The Jones’ New Home Our homebuilding experience, from day one.

Family traveled from all over to spend Thanksgiving together at the house. We rented tables and chairs so that everyone could sit down and eat together. For the first time since the housewarming, it felt like home.

The last six weeks have been insane, but we’re finally getting settled in. It looks like we’ve managed to furnish every room in the house faster than we thought we would. I’m just happy that things are getting back to normal. Sleeping in a bed, working at a desk, etc. There are still dozens of little projects left but those can wait for now. I’ll drop some new photos here and add another gallery with all of the new photos.

Here’s what the front of the house looks like now.

After dinner I like to retreat to my study, light up a cigar and have a bit of scotch.

My brother-in-law helped me put up the Pierre Deux wallpaper I picked out. It goes great with that mirror and light fixture.

Here’s the kitchen.

And the deck

The dining room

The living room

The family room

Catherine’s office

A special room set aside for meditation

And finally, the master bedroom

We walked through the house with Jim, the project manager and nit-picked the house for three hours. Retouch paint here, re-caulk there, buff out this scratch over here. Both of us being there really made the difference. I missed some things that Catherine picked up immediately and vice versa. Overall, everything looked fantastic.

I’m a little dissapointed that the deck won’t be completed by closing. It takes 4-6 weeks for the township to issue a building permit, and only one day to actually build the deck. The permit was submitted 2 weeks ago, so it’s going to be a while.

The landscaping guys got started today. They’ll lay down sod and seed the backyard.

We can’t wait to spend our first night in the house next Friday!

The builder is subcontracting our deck’s construction to another company. It’s cool because we’re able to customize our deck even further if we want and just pay the difference in price directly to the subcontractor.

So we went a little crazy and did more than just the 309 sq ft rectangle that came standard. We’ve split the deck into two levels and added 3-foot corners. We were considering expoiting a loophole in the homeowner’s association rulebook forbidding us to build a 7-foot privacy wall blocking our neighbor’s view of our deck, but backed out at the last minute. We realized that we’d be obstructing our own view of our deck from the dining room. Besides, things could get nasty if the homeowner’s association ever forced us to take down the wall after we’d put it up.

Here are the plans that the subcontractor faxed us. These guys are a little backed up, but we’ve been lighting a fire underneath them to keep things moving. Our next door neighbor went to settlement last Friday without their deck built. Let’s hope these guys can get ours up before we close in three weeks.

Wifey and I have split up decorating responsibility by room. The powder room is one that falls under my responsiblity. Yay!

So we grabbed that mirror we had our eye on at Lighting By Design.

It’s going to look perfect against a Pierre Deux wallpaper pattern I picked out.

I measured each wall and did some quick math to figure out that we need four double rolls to cover the powder room. And I thought I’d never use math again

We met up a the house on my way back from work today. Things are really coming along. They’ve given us a tenative completion/settlement date of June 17, nearly 2 weeks sooner than originally promised.

What the sales rep told us is turning out to be true. We’re glad we went for some of the options that we liked, even though they cost an arm and a leg.

Like my study. I’m gonna love working in here. The full-wall bookcase was one of those options that didn’t come cheap, but turned out beautifully. I wish I could just skip the commute and work from home everyday.

The’ve put up the stone facing on the family room fireplace too. It adds “drama” (Christopher Lowell taught me to use that word) to the room

A close-up shot of the kitchen and the new granite countertops.

I stopped by the house on Sunday to check out the latest progress. They’ve got the kitchen cabinets up! That was pretty exciting to see. The specialty lighting we ordered from Lighting By Design was up too.

They finished the banisters and painted the french doors on my study.

The bedroom is great, but I can tell already that we’re going to have to rethink the ceiling fan. I’m rather tall and will likely be decapitated if I ever jump for joy near this thing.

Here’s a shot of the dining room from the living room. Note the cheesy standard chandelier. We held off on upgrading this fixture because we’ve yet to pick out a dining room table. Apparently, one must pick a chandelier that coordinates with the table. The things I’m learning.

Greg, the sales rep told us that our closing date will probably be moved up 2 to 3 weeks! Excuse me? The builder is really ahead of schedule at this point. We’ll know our exact closing date after the parts for the kitchen are delivered.

We’d better start packing then! We rented some storage space last week and started packing up all of the small stuff. Several times a week, we drop off what we’ve packed and put it in storage. Hopefully we’ll have everything but the big stuff moved by the time we close. I wish we’d bought a big SUV a while back

We stopped by the house too. It looks like they’ve got all of the interior doors up as well as crown molding and chair rails. I like the view from inside my study.