Drywallin’ It

Welp, its official. Our house smells like NEW HOUSE now! Why is that, you might ask? Because our dry wall is up. Totally up. Eeee! It was a nice break from what had been a hard, tiring week. I’m not gonna lie, it has been exhausting with a new puppy on board. With me going back to working nights and the puppy not sleeping at all at first, Josh and I have had our share of fights and frustrations this week. Puppies are no joke and require all your attention (which we knew but now it is SO real!) We are excited that he is settling into a routine and also is the cutest dog around. There… that was a huge dose of honesty from someone who doesn’t like to look weak. I like to put a face on like everything is rosy, but this week was tough, and we appreciated your prayers of encouragement. Here is a picture of the little guy… he sure is a cutie pie 🙂

I will keep you all posted on puppy days and how his training is going. As of now, he sleeps for about 4-5 hours and needs to go out once throughout the night to pee, then goes right back to sleep. He whines for about 5 minutes when put in his crate and then goes right to sleep or plays by himself. THERE IS HOPE! He also loves to play tug of war and has semi-learned to play fetch with the chuck it toy. He is in LOVE with peanut butter. More updates in the future (and cute, adorable, wonderful photos!)

Anywho, back to drywalling!! That was a bit of a puppy rant. So we stopped by the house yesterday and lo and behold they had started the drywall process. Today, it was finished! Woohoo! Check out some photos:

 

These two are day one and two of drywalling. Definitely see some updates eh?! We have WALLS! Walls that will be painted! So exciting, indeed.

This is a panorama of the living room, dining room and kitchen. I cannot tell you how happy we are to walk through and smell and see the house the way it is. It is alllllmost a livable space! Speaking of livable, we decided to celebrate the drywall process by ordering pizza to our future address. I will tell you, the pizza delivery guy was confused as to why a construction site ordered take-out….

Baha you may laugh. We had a blast! Here are a few other photos you may like to peruse through:

We think the next step is painting and then…. CABINETS! See ya next time and thanks for reading 🙂

 

Insulation and Puppy Days!

Hi everyone! It has been a bit since I’ve had a chance to sit down and write a blog post. Blame it on our new puppy. He is ADORABLE but a TON of work. I have been telling people that he is like a combination of a newborn baby and a toddler. He cannot sleep through the night yet (tiny bladder) and he gets into everything (loves biting and chewing!). Here is a photo of our new addition- Harley David (baha!) Swieringa!

We are so thankful to get to raise such a beautiful and fun puppy. Check back for more updates as he gets bigger!

In other news- they put insulation in our house and dropped off the dry wall to hang at some point 🙂

The kitchen and dining room- insulated and ready for finishing. I will say- now that the house is insulated, it is a TON quieter when we are inside. Not that it was ever super loud because the subdivision is in the country- but its good to know it’ll be even quieter because of insulation (and dry walling too). 

And the guest bathroom

Sheets of dry wall ready to hang!

The garage!

Aaaand the basement (think, ping pong table..)
Also- as we were scoping the house out for changes, we noticed a really cool one…

One of the insulators must have added his own verse because no one else has written in pen! So neat to see one of the construction workers add his own verse to the mix. He also wrote “Amen!” next to a verse someone else had written! HOW COOL!

Check back later this week to see dry wall additions!

A Family Affair

This MAY be one of my most favorite posts so far. Why, you might ask? Weeell…. We got to show our home to my favorite little girl and boy (aka my niece and nephew) and their family (aka my brother and sister-in-law. Yeppers- Bram and Stacey and Emma and Eli came into town for a visit!!! 

AHHH! I know.. you’re overwhelmed by cuteness 🙂 Emma is four and will be starting her second year of preschool this fall and can tube like the best of them. And then there is sweet Eli, who turned one in March and runs (yes, runs) like you wouldn’t believe and is a pro at saying “daddy”, and nothing else. They loved taking a tour with us as well as my parents and Bram and Stacey. 

That there is my brother, Bram, who is a pilot and his wife (and my sis!), Stacey, who is a fabulous teacher. We took the above picture and they my mom wanted a closer photo, so you get what we see below…

Bram and Josh must have had a secret little boy meeting and decided to put these faces together… Classy folks. 

We had a blast checking out the house and then went out to dinner and even had some ice cream afterwards! 

Thank you SO much Bram and Stacey for coming out to see Josh and I and celebrate family and a new home together 🙂

Second Story Tour and Mechanical/Electrical Finishes

Hope you all had an amazing Fourth of July weekend hanging with friends and family, celebrating our nation. We went camping with a couple friends from church and had a blast!

We also had a blast walking through our house on Thursday before we left- noticing all of the changes! So, I left you with a few photos of the hot and cold piping that was started at the beginning of the week last week. They worked extremely fast last week and totally completed the piping and plumbing and wiring for the WHOLE HOUSE. That includes light fixtures, all plumbing, and a FIREPLACE! Lets take a second story tour and then I’ll show some mechanical and electrical details:

This is at the top of the stairs and showing the hallway to the 3rd and 4th bedrooms (which are to the right of the picture). I think Josh is actually standing in the guest bathroom.

