We Saw the Light

Wow, did we ever see the light a couple of days ago!  I mean literally, we saw the light.  Tons and tons of lights, actually.  We had our lighting fixtures selection and holy smokes were there a lot of lights!

I could have spent all day in this place.  I mean, look how pretty!  Pretty, pretty, pretty lights!

Michele (spelled just the same way I spell my middle name--Michele--with one "l". Must have been light selection destiny!) was our interior light selection designer.  At any rate, when we arrived, she introduced herself, then asked if we had our floor plans.  Um, what?! Floor plans? We had no idea what she was talking about.  She said our builders hadn't given her our floor plans so she didn't know what lights we should be looking for.  This seemed oddly reminiscent of this post here. 

I actually had a copy of the floor plans in my email so I quick pulled it up on my phone and emailed it to Michele.

Thankfully, she was able to print off the plans so we could get started.  Otherwise, we possibly would have had to scrap the appointment.  Grrr to our builder for yet again not being organized, prepared and for failing to communicate with us or the subcontractors.

Anyway, luckily we were able to jump right in with exterior selections. I don't care for the exposed light bulb look (just not my thing) and we knew we wanted something that mimicked the lines of the exterior of the house, as well as something that was in our price range.  That left us with about 3 options, which made it easy. So we decided on something very similar to these for the exterior:

 We'll also have some recessed lights on the front porch area in addition to the light fixtures like above for the garage area. Yay for recessed lights on the front porch!

Then we moved onto the really fun stuff--dining and pendants! There are some unbelievably gorgeous fixtures out there for these areas. We decided we wanted the oil-rubbed bronze finish since the door handles will also have this finish.  Also, since most everything in the house will be white or light, we felt like we needed something a little darker to anchor the rooms.  Kind of like this:

Sort of like that--couldn't find an exact image, but it gives you a basic idea.  We chose these pendants

which are hard to see because of this super, duper bad photo (dang hard to take pics in a room full of light fixtures and a black ceiling).  The pendants are kind of gold with a really warm, amber-colored light.  Cannot wait to have these beauties hanging up!

We simultaneously chose the dining room fixture so it would coordinate with the pendants.  Again, we pretty much knew what we wanted--something oil-rubbed bronzed and something more rectangular in shape since that's the shape of the dining area.  We ended up with this.

Now I know it's hard to tell from the above photo, but this has really clean lines and is very simple while still being pretty visually interesting.  That's totally my style.  Here's a little better photo of this same fixture from the catalog

See how pretty? Cannot wait to see that piece of jewelry hanging up!  We also chose a coordinating hanging light for over the staircase and something fun for the foyer, but I neglected to take photos of those.

Next up were the bathrooms.  Nothing super exciting there, but this is almost what will be in our master bath.

Again, not a great photo, but you get the idea.  Oil-rubbed bronze again with those same clean, simple lines.  Our fixtures will have 3 lights instead of 2 and there will be 2 sets of these in the master bath--one over each sink.  Have I mentioned yet Eric and I each get our own sink? Doing a happy dance about that!


We finished up with some less exciting lighting decisions--closets, mudroom, and ceiling fans.  However, on our way out we found these light fixtures pretty entertaining!

Can't go wrong with a little chandelier bling!

Or a giant disco ball!

Of course, we'd never actually have any of these fixtures in our house, but I know a 7-year-old little girl who might want something like this hanging in her room!

The giant disco ball changes color! This would be Marea's favorite!

And that wraps up our lighting selection, and actually almost all of our selections.  Amazing to think we'll be in our home on the Lane in just under a month!

Catching Up

Just a quick post to catch you up on a few things that have been happening with our home on the Lane.

First up, the cement for the basement, driveway and garage have all been poured.  The kids even wrote their names in the corners of the garage floor as a sweet little memento.

It's hard to see, but Marea wrote "Marea 7 '13! Sieger!"

Evan's is a little easier to read. "2013 Ev"

The fireplace has been installed.

We did our electrical walk-through with the head electrician to decide where all of the lights/outlets/switches will go. 

Eric the electrician with Eric the future homeowner:)

The wiring and plumbing rough ins are almost done, including the bathtub/shower in the kids bathroom.  Not super exciting, but very important!

Office

Laundry

Kids shower/bathtub

We chose our trim. Have I mentioned yet that our trim will be white, along with our cabinets and doors? This decision took some consideration on our part and we only had 4 options. 

Our 4 trim options--2 wide styles and 2 standard styles

Since the ceilings on the main level will be 9 feet tall, we were worried the standard sized trim might look a bit lost in the tall rooms. The scale of the trim with the tall rooms just didn't seem to match up.  Because of this, we were really leaning toward the wider trim,  and also the style of that trim just fit better with the style of our house. 

