still waiting

on those after pics of the living room, dining room, kitchen areas (oh, and the office).

we are currently waiting on the mantel to finish the fire place, then we can hang the tv and wire everything. we also need to build our butcher block for the island, finish the up lights and under cabinet lights for the cabinets in the kitchen, hang the chandelier in the dining room, find and hang some pendant lights over the island in the kitchen and put in the crown molding in the living room.

oh, and then we need some window treatments pretty much everywhere. then we will put up some after pics.

in the mean time, i have not forgotten about you (the you is to my blog, since i am sure all 3 of my reader have left). i will post more to you soon.

make up gift

so i know i have been seriously slacking on getting the final pics of the house up here. i think that is mostly because i am seriously slacking on getting the house finished, so images of the finished house are tough to come by.

to try and appease you all, i wanted to write a quick post about an artist i am currently obsessed with. her name is lissie - just lissie, like cher or jewel - and she is fantastic.

i first heard her when she opened for ray lamontagne at the orpheum theater in la. she was great live and a perfect opener for ray. i got home and immediately purchased her ep why you runnin'. it was really good, the title track being the stand out for me, but didn't have the song that was my favorite when we saw her live. then, it happened.

it will be the first song on her upcoming album, which you can bet your sweet you-know-what i will be buying when it drops. it's called when i'm alone and it's amazing. check the official video below.



and as an added bonus, she does a cover of lady gaga's bad romance that is stunning. seriously, she might be my favorite artist of the moment. here's the video for bad romance that she recorded and released on youtube.



please take a moment and enjoy. she really is fantastic...and great live.

just a girl and her violin

this is seriously incredible. enjoy.

house saga: during pics part two

so here are the latest and greatest pics from the house. it is being fumigated right now, so i have a little time off tonight from work, but we still have to pick materials out and get people scheduled to come in. still, the break is much needed let me tell you.

these images are from 5 days ago. i will more up at the end of the week, once the tent comes off. they were taken at night, so be generous when judging my photographic eye.

this is our kitchen all dry-walled with the slider in place on the left and paint going on

the fireplace has since been demoed and the walls painted

closet in its new place

slider in the dining room installed and the first coat of paint on

dining room from the living room. that is a mossy green kind of color. the picture doesn't do the color justice.

more images to come, with cabinets and paint finished. man this has been a whirlwind. stay tuned. we are about 10 days from move in and there is still a TON to do.

house saga: during pics part one

as promised, here are some pictures i took yesterday. there is still a ton happening in the next few days: electrical today, insulation tomorrow, stucco today and tomorrow, dry wall on friday. i'll have some more pictures on monday.

for now, here's the progress:

here is the gutted kitchen with the window moved and set and the old hole framed over

the window in its new home and the hole where the slider will go

new fireplace in the living room with my father-in-law hard at work

entry closet moved and the dining room in the background. you can also see the framing for the slider on the right

more pictures on monday. it will look totally different. still under budget and ahead of schedule. yay!

house saga: before pics

so i finally had some time to get my camera battery charged enough to pull our before shots off of it. tonight i'll take some "in progress" shots, which will look pretty cool because the house is basically all framing and exposed plumbing, electrical and duct work. it's pretty fun. anyway, here are the shots:

here is our dilapidated house front the day we closed escrow



all of the next shots are what will become our great room, the kitchen, dining room and living room together:

this was the view from the front door. that wall is now gone

again, that wall on the right is gone and the coat closet was moved to the corner of that brown wall. the corner right in the center of the picture is also gone, that room is now the dining room and is open to both the living room and the kitchen

this is the kitchen side of the wall we removed. this entire kitchen was gutted

the window on the right and the sink in front of it are now where the oven was. the oven was moved to where the window was in this shot. again, the cabinets are all gone and there will be an island in there

this view of our neighbor's camper is one of the reasons the window was moved. the more practical reason was so that we could move the sliding door to the dining room and be able to see the kids playing in the back yard from the kitchen. but the camper is just ugly.

that sliding door there was moved about three feet to the left and that wall with the cabinet on it is no longer. that is now our dining room.

finally, this was the fifth bedroom that is now our dining room as seen from the doorway, the doorway that is also no longer.

and there she goes. our first installment of the house rebuilding saga. so far, praise the Lord Jesus, we are ahead of schedule and under budget. if you are familiar with construction at all, that is no small miracle. i pray the miracle continues through the end of the project.

with my camera now fully charged, i will take some more pics tonight of the progress. check back tomorrow for those shots.

more house stuff

so we were running around like maniacs yesterday trying to get all our docs signed and notarized so we could start work on the house tomorrow. God bless our realtor and his patience. he really helped to fix a bad situation that wasn't really his fault to begin with. so thanks for that. and the escrow agent, jolene diaz was really nice and helpful. so jolene, if you ever google yourself (does anyone else ever do that? i had to stop trying, there are like 756 guys - and 3 girls - named adam steele in the united states) and this blog turns up - thank you!

today we get the keys. tomorrow and sunday we demo the whole front area of the house, including the kitchen. then we close escrow on monday.

here is where we stand on the place:
-found out the heater doesn't work and there is no a/c...just before summer. cost of new stuff (with a stellar deal...thanks to my father in law and his subs) - 4500. awesome!
-found out there are termites. we may need to tent the house. 2k. sweet!
-found out the pipes are galvanized, not copper. couple thousand more. ok!
-cabinets - thanks to erick corsa from rocky peak for a great price and a wonderful attitude about the work. seriously one of the best guys around. erick, same as jolene, if you google your name and read this...thanks! anyway, cabinets - 7000 - 8500
-counter tops - anywhere from 1000 to 4000 installed. we need to shop this out.
-flooring is 8 bucks a foot, for either 580 ft2 or 1520 ft2...so either 4500 or 11000. big difference, i know.
-appliances could work for the time being, and that is great. may have to wait on these and upgrade later. looking at around 4000 for all stainless steel stuff.
-sink and fixtures haven't really been priced out yet, but those can be reasonable or crazy, depending on where we go. most likely somewhere in the middle and definitely at least 1k.
-still waiting on the bids for the dry wall and electrical. don't know where to put this.

so for you mathemagicians who have been counting as you go, we are looking at about 17k if we do the bare minimum and about 40k if we go with everything we want right now. needless to say, the 40k ain't happening. we only have about 23k to work with. so we will be cutting some stuff out for sure.

owning our own home - priceless!

i will be posting before pics of the whole house on monday as well as some pics from the demo process.

stay posted for more on the saga of buying a first home. so fun. we'll see if i'm still saying that in a couple of weeks.