Painting, more on the kitchen island, heavy equipment

The painting is well under way... it's predominantly a mix of black and silver on the upper level (and we heard a lot of "we've never done a house like this" from the painter and the GC :-) )... the colors are looking very very nice though...

The cabinets are partially set in place (although they had to be shifted a bit to accomidate the large dining table which is coming later)...
And the excavating / septic / backfill work has resumed...

Roof and kitchen island

Roof is almost done... it's a gray color (looks even better in person!)

More roof...
Cabinets were delivered today from Valley Cabinet... 
And here's part of the finished product (before being installed)..

Doors & Tile & Floor

Shower floor for the master bath is in...

Tile in place so that the wood stove in the great room can be set....
Some flooring down (a small amount to enable the install of the fireplace in the master bedroom)... and that fridge is just temporary for now...
And the interior doors arrived on site...

HVAC, data network

Sara and Michael took the day off today to spend the entire day at the property doing some catch up things.  Much of the work was getting the cabling for the data network punched down and cleaned up. 

Meanwhile, Rommel is very excited to see the new 7.1 decoder for the media room... she's enoying it now in the hotel room as she heard these things run very warm and this is like a built-in warm cat bed.

Also good news is Frontier Communications finally got on site to put the DSL and voice lines in.  The tech from Frontier was quite impressed (or maybe it was stunned) at the size of the data network for the house.  He told he's not even seen a business infrastructure room wired so cleanly and thoroughly... I guess Michael's years of managing infrastructure in all those field sales office is paying off :-)

Also very exciting for the day was seeing the HVAC ducts get installed.  To build the industrial / loft theme in the house, we are going with full exposed stainless steel duct work through most of the house.

Hoping to see the drywall folks back on site on Wednesday to get that finished... and ideally seeing roof and septic in place end of this week / early next week.

Tape, mud, and Saturday breakfast

We spent a late Saturday morning / afternoon having breakfast... pancakes, sausage, homefries, juice, coffee... our first semi-formal breakfast in our new home... we were surprised to find this yellow truck in our driveway (and all our things missing from the garage).  We then found out that there was a guy there to do taping and mudding on the drywall.  And the stuff from the garage was moved into Michael's office as the drywall in the garage is getting finished.

The second Rinnai hot water heater is in place (one was not going to produce enough hot water).
And evidence of the taping and mudding getting finished.  This is part of the master bedroom.
Sara pondering how much longer...
The elevated platform in the media room is in place.  There will lights facing out from the steps on both sides.
Sara inspecting the operations of the cat litter box access panel.  Now we need to figure out how to get Rommel to use it.
Also have an extra beam in place in the gym to hang the heavy bag from.

Getting closer on the showers

So the concrete is finished in the shower floor...

And one of the shower panels has made it upstairs to the master bath... so hoping to see it hanging on a wall sometime soon...
More work completed in the kitchen... this area is where the double wall over will go + built in shelves for the cookbooks, microwave, etc...
Closets are getting drywalled as well...
And, on a sad note... the first damage during construction... if you look closely they even left a nice little note that a new window was already ordered :-)

Progress on kitchen cabinets

Kitchen cabinets are coming together very nicely... see below for the pictures of the work in progress... this one is more or less the entire island - this is the view you'd see coming into the kitchen area.

This is where the dishwasher and main sink will be...
This is where the cooktop and vegetable sink will be.  Note the lower height for those who are vertically challenged.
This is one of the sides... we will be using stainless steel baskets in all the openings that you see...
And another set of cubbies for more storage baskets.
We saw these in person as well and they look great!  Though the question had come up of "will these fit through the door of the house"???  it will :-) 

More drywall

We spent Sunday afternoon at Malinka Montreux (after watching a pathetic effort from both Cincinnati and Baltimore in their NFL opener)... thankfully Penn State looks very good so far this year.  Anyways... more drywall work done... below you can see our master bedroom and the built-in headboard.

Most of the concrete base for the master shower is in...
And you can see more of the kitchen taking shape (the spot with all the openings will be for the double over, and other built-in shelves).
And the media room is finally looking like something... the screen goes in the middle where the wall is recessed.
And the culinary artist is hard at work again... we actually eat at the site ~2 or 3 nights a week...

Water Well, Drywall, and feeding the ducks by hand

So more good progress... Sara was enjoying a little late afternoon fishing today...

And also feeding the ducks by hand...
The water well is done (380' deep)...
Getting ready to mount the AC compressors on the outside of the house...
Drywall getting hung inside... 
The great room entertainment wall is coming into shape now...
A view of the stairwell...
Looking into the master bathroom (hot water towel bar is hung... shower floor is started...
Master bedroom built-in headboard  taking shape...