Temporary Certificate

WE CAN MOVE IN!!

City came by today for the final.   They issued two corrections, but nothing serious and they said we can move in.   One of the corrections is to finish the Master Bath ( something about tempered glass ), but they gave us 6 months to do it.

No pics with this post, but thought I'd share the news.   

We actually aren't going to start living there until the 30th as we have some things we'd like to get done first, but at least we can start moving some items in.

Getting closer

We are getting closer to being able to move in.  We have to be in by October 1, due to our landlord selling the place we are renting.   What this means is that we have been focusing on completing the items required to have the permits signed off and a certificate of occupancy issued.   The plan is to complete landscaping, interior trim, interior trim painting, and two bathrooms after we are able to move in.   Having a working bathroom and a kitchen is one of the main requirements, along with having all of the safety feature installed.  Railings, smoke alarms, being the main ones.  We are getting close to getting these items complete and have the last 3 inspections scheduled.  Two are today and the final is next Tuesday.   Here are some current pics.

Kitchen

Downstairs bathroom tub surround, I'm almost done tiling it.

House numbers and railing.  Both required before move in

Driveway

Back deck now with railings.  I'll try to take another angle of this later as it turned out really nice

Front Entry steps.  Railing is almost complete, we are waiting for a part for the porch rail

Interior stairs and railings, wood cap for the upper rail will get installed today.

Kitchen island and sink - need to get this all plumbed this weekend

Oven and Cooktop installed and functional

Kitchen, driveway, blower door test

A quick update.   Kitchen cabinets ( Bellmont 1900 ) are almost done, appliances ( KitchenAid Black Stainless ) were delivered, countertop ( Cambria poured quartz ) should be here in about a week.    The driveway got poured.

We had the blower door test yesterday and it tested at 1.5ACH ( Air changes per hour ).   We only needed a 5 so I didn't go around and try to find the leaks.  I have a good idea where a couple are that I want to seal, but that can be a later project as the testing was more than sufficient to pass the state of Washington's Energy requirements.

Here are some pics of some of the changes.

Kitchen Island

Shower pan form for Master bath.  It's one of the Schluter perfab ones, I like them because then you don't have to worry about the slop to the drain being correct.  We don't plan to tile it until after we move in, but needed the drain set up for the blower test.

Kitchen cabinets.   Yes the wine fridge is the first appliance we installed.

More kitchen cabinet pics.

Front stairs are in.  I'll take a pic from the street in a day or so.

My new induction cooktop.  Have to wait for countertops to install

Fridge

Driveway, they poured it over 3 days, and the right side in the pic still needs to dry out a bit.  We are thinking the dark areas will go away after it dries and will match the left.

Front decking is in, just starting on the railing

Wood flooring

Some things are moving fast others are slow.   Still waiting for the driveway to be poured, rumor is they are coming on Tuesday.   The wood floor is going fast, it is 80% complete, the bulk of the remaining work is the stairs.   We have 95% of the electrical done, remaining items are for the kitchen appliances.  The cabinets were delivered last week, and appliances come on Thursday.  The decks are about 75% complete, railings came last week and they should be in by end of week.  Starting to get ready to tile and do the trim.  After the HVAC guys wrap up the boiler and we get a blower test passed we will be getting close to being able to move in.  It's going to be a busy month.

I found I can share my solar output data.   I have a device plugged into the wall that monitors the panels.  The data can be found at this link

http://apsema.com/ema/dashboardPublic.action?id=ff80808156a23fcc0156bdeb39863273

Here are some pics

Exterior paint finished

Wood flooring

Decking in progress

More wood flooring

Just something we are happy to have installed

Fire door between garage and house

Front door

More flooring

Driveway, concrete stain, interior doors

Things have been progressing quickly this week.

Nick from Artistic Concrete Creations stained the basement floor and it turned out great.  I haven't been able to walk out on it yet, but from what I see from the edge it looks good.  The pics have a bit of glare from the lights, but it's not as shiny as the pics look.  We went with a stain product from WestCoat called Fast Stain, it's not as eco as the water based stained, but not as toxic as the traditional acid stains.  We opted for this over the water based due to numerous people telling us the water base ones just don't cut it.  

The boiler for hot water and radiant floor heat is almost ready to go.  The HVAC guy is waiting for one part and we should have it all together next week.

Scimitar construction has been out grading and prepping for the driveway pour.  Today they finished up all the forms for the driveway and walkway to the front door.

The interior doors arrived late this afternoon too.  We went with 5 panel solid wood door from Simpson, we chose a Redi-Prime finish that we can paint as we thought that stained wood would clash a bit with the dark wood flooring.  Tomorrow we start installing them, but they probably won't get painted for some time.


Here are some pics.

Driveway forms, and gravel parking pad. 

Walkway to front door

Different view.  I was trying to capture the red doors, but only picked up the deck one.

Looking out the front window

Stained floors

Stained floors with the lights off

Interior doors

Hot water heater and radiant heat all in one.

.

