Lighting and flooring, and painted walls

Lots of action on the house in the last 3 days. On Sunday night, we went as a family to look at the house and the painter had been there sometime between 5 pm on Saturday and 6 pm on Sunday and primed the entire inside of the house! Looks awesome!

Monday was a crazy day. I met with Tina at 10:30 in the morning to go pick up the light fixtures from Home Depot. Lighting is one of the areas we went basic with, we figure we can easily upgrade those later. As we were leaving Home Depot, John Michael, our main contractor and Tina's brother, was walking in to pay for it and pick it up. Why don't I just go pick out the stuff with him you ask? Apparently he doesn't pick out lights because he always picks out the wrong thing and ends up having to return them again and again. Their system works though, because Tina is great at it and it's kind of fun to go shopping for that stuff with someone who obviously enjoys picking stuff out.

We then met our babysitter at the splashpad so we could leave the kids with her while we met with John Michael. This was about 30 minutes after we saw him picking up the lights. By the time we got to the house, half the fixtures were already installed. The electricians are definitely quick! All went well with that meeting, and the house looks like it will be basically done by the 30th of June.

We also talked about adding a deck now too, since the paperwork wouldn't be able to be done for the tax credit. Jeff originally wanted to do the deck himself, but I was kind of freaked that the kids would open the patio door and fall out of the house. We also haven't figured out what door we are going to use to let the dog out each time. She's kind of scared of stairs so it probably won't be out the back, but we'll see.

This morning, the boys and I were headed to the Red Smith Library and saw the cement truck heading towards our house. We pulled up to watch it pour cement into the garage, and the fireplace mason guy had me come into the house and talk about the fireplace. We decided to have the stone go 60" high so it won't be too high when we put the beam on top. The bad news is that we might not be able to use the beams my Dad brought up for us. Those are 6" beams and the stone sticks out 5". That might look weird. So we'll see when the stone is finished. I hope we can use one of them! One of them is from the cottage that was left over from the cedar woodwork there. It would be cool to have a little bit of the cottage in our new house.

I went to the house on the way home, and saw that all the vinyl and tile is finished, plus there is now electricity. It looks great! I love the master bath tile, and the other one is pretty cool too. We wanted to go dark because boys are messy and it will hide dirt a litle longer. As for the vinyl, it was the one instock choice that was a little thicker and had an antiscratch coating, but that was the same price as the lower quality ones. Originally, the house was bid with hardwood floors, but since we have a big, heavy, dog and two boys who like to race trucks all over the house, I thought that it wasn't very practical yet. We will definitely upgrade that floor in the future. It is a lot darker than my white (or white when new) vinyl at our old house, so it will do a better job of hiding Hayley fur clouds.

The garage floor is all shiny and new looking too, and still wet. Hopefully we can keep this garage organized for at least a few years :)

The siding guy is plugging away at the house. He is the one contractor who is working by himself, so the siding seems like it is going up very slowly compared to the rest of the house. But in reality, it is going up super fast, he only has the front of the house and side of the garage yet to go. I love the brick and gray color together. I was so worried that it would look wrong, but I like it!

Enjoy the video today!