We have doors! And trim! And a driveway! :)

More changes coming to the Younker house!! Our doors came in as well as the trim. They are just waiting to be installed. We are hoping that the trim carpenter is coming next week to start on everything. In fact, we have meeting with him Monday at 3:30 pm to discuss our plans for our closets and pantry and locker for the mudroom.


Our doors and trim waiting to be installed. I can’t wait to see what they look like on the walls!!!


Ted and I also started tiling the master bathroom. So far it looks awesome. I’m in love with the tile we selected.

Here it is as we started dry-fitting the tile.


Here it is grouted and dry. I LOVE it.
As we were laying the tile, two men showed up and dry walled our garage ceiling. They were done in no time at all.


Last but not least, we have a driveway, walkway and patio!!! They also came and graded our lot to even out the ground…it made a big difference.


Our patio!!





Our driveway!! The rest will have white rock (see below)


The walk way and steps to the house



The driveway!!!


The lot all nice and graded/leveled out.



Love how everything is coming together. The last thing we need for the exterior is our stone, which hopefully will be soon!

Next week we are hoping to continue tiling the master bathroom. We will be working on the shower since the front and back of the tub will need to wait until the cabinets are installed (hopefully soon).

EXCITING NOTE: We were given the green light to lock in everything. Estimated closing date is January 153, 2014….one month more than we originally were told, but that means approximately 48 days left in this apartment!!!! Woo Hoo!!

Tile, siding and trim ~ Oh My!

This weekend was an eventful weekend in the Younker household. We dry-fitted tile. We set a shower pan. We laid tile down. We grouted. And we watched as some guys froze their butts off to hang our siding.

First up. The tile.

A couple weeks ago Ted’s dad, Ted and I put in the backer board in the hall bathroom and the laundry room in preparation for the tile.

Backer board going in the laundry room a couple weeks ago

This weekend we had a crew in our house to help us with the tile. Ted’s parents, our brother-in-law Chris, and us. This girl isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. In fact, I love these types of products. It’s a great sense of accomplishment when it’s all over, even though it seems to take forever!!

Ted’s dad dry-fitted the tile in the hall bathroom. And then each tile was labeled so that we knew exactly where that piece of tile went when we mortared it down. I helped him with this part. The bathroom was so little it wasn’t big enough for more than one person so I got the hard job of handing tile to him and mixing more mortar!

        
Dry-fitting the tile.                                                         The tile is mortared down (you can see our labels)

On Monday, Diane and I had the day off (in observance of Veteran’s Day). Ted (Ted’s dad) is retired so he has every day off. So we came back on Monday and grouted the hall bathroom and laundry room. And wiped it clean.

     
The grout is in. The tile was pretty filmy. I was nervous that the grout was too dark and not the color I wanted. In the second picture you can see how it lightened up and looks great!

The laundry room got the same treatment. Chris and Diane dry-fitted the tile in the laundry room. And then we mortared them down. Ted’s dad and Chris both worked on getting the tile down so it went pretty quickly.

      
Dry-fitted                                              Tile and mortar


The grout is in!

I love the way it all turned out. I am so grateful for the help we had in this project. Without them we never would have gotten all this done in a weekend. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

 

Next up – the master bathroom.

While we were working on the hall bathroom and laundry room, Ted was busy in the master bathroom working on installing the bathtub and pouring the shower pan. Again, we had some help with this project from our good friend Josh.

    
Ted mixing up the…whatever he used… for the shower pan

     
The shower pan is poured! Letting it set before we put the membrane on it

  
My tub is set! I’m so excited to use this thing. It would have come in handy after the weekend working at the house. My muscles were aching!

    
And we got the backer board down on the floor of the master bathroom. We are ready to tile!

Last but not least – the siding. It’s up! And it looks awesome!

You may remember when I mentioned earlier that we went with James Hardie cement board siding in Iron Gray. We love it. The white trim really helps make it pop!

The areas that do not have siding on them will have stone. Hopefully that will be in the next couple weeks. Hopefully before this Nebraska weather turns too cold.







There is our house. It’s moving along. Each week we get closer to having it all finished! We are crossing our fingers that we’ll be able to move into the house in about 8-10 weeks.

Next on the agenda: tiling the master bathroom, pouring the driveway and patio, and exterior stone. The trim carpenter is suppose to come in the next couple weeks to get started on installing cabinets, trim, install interior doors and work on our closets and locker for the mudroom. Then it’ll start really looking like a house on the inside!

And because she’s too cute not to share, Rainey enjoyed sitting on the porch watching everything going on around her.

The tank is in!

The septic tank that is. I know, I know. It’s a septic tank. It’s not glamorous at all. But it’s part of the house building process.

