April Fools!

As I mentioned in my last post, there was too much left to be done and not enough construction money (or any other money for that matter) to do it with. So we had to take over finishing quite a bit of things ourselves. We had to take care of installing all of the basement light fixtures, we had to take out the plumber and install all of our plumbing fixtures; we also ended up installing all of our appliances, we hung all interior doors, installed all door knobs and hardware, among other things, and all of this had to be done by the end of April. But the house needed to look "finished" for the appraisal now (early April!)

Talk about pressure!

But first, carpets were coming the second week of March and since the beginning we were tasked with cleaning to save money, we had to make sure floors got cleaned before then (well, I also wanted to really clean the floors! I don't want all of that dust hidden under carpet pad).

Since the basement was the fist to have tile done, and all of the trimwork, stone, and painting and staining as well, we were able to start cleaning in the basement. It didn't take long to realize that cleaning the basement floors wasn't going to be easy. As soon as I tried to mop, the floor turned to mud (from drywall dust and paint overspray). So I began scrubbing on a tuesday, by thursday I had only done 2 rooms. Thankfully my in-laws came to our rescue, and we all pitched in.

I worked mainly on the task of cleaning the floors. It was arduous work. First, dump a bucket of water, use a sponge scrubber to loosen up all of the crud. Then use a bunch of paper towels to pick up some of that slush (i tried to simply mop it out but for each small section it would take four or five buckets of water before the mop would run semi-clean). By taking away the muck with paper towels, it only took two passes with the mop to get the floors clean.

Evan became my great helper. Bianca also liked  playing in the mud down here!

While Evan and I worked on cleaning floors, my father in law installed the door to the tornado shelter.

Bianca came over to help grandpa and show him how it's done.

At the same time, my mother-in-law, Pam, went around and mounted all of the light and outlet plates back on.

By now Bianca has lost her pants. But she's still a great supervisor.

Shawn in the mean time started hanging light fixtures.

Sparky did a great job.

I was smiling until Shawn asked if I remembered to shut off that circuit.

Eventually I joined in the fun at playing sparky too, while grandpa and grandma entertained the kids before they headed home.

Working overhead is tough. Why did we ask for so many lights!

Tile work continued upstairs, and I love how the deco-tile transitions look on the floor.

But of course, we hurry to get the house all cleaned up and ready for carpet, but the tile job was taking longer, so carpet got delayed. Until the tile was finished, we couldn't really do much else.
So we focused on finishing hanging light fixtures. Shawn also started working on installing plumbing fixtures, starting with the basement bath.

While we worked inside, the framers came back to finish up the front porch! This is one of the areas that for the past four years I have hated about the house. It just didn't initially turn out like we thought it would, and I'm glad we got a chance to fix it. Joe, our framer, was awesome. We described what we wanted, gave him a picture of what we thought and he did it!

The columns turned out awesome. We love our new front porch!

And look! The siding is officially done! Yes... finally... all of the siding has been installed. (Of course, this does not include painting)

Then our lovely Iowa weather forgot that spring was supposed to start coming soon. Good thing carpet was delayed because there was no way to get to the house! It was snowed in. And the framers finished the outside work just in time too.

Another winter wonderland landscape

So the tiler did everything that needed to be done so the carpet could go in. By spring break, our new carpets were in. Since Evan had no school and our daycare was on vacation for spring break, we took time off and had a workation.

Now that the carpet was in, we could start hanging doors. Again, since tile work was still going on upstairs (mostly grouting by now), we started by hanging the basement doors.

Doors look great! And this is the carpet that used to be in the family room. Now it got moved to the hobby/ bsmt laundry (in closet) room.

You can see the neutral toned carpet. The "cheap" menards doors stained great!

This leads to our old basement bedroom and small linen closet on the right.