This is the other hallway leading to bedrooms 1 and 2. The staircase is to the right at the bottom and the guest bathroom is to the left (you can see the bathtub a little bit). What I really love about this upstairs is how much wall space in the hallway I will have to put picture frames (and embarrassing baby pictures of Josh!). 

This is the view from the corner of bedroom 4 and looking into bedroom 3. It will be easier to see each bedroom when they drywall but this gives you at least a bit of an idea. These bedrooms are exactly identical except the front bedroom has two windows and this back one only has one (but with a fantastic view!). You can see the wiring along the far wall a bit (ignore the blurriness..).

This above photo is of bedroom #2- aka our future nursery. It is the smallest bedroom and is right next to the master bedroom (where Josh is standing while taking this picture).
Aaaaaand…. our bedroom!!!:

This is just a horrible picture that doesn’t show the bedroom well, but hey, its hard to get the angles right! It is by far the biggest bedroom and has the two windows you see here plus one window in our walk-in closet (yeah buddy!).

This is our walk-in closet with a window on the far left wall. I am not sure I’ll know what to do with all this closet space…. Just kidding… I won’t have any troubles filling it 🙂

This is our bathroom in the master. Not much to say here except the piping, wiring and plumbing are done which is amazing!

This is our whole downstairs now! NOTE: Fireplace is installed in the left side of the picture!!!!! Also to note… the house is extremely bright without even a single light bulb 🙂 So many windows = my favorite part of the house. 

Our breaker box in the garage. I think this photo is hilarious because it shows how MUCH has happened! These wires were all attached and much neater when we visited the house yesterday, but yours truly forgot to snap a photo. 

This is our laundry room- all hooked up and almost ready to go!

I am standing AT OUR FUTURE KITCHEN SINK! (Insert woman joke about my place…). This is also one of my favorite places because the view from our kitchen sink is really breathtaking (pictures to come) and the room is so OPEN!

The can lights we opted for! There are five in the kitchen/dining room and four in the living room. Like I said earlier, really bright rooms are kinda my thing 🙂

A better view of our fireplace. the orange hose is a way to hide all our wires for the tv that will go above the fireplace. 

Kinda boring but kinda extremely cool… our water heater (50 gallon!) and HVAC system! This is in our basement (Obviously..)

Now for a few outside shots to end it out! We walked around the house and Josh snapped some cool pictures!

Thanks for reading!!

Next up is dry wall I believe! AH!

Garage Doors, Shingles, and a FRONT DOOR!

Well friends, the time has come that our house can officially be called a house. You saw them install windows, you saw them frame two whole stories… but now… we have DOORS! This closes our house off to bugs, to outsiders, and most of all, to RAIN! Last Saturday we went out to the house, really just to give our family a tour and were surprised to see doors and a garage door! Take a look!

You’re going to get sick of me saying this- but it LOOKS. LIKE. A. HOUSE! So exciting 🙂 You can see the shingles were dropped off as well, getting ready for Monday’s roofing project. Speaking of….

BOOM! Yeah buddy! Our house has a roof with shingles on it! I also look like peg leg 🙂 Story behind my peg leggedness: We have painfully discovered a fire ant hill directly under where I normally stand for these photos (as evidenced by all twenty of the bites on my poor feetsies…). Hence, the fashionable lean. Anyways, this may be the last time lapse photo you see for awhile- they have finished most of the outside work for now. The last few outdoor finishing touches will be siding and our porch and driveway- which aren’t completed until the interior is mostly done.

After our giddy excitement on Monday over the shingles being finished (helping keep ALL the rain out. Bonus! Helping to get rid of our interior puddles, one warm day at a time 🙂 )- we walked inside the house, and were even more thrilled. They started fitting the house with mechanical rough in! That means getting ready to put hot and cold water throughout the house, as well as piping the plumbing (my knowledge just keeps growing). We did not expect to see this put in so soon. They are FLYING now- but no complaints here!

Kitchen sink piping. Can’t you see the ooba tuba counter tops in your head?! Almost there!


I made Josh take a picture of the orange goop they used to secure the piping in. SO WEIRD! That pipe leads from the kitchen upstairs through the floorboards to the….

Master bathroom SHOWER!!!! AHHH! Like I said, we are starting to get the parts and pieces to a house, huh? Below is the future kiddos bathroom:

Tub with shower 🙂 Here is some more piping, I know you love seeing it all!

This is the set-up for the toilet and shower for master bath. Josh is standing on the stairs going upstairs taking the photo- hence the odd angle. Soon we will have drywall and won’t be able to take pictures through the “walls”.

One final photo shows what our garage is filled with right now- aka today’s project for the builders?? Who knows what we will find next! 

That is everything to finish HVAC set up as well as our furnace (front and center). To the left of this photo is a huge pile of bags of insulation for the metal pipes. 

We shall see what happens today and the rest of the week. We are SO excited for the interior of our house to start to come together 🙂