Center Stage

My apologies to anyone who has checked in lately and noted the lack of updates. We had a family reunion in Lake Geneva over the 4th and my sister and nieces were here all last week, so we were too busy going to the beach and playing to spend much time on the blog. Thankfully, while we were goofing off, work on the house continued. Erica was a great help with giving me ideas for the house. She's got the benefit of not being so close to and caught up in every little detail, so she was able to 'see' the overall picture and find solutions where I was only finding dilemmas.

My favorite house event of the week was that they poured the porches!! Now that there's concrete on top you really get a sense of the space on the porch. It's huge! They are pouring the steps today and we can't wait to sit on it...even without chairs! We've had some great porch sitting weather which is giving me the itch to move in! However, there are still so many decisions to make that I don't want to rush it too much.

They've also been busy putting up more siding and the feedback is all good from the neighbors who seem to love our red color choice. Ironically, we were at the Gilmore Auto Museum north of Kalamazoo yesterday and they had about 7 enormous barns all painted a very similar shade of red and I loved it! If only we'd gone up there months ago I wouldn't have had to agonize over the color so long. I could have just used theirs! The picture to the right shows the side porch as well as more of the siding. The unfinished portion will have shake style siding, which should be a great variation. They've sided the whole garage. The window to the right of the garage doors is getting a window box that will be painted in our accent color of Yorktowne Green (June 20 post), as will the entry door around the corner.

Work on the drywalling seemed to slow down a bit but hopefully they'll get it all up this week. They've completed the upstairs and about 1/2 the main level. But they still have to tape and mud those, so we're a ways from completion. One huge positive is that even with closed up walls, the house still seems very light inside!

This week's 'projects' are to meet with the tile installer to finalize a couple things, look at granite slabs for the kitchen, and consider more carpet options. We also have to meet with our concrete guy to talk about options for the patio (which will be stamped and stained to look more like slate or pavers). There's a house in the neighborhood that's being built by a family from Bayonne, NJ and they basically paved their whole backyard. Brian's thinking he's got the right idea, but I'd like a little more greenery. Mike's suggestion (the concrete contractor) was to tint the concrete green! Yikes. I'm sure we'll come to some better compromise. Stay tuned.