Roses

Preliminary notes: These roses are quite small. I used 3/8 inch ribbon, 100 % polyester (simply because that's what I had on hand). The fun part about these roses is that you could use any ribbon color or shape. For smaller roses, use smaller ribbon. For bigger ones, you guessed it--use a larger ribbon. Any color, any size, sounds good to me! Because this project is so small, though, I was grateful for my mom's glue gun which is a smaller size and a cooler temperature than mine. I could get a teeny dot of hot glue and could also put my fingers right over it without getting blisters. So, I'd recommend a low-temp gun for this one.

Alright. Here we go. To make the Ribbon Rose, here's what you do:

1. Firstly, know what we're going to do: we're going to basically just roll up the ribbon in a tight roll. But we're going to twist the ribbon a few times and we're going to glue it down as we go. So, to start the center, turn over one corner of the ribbon and glue it down.

2. Curl it around so the raw edge is tucked underneath the roll of ribbon. There--no fraying for us! By the way, I keep this attached to the whole spool of ribbon while working.


3. Twist your ribbon once, so it kind of folds in half, then wrap the ribbon around the center and secure the inside with a tiny drop of hot glue.
4. Watching as you go, keep wrapping the ribbon a little ways, twisting the ribbon before each glue-down. You can switch directions of the twist or even do a double twist here and there, whatever you want. Look at your rose and make sure you glue it right where you want it. The more times you wrap it, the bigger the rose gets. Keep going around and around until it is the size you want it. Mine are about the size of a penny.
Hm... the next time I make a tutorial, I think I'll give myself a manicure first...
5. When the rose is the size you want it, twist the ribbon once and pull it under the rose and cut it off of the spool, giving yourself about 3/4 inch extra ribbon.
6. Fold the extra ribbon back on itself once and glue it down.
7. Now fold it back on itself once more so that the extra ribbon is completely hidden underneath the rose, and glue it to the underside of the rose. This double-layer of ribbon will help give the rose some body and stability, as well as a great place to glue when you're ready to attach it to a clip.
8. Clean up your hot glue spider webs, and we're done with the rose!
Now the fun part: how to use it...

For this pink one, I made a couple other pink roses out of various pink ribbons I had leftover from Valentine's hearts.

I made a small green loop, then glued together my roses...
...glued my green little leaf to the back, and attached it to a green-lined alligator clip. Tri-roses clippie! Way cute, and very petite, which is great for small babies.

But why stop there? Here I dressed up this rose with some brown loops in the back and another set of pink loops in the middle (seven brown and five pink). I've used buttons for centers of flowers before, but this is a great way to do it too--especially if your buttons (like mine) are packed away in storage for another few months. :DHere's a black and white one I did already on a baby shower gift. The gift was wrapped in plain white wrapping paper, then dressed up with a black ribbon around the gift and the hairbow is the finishing touch. Great for a baby girl! (This black ribbon was 5/8 inch, not 3/8 inch. I folded it in half and glued it shut first before I made the rosette, which made it a little harder to work with, but gave me the smaller result I wanted.)
Happy Hairbowing!

The House: 29 Weeks and Happy Birthday to me!

Another week down!

Yesterday was my birthday. My awesome mom brought the kids out along with 6 large pizzas, 3 gallons of lemonade, and cupcakes. (I helped her make/order the food, but she did all the packing and hauling and moving and setting it up). We had a great birthday party. I felt so special and enjoyed a night of building and celebrating with all my new friends. If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times--we're building more than houses. We're building a neighborhood.

But we didn't just party this week, we got some good stuff done. Firstly.... SHEETROCK!!!!
(see the sheetrock over the front window? They cut it out later.)

On Saturday when the kids and I took lunch out to Cody and his dad, the subs were in our house hanging the sheetrock. They had fired up the furnace and Cody opened our vents (we had them covered with leftover shingles to help keep them clean) and were moving fast. They had it mostly done on Saturday, and finished it the remainder of the way on Monday. They're pretty quick with it, and I'm SO glad we don't have to do sheetrock by ourselves! It's very dusty, very heavy, and if you make a mistake it's an expensive one.

The dining room, as seen from the front door:Master bathroom:

The laundry closet/hall, as seen from Lee's room looking toward the girl's room:So anyway, they finished up the sheetrock on Monday. Tuesday they did the first coat of taping and mudding. We went in to see how it was going and learn a little bit about mudding, since we know it's quite the process. Like most things, it's easier with the right tools. But when we went in, they had our house being heated with a propane burner and they informed us that the furnace wasn't working right. The fan was running okay, but it wasn't heating well. So after they left, our group member who knows all about furnaces went downstairs and checked it out. He found a drain wasn't draining properly and some water had gotten into the circuit board. On Wednesday afternoon the heating guys came back and repaired the furnace and fixed the drain, and now it's running great. So we got our second coat of mud and tape on Thursday and are getting our final coat of mud today. (three coats, with drying time in between, followed by a good sanding, makes the mud nice and smooth.) We'll probably get to start our doors and trim early next week.

Meanwhile, around the neighborhood:
House 1: We spackled the nail holes on the trim, baseboard, and shelves, then went back and sanded them smooth. Also started on caulking.
House 2: Worked a bit on their stone which finally arrived. We re-tented half of their house. Their stone is all on now, just needs grout. Also, spackling and sanding.
House 3: Has 3 4x4 wood posts that will be for their hand railing installed. Spackling and sanding and caulking.
House 4: Front posts installed. Trim and shelves all done.
House 5: Trim, closet shelves, window sills, stair runners all done.
House 6 (ours!): Sheetrock done, mud and tape mostly done.
House 7: Trim, closet shelves, baseboard, etc all done. Back porch poured--yes, Concrete! Front posts installed.
House 8: Sheetrock, mud, tape all done. Interior doors installed (or at least some of them). Front posts installed.
House 9: Stairs re-built, dormer windows put in, sheetrock hung. Front posts installed.

One last note about those front-posts I was mentioning: some of the different floorplans have a handrail along the front porch. Ours does not. The ones that do have these big vinyl-wrapped posts on them. Cody and another guy in our group put them in. They're kind of tricky and very large and heavy, and they are bolted into the concrete and then nailed into the trusses above. That's a job that I won't talk about when it comes "our turn" because we don't have any, but I still wanted to mention because Cody did such a good job with it. :)

Still no estimated move-in date. So, were just working away until it's done. They're coming!