The 2 wide styles up close. We love the one on the left.

However, the cost of the wide trim vs. the standard trim very quickly made our decision for us.  Way too much money! So standard trim it will be.

But we ended up with the standard size trim. The style on the left is what will be in our home.

And I think that covers most of the things that have been happening lately.  It seems like recently things have slowed down, although in the last day or two they're showing signs of picking back up.  Today we had 3 phone calls from different subs and the builders about various questions.  In the last week or so, we've been emailing and calling back and forth with the plumber, electrician, cabinet maker (who happens to be my awesome brother-in-law!), interior designer for the light fixtures (update on that soon), and the builder.  Whew! So stayed tuned for lots more updates!

Sometimes Building Just Sucks

Long time, no blog.  That's what happens when I am immersed in parent-teacher conferences.  Anyway, remember how we're including the good, the bad and the ugly here on our little blog?  We've covered the good and a little of the bad.  Now here's the ugly: sometimes building just sucks.

Like when we heard we were 3 weeks delayed, that sucked.  Or like the numerous times our builder has failed to be organized.  Just a few examples of that are the builder failing to send the plumber the paperwork he was supposed to have, or never--not once that I can recall--being on time to any of our meetings, or not responding to our emails.  Like ever. That all sucks, too.

You know what else sucks? When a sub-contractor tells you to pick out your selections and then you spend 8-10 hours researching and deciding, and then they tell you that those options aren't "available".  Yeah, that sucks, too.

Here's the story.  One Monday a couple of weeks ago, we met with the plumbing subcontractor at our request.  He had given us a PDF version of the standard plumbing fixtures, but we felt like it was tough to chose fixtures based on a PDF, thus the requested meeting.  At the meeting, he handed us this little booklet

and told us we could browse through it and choose whichever fixtures we'd like.  So Eric and I headed home, knowing there were some items we definitely wanted to change.  The plumbing subcontractor, Paul, had recommended we look at the Delta plumbing website, too.

In the midst of researching plumbing options of all things!

That same night, Eric and I spent about 2 hours each looking through the materials and websites, researching, and trying to narrow down our options.  It was a bit overwhelming, to be honest.  Then the next evening, a Tuesday, we again spent 2-3 hours each going through the materials and finally made our selections (subject to pricing).  Yay! Or so we thought.

More of this!

We emailed off our choices and waited to hear back on pricing. A couple of days later, on a Friday, I received an email stating that "Most of your items we can not get from our supplier but they did send us replacement items that look almost exact."

The bottom choice was our selection, the top choice is the replacement.

Now, we were not happy to hear this news since we'd spent 8-10 hours total researching our options and because we were told we could choose anything we wanted.  Not to mention the fact that although most of the items did look similar, the did not "look almost exact".  I won't go into all the details, but there were a LOT of emails sent back and forth (I count 25, to be exact). 

Say what?! 25 emails about plumbing fixtures!  I know, I know!

In the end, after 14 days, 25 emails, 3 different price quotes and approximately 3.6 kajillion hours (during conference week, no less!), it turns out we can actually get the original selections we wanted, and the price is actually pretty similar to the standard for most items.  So, long story short--we'll be getting most of the upgrades we wanted.  It just sucks that we wasted so much time emailing back on forth on something that should have been straight forward and taken very little time.  And it sucks that we have to be the ones to be on top of all these details, when that is really the responsibility of the builder and their subcontractors. So, yeah, sometimes building just sucks.  But enough complaining. I'm now officially calling this pity party over.  I'd rather be involved with these decisions than not and I cannot wait to see all of these pieces come together to create our home on the Lane!

Framing=Finished!

Hip, hip, hooray, the framing is done today! Well, technically it was done a few days ago, but that doesn't sound quite as catchy, does it?  Here's our home on the Lane!

Isn't she gorgeous?  I still say she needs a name. Here's a rundown of what's been happening at the house. When we left off, the framing had started and the house looked like this.

The main level was started although there was still some to finish, as you can see. They finished that part up pretty quickly and the builders went to work on the second level (when I say pretty quickly, I'm talking in one day, which meant we couldn't capture all the stages of building because we were at work).

 

Once the second story was up, then the roof trusses went on.

And then the plywood went onto the roof trusses, and the windows were put in (you can see one window installed in the photo below--the rest are in the photo below).

Lastly, they installed the rest of the windows, put up the shingles and finished framing the front porch (one of my favorite parts of our home on the Lane).  There are still a details to finish up with the framing/roof, but that part is 99% complete.

And there she is! We're working on putting together a little video tour of the house soon, so stay tuned!