We have lights

A quick update.  Painting on the outside and inside is at about 95%, we still have two bathrooms to paint inside and they have a few things to finish up on the outside.   The biggest change is that we have lights.  Over the weekend I wired up most of the switches, and about half the outlets.  Juggling a couple of other items right now, but I hope to have 95% of the electrical done by the end of the weekend.  Yesterday we got internet hooked up.  We did it a bit early because we both work from home and wanted to make sure it's up and working prior to the move.   The HVAC guy is putting in the tankless boiler/water heater today, he connected the gas swing arm yesterday and the gas company is going to set the meter today.  That will be my last utility hookup.   Driveway was suppose to start this week, but I'm having a hard time nailing them down to a time frame.   The concrete floors in the basement will get stained and sealed tomorrow and my interior doors should arrive on Thursday.   A lot of moving parts right now, but things are really starting to come together.  

Here are some pics

Exterior paint nearing completion.  The stack of wood is the Batu for the decking

Basement rec room with working lights.   The floor is getting stained tomorrow

Concrete floor stain test patches.  We are going with the one on the left. 

Exterior paint on the back of the house

Another in progress pic of the paint

Tankless boiler/hotwater heater

Upstairs lights.  Working mini split on the wall and all the hardwood boxes are open for acclimation

Painting

Ahhh the joys of painting.   Ok there really is no joy in painting, maybe a little bit at the end when you look at it and go, hmmmm I think that was worth it.   Unless it's a ceiling.   There is never any joy in painting ceilings.

We have been making good progress painting and are about half way done.  New walls really like paint, we are finding we need to prime and then 2 coats on the interior.   The crew I hired to paint the exterior started yesterday. They are making good progress and shouldl wrap up by the end of the week, while we hope to wrap up interior by end of the weekend.  There may still be some cutting in to do, but the bulk of the interior painting should be complete.

Floors:   Yesterday we picked up 4300 lbs of hardwood flooring for the upstairs.  After schlepping each 65 lb box up the stairs we decided that is not a good future career choice.  For wood floors ended up going the pre-finished route.  I know I know, new construction do site finished.   The cost seemed insane, ok not seemed it was. We looked around at some of the prefinished options and we found some really cool wood.  At least it's cool to us, and it's still solid 3/4 inch wood and not engineere,d so if I hate it and want to finish it differently we can.  If anyone is curious here is a link to the we are going with.  FLOORING LINK

In the basement we are staining the concrete and then putting a sealer on it.  Nick our concrete stain guy came out yesterday and we did a test patch in a closet.  And I forgot to take a picture of it.  It turned out nice.  We are having him change it a bit and do another test on Thursday, but I think we are close and it looked great, we just want to alter the color pattern slightly.

More to come.  Here are some of the pics I've been promising.

Drywall and texture complete downstairs

Upstairs drywall and texture finished

I installed an awesome sink.  It's been great for painting cleanup, or if I get thirsty

Finishing up the upstairs painting, just need to cut in along the ceiling.  The gray color looks kinda white in the pictures. Notice the big pile of hardwood flooring we schlepped in yesterday, that is just part of the 4300 lbs of flooring

My exterior painter started the outside.  Starting to think after the ceilings I should have hired him for the inside.   Kidding

Back of the house painting in progress.

An almost finished room, it even has a light fixture.  This will be my office.

Drywall complete

The drywallers finished texturing yesterday.  Mudding, taping and drying took a bit longer than expected, but it looks great.   We start priming and painting tonight.   A few other things have been going on in the background, but not much that looks impressive in pictures.   I noticed the siding crew had arbitrarily put some of the siding below what will be the final grade, so we had to move that up and move up one of the downspouts and the gas line.  Besides that it's just been a lot of work with scheduling and lining up the finish materials.  The interior doors are here, but we are going to wait a week to have them delivered.  The cabinets will be delivered on the 23rd.  On Monday I'm going down to Seattle to pick up the wood flooring, our tile order should arrive on Friday.  The concrete stain sample should be in any day now.  Decking arrives next week, and we are close to finalizing the railing decision.  Exterior painting will start on Monday too.  The upcoming week will be fairly busy as we get the painting done and start the finish electrical, tiling and some of the finish plumbing.

I'll upload a few pics later tonight or tomorrow.

Gutters, gas, drywall, garage doors

Things aren't changing as dramatically as when the drywall was hung, but things do continue to change.  Last Thursday the garage doors were installed and we really like the choice we went with, we were going to go with the modern all glass ones, but are actually happier with the look of the ones we chose.  They are insulated aluminum doors installed by Sound Garage Doors.  The openers are liftmaster belt driven.  I like how much quieter belt driven is.   It's really nice to be able to close up the house at night.   J & S gutters installed the gutters around the roof today and connected the downspouts to the storm drain.  This will be nice the next time it rains as it was really making a mess when it rained.   The gas company came out today and ran the gas line the house and set the bar.  One of the last utilities to get hooked up.

Here are some of the latest pics.

Wow garage doors!

Havent had a backyard picture in awhile.

Big picture of the gutter install.  I think they look good.

Gas line install in progress.  Gasline is sticking up.  The bar is hanging off of the hose bib.  They haven't installed it quite yet.

One open, one closed

Close up of the front downspout.  The post hides it a bit.