Our house is finished!

Our house is finished!! There are some small things yet to be completed, but the house is in the final inspection stages. We do our walkthrough next Tuesday, on Nov 3. We might be signing papers the same day, but I don't think we'll get our keys for at least another week.
The final picture of the outside. The light is poor since it was nearly dusk, but you get the idea. It's a lovely house, I think.

Camille standing in her room.

The final pic of the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Shannon's talking to a painter in the doorway. The painter was doing touchup work outside.

Final kitchen photo! In the end, I like the white appliances fine.

A photo of Camille's amazing closet. I couldn't get a really good picture, but the thing is huge! Easily big enough for a dresser and some storage. Or her mountain of shoes. Or her huge collection of dresses!

So that's it, until we have keys anyway. It's been a fun process to watch and photograph. I've enjoyed journaling about it and will like having the journal as part of our memories.

Almost there!

We're getting so close and now that we know it's ours, we're visiting at least once a day.

They painted! They've done Phase 1 of the exterior paint, so we now have a dark green house. Phase 2 is in process...they're painting the fake shutters and any trim that can be removed and taken into the garage (it's pretty wet today). Phase 3 will be on the next dry day and will be the rest of the trim. In the end, we'll have three colors...dark green, ivory trim, and tan accents.

The kitchen, missing only the stove and microwave. I'm wishing we'd gone with black appliances. We chose white, though, because our refrigerator is white and it's only a year old, so we won't be buying another anytime soon. But I think black would look really nice in the kitchen. There's more counter space and more cabinets than I remember.

Master bathroom is complete and sooo roomy. It's huge! We could put in shelves on the opposite wall. Cabinets even, if we want. My brother Matthew and his wife just completed a house in August and they told me to expect things to look bigger than they do when the house is unfinished. And he's absolutely right. There were times during the building, especially when only the studs were up that we wondered if the house was simply too small. But it's actually so big. At 1200+ square feet, it's about the size of our current rental house, but it's laid out differently and the space use is more efficient. Not so much hallway and more living space. I can't wait to move in!

We officially got the house!

Our loan officer just called...we officially have the house!!!! Our financing came through this morning and she locked our rate at 4.875%. Amazing!!!! God has brought us so far in the past three years...from literally nothing to the American Dream.

Neighborhood pics

It's been a long while since I showed pics of the neighborhood. For comparison, here's my last post on the neighborhood: http://hicksfamilyhouse.blogspot.com/2009/09/some-of-our-neighborhood.html. The pics below are the same views as in that post.


First, the infamous "house next door". Still about a week ahead of us, this one is now finished except for the tiny little details, like painting over little scratches on the walls.

Looking out our front door to the east. These houses weren't in the first picture at all. They are a couple of weeks behind ours and I'm not sure they're sold yet. Behind them are several almost-complete houses that are sold and just about ready.

From our front door looking west. These houses were either barely started or partially finished in the last post. Now they're completely done (except for the one with the white garage door). The one at the far right is now occupied.

So many changes since last time!

It's been a full 10 days since I've posted and a lot has happened since then. If you click on the pictures, you'll get a bigger view of them.

Not much new to see here, but if you look closely, you can see that the exterior lights have all been installed. The only thing left is to paint and to install some fancy woodwork on the porch posts.

Ah ha! Carpet at last! And lights! They've installed all of the carpet, all of the cabinets, the countertops, the backsplashes, light switches, outlet plates, trim, etc. The house really looks like a house now and we had great fun trying all the light switches.

Just for fun, a pic showing out colors. The colors match so well. I really like what we picked out.

Master bathroom. Pretty much everything is here except the mirror and the toilet isn't installed yet.

Progress!

We stopped by the house today. No one was working there and all the doors were locked. Except, hee hee, the mandoor in the garage. It was previously nailed shut but I guess they opened it.
This is taken from outside the back door. We thought we were locked out so I took a picture...actually not too bad of a view, though. Living room, kitchen (dining is in the middle), and hallway to the right.

Once we were inside, I got some better pics. The cabinets Shannon wasn't sure about look fabulous. Yes, he loves them too! The floor that I picked but was afraid I'd hate looks GREAT. So glad I picked it because it goes so well with the cabinets. Hope it looks just as good with the carpet.

Camille's bathroom. Teeny tiny, but it's hers and we won't have to keep the potty chair handy for those emergencies anymore.

Master bathroom. Camille was shocked to see two sinks!

In other news, the trim is finished and doors are ready to hang. The laminate for the countertops is in the garage. Then the only things left inside will be the finish work (outlets and such) and the rest of the flooring. They painted our neighbor's house this week, so hopefully we'll have paint soon, too.

That's it for this time. Pray for us, though. Our financing still isn't 100% and Nov 2 is the day we'll know for sure. If the answer is No, then we'll wait until January which will stink but we should still be able to get our house. Until then, we're still taking pictures and visiting in the faith that this house, custom built for us, is going to be our future home.

Walls are painted

Our house on Saturday, October 3. Exterior is little changed except for the garage door.

They've delivered our cabinets and installed a garage door opener. These cabinets are huge, but take up a tiny amount of our large garage.

The big news this week...they've painted! The texturing and painting was completed since we last visited. It looks so nice.

The TV goes right here! Camille loves playing pretend and today she took us on a tour of the house. "Our table is here, the TV is here. In the mornings I get out of bed and walk in here for some juice."

Our walkthrough is scheduled for Nov 6 and closing is a week later. In less than 6 weeks, we could have the keys to our first house!