And when your hubby digs and installs it, it is pretty exciting! I’m so thankful my husband knows how to do these things. And that our builder allows us to do these things on our own in a way to save some money. And it is a way for us to make this house a part of us; because our blood, sweat and tears are going into the building process.

Installing a septic tank is easy peasy, right?!?


Wrong!

I had NO idea what went into installing a septic tank. I honestly thought you dug a hole and set a tank in said hole and ran a pipe or two from the house to the tank. Ha! Needless to say, I will just stick to my day job and leave this stuff to the professional.

So without further ado, there is my hubby hard at work!


That’s my husband….in the backhoe. And that’s my back yard…completely torn up!




  
There is another shot of Ted hard at work. The person crouched down is Matt, Ted’s helper. And a picture of how far the pipes are coming from the house. You can barely see it, but the septic tank is the orange thing closer to the house (in the hole of course)


   
                          The septic tank. Fun isn’t it!?!


More trenches dug by the hubs!


The hubs also dug in our garage drain. More exciting stuff, I know, but it’s progress none the less. And progress makes me happy!!








So blessed to have a husband that does this. And doesn’t mind my questions about this, that and everything in between!

Next up – tile!!

Paint, countertops and appliances

Sorry it’s been a while since my last update. It’s been a crazy month!!!

Since my last update Ted and I have been making a lot of decisions. We went and bought the exterior lights for the house (flood lights and lighting for under our deck (patio area) as well as the hardware for our cabinets. Thank you Menards for those sweet deals!!

We’ve picked out our paint colors and tile for the bathrooms and laundry room. They are:

Hall bathroom

Photo courtesy of Lowes (click pic for link)

Laundry Room

Photo courtesy of Lowes (click pic for link)

Master Bathroom

Photo courtesy of Lowes (click pic for link)

We’ve also made decisions on paint!!! Yay! I think this was one of the hardest decisions for me for some reason! (and for some reason the pictures turned out really odd, so I apologize). Here are the paint selections:

Hall bathroom, office and master bedroom (Mexican Sand – click pic for link)


Kitchen, dining, living room, stairs, hallway, spare bedroom (Pewter Cast – click pic for link)


Laundry room and master bathroom (Resolute Blue – click pic for link)


East wall of dining room and living room that have windows we decided to go for an accent wall to break up all that grey! (Stolen Kiss – click pic for link)

Yesterday Ted and I went up to Omaha to pick out our countertops and appliances for the house. You know you are getting old when you get giddy to pick out those things! But giddy we were.

Our first stop was at Unique Stone to pick out our granite countertops. I’ve never picked out granite countertops before. When we remodeled our bathroom at the old house we picked a vanity that came with a glass sink, faucet and a granite countertop, so the decision was made for us at that time. But this time the decision was all OURS!

Since we already knew the color scheme we were going with in the kitchen (grey) we were able to make our decision easily since there were a few choices that went with the scheme.

 

The winner was Caledonia!!

Close up of Caledonia. It has a lot of colors that we are working with so it’s a great universal piece for us.


Laura from MK said that her granite guy has a lot of remnant pieces of this Cooper Brown. If he has one that works for our hall bathroom we are going to go with it for in there!


Not a great close up shot of Cooper Brown but definitely gives you an idea

 

Our next stop was appliances. We knew what we were going to get. GE appliances in the new Slate color.  I like the look of stainless steel, but my OCD personality can not take the smudges and fingerprints that stainless steel leaves behind. And that is the most common complaint I hear about stainless. So when GE came out with the slate line, we were sold.

Here is what we are going to get (these are actually the exact models and all):

Photo courtesy of Klenk’s Sales (link when you click pic)

We also are getting an awesome wine/beverage fridge for our island. We weren’t expecting one at all, but we were surprised to see it on our blueprint of the kitchen. Who are we to argue with the professionals?!? They must know my love for Moscato! We decided to spend a little more on the dual side by side so we could put more than just wine in there (Gasp!!! How dare I say that I know).

Danby Silhouette Wine Cellar

(link in pic)

Lastly, we picked our washer and dryer. I wasn’t planning on buying them right away, I was going to wait until Black Friday to see what deals were out there but we got such a great buy we couldn’t turn it down.

We purchased the LG 4.5 cu foot washer and matching LG 7.3 cu foot electric dryer in the steel graphite color. The picture below is directly from LG’s website. It’s their newest technology…and it completely out of the norm for me. I’m going to have to read the manual to figure out how to do laundry! But we love them and we loved the price. I can’t wait to have my own washer and dryer again.

Well, I’m off to the house to take more pictures. And to help my husband with the tiling. Until next time!