We bought some ceiling fans for the basement, so here's Shawn wiring the switch for one of them

Since there was so much to be done, we decided to stay at the house at night during spring break. This saved us having to run back into town to the apt. This was we just put kids to bed. Problem was that all of our camping gear was packed, so no blow-up mattresses. Kids seemed to do ok on the carpet. Us on the other hand, not so good sleeping on the floor. We found some couch cushions stuffed in the van to semi-make a bed (did I ever mention that the van ended up being used for temp storage when we moved out?).

So we did a ton of work during spring break. We got upstairs doors hung, started installing door knobs.
Trim carpenter came back to drill all of the holes in the cabinets, but we had to install the hardware ourselves.
A big job was installing all of the plumbing fixtures.

I'm lucky my hubby can do it all. Sneak peek at the master shower too!

Evan took this shot of the tub faucet. Great photographer in the making. Sneak peek at tub tile too.

Here Shawn's installing the small bath shower fixture.

And here he works on the laundry sink. Can you tell he's got the quit taking pictures look and help instead?

 At the same time that we were working, the electricians were hanging light fixtures upstairs. And then it came time to install appliances. Since nothing was happening we asked who was supposed to install those. Appliance store said contractor, contractor said plumber and electrician, electrician said not in his bid. Round and round we went. Finally we just installed the darn things ourselves just so they got done! Most of it was hauling in and unwraping, like the fridge.

Here's the fridge going in (look! lights are in too!)

Look at all the space. I held back a tear when I realized this was probably the last time it would be this clean.

Gorgeous. But I'm dreading the fingerprints already.

Our new oven!

 The oven we hauled in, unpacked, but the electrician put it in since he had to wire it.

Appliances can't be complete without a dishwasher.

 The dishwasher Shawn installed since he was doing the plumbing for it. The electrician wired the plug, since it goes on an outlet.

Pop-up vent and cooktop

The hardest of the appliances to install was the downdraft pop-up vent. Since I wanted functioning drawers underneath the gas cooktop, we had to reverse the blower motor to go on the back, rather than having just fake drawer fronts. Then we had to rig-a-ma-jig the brackets since the space underneath didn't quite fit. But in the end, it got installed. The hvac sub hooked up the venting and also the propane to the stove and the electrician made the wiring connections.

Finally, it was time to lock in our rate for our final mortgage and get an appraisal. Since we have a closing date for May 1st, we needed the house pretty much done and looking good enough for the appraisal by early april. This meant that the house had to be scrubbed clean and shined up. The appraiser was coming on Friday, so I took the Thursday before off and cleaned from 7 am until about midnight.

So I took a lot of pictures because it was probably going to be the only time it would ever be so shiny and clean!
So take a look!

Small bath upstairs

Great room

New wall sconces in great room!

View to the front foyer and stairs to the basement

Front foyer. The tile here has small granite diamond accents

New outdoor light fixtures on garage

Our front door was painted brown. We love it!

Porch lights. And no, that's not a missile defense system or a star trek contraption. It's a motion sensor for the lights.

Close up of the porch hanging light

Exterior wall sconces!

Upstairs kid bedroom. Bedrooms all got ceiling fans

View from master bedroom into master bath

Bath and walk-in tiled shower

Tiled accent niche inside the shower. I love the deco tile!

New mirrors and sconces.

View from stairs to the basement bar/kitchenette. Had to reuse the old appliances because no budget to get new ones.

Stairs up to the main floor from family room

Basement bath vanity, new lights and mirrors

Last, but not least, our new walk-in pantry!

It is still hard to believe that we finally came to this point! We can't wait for the appraisal to get done. Our prayer is that the house appraises for the same or more than the construction appraisal (or we're in a pickle if not!)

But we're burned out. For the past three months we've gone to work during the day, then rush to the house to work on something, then rush back to the apartment to get kids to bed because it's a school night. We've spent almost every weekend day here too. I think we eat mcdonalds or wendy's every night. But it's done (99% of it anyway) and looks good enough for an appraisal.

So to wrap up, the appraiser came yesterday, but we have to wait a couple of weeks to see how it goes. Here's praying and hoping for the best with the appraisal, but there's still a lot of miscellaneous little things that need to be taken care of before we could move in or close!

Until next post.