Getting Closer…

I haven’t had a chance to go through all the Belize pictures yet, and Christine hasn’t finished processing our wedding photos yet, but don’t worry — you can all be assured that full recaps are coming.
In the meantime, you get an update on our house! We found out via email from our sales coordinator on Monday that the construction manager expects to turn the house over to the sales department in three weeks. After some back-and-forth on final fixes, that means we’re looking at closing in 4-5 weeks. WOW. In all likelihood, we will be living in our new house by the middle of July, which is a whole month earlier than we expected when we began the house-building process. The downside means a month of paying both rent and a mortgage, but the upside means: we will have a house!
We stopped by last night to see what progress had happened in the past week and a half. I have to admit that it was a little disappointing. After a couple months of significant changes happening on a daily basis, walking in and seeing only a few improvements like cabinets and paint was underwhelming. Still, we are getting really excited for the day we finally move in.
The last time I posted an update was right after they’d installed sheetrock, but before they finished it. Bricking was in progress, but not complete. They finished the brick and stone at the end of the week before our wedding, and I saw it on Friday the 22nd when I met up with Carter and Kent just long enough to show them the work in progress.
Here’s what it looked like last night, all finished on the outside. I’m really happy with how the stone turned out around the doorway. And notice we have garage doors! Woo!

The most obvious addition were the cabinets! They were all installed, both in the kitchen and in the bathrooms, except for the kitchen island which is sitting a few feet farther out from where it will actually be. It’s been a while since we saw the color, so we were happy to see them again. We love the dark, dark espresso stain. It’s going to look so awesome with the countertops we chose. Also note in the background that we have a fireplace mantle now, and you can see that they’ve painted all the walls the standard “new house beige.” They still need to go back and touch up all the edges though.


Other new additions included interior doors, for both the entrances to rooms and for closets and bathrooms. We also have windowsills, floor trim, moulding, a chair rail in the dining room, and shelves in all the closets.

Doors!
The brick is complete on the back of the house as well.

Just 4-5 weeks! I can’t believe it!