Building our retirement home

[KiotiKowboy]

Believe it or not ... I'm still here It seems my time was just being consumed with the house and I lost touch with TBN.

Status - we are STILL under construction - lol. Getting closer, but it has been like pulling teeth to get anything done on a schedule. We crossed the 1yr mark in June. Exterior doors were 3 months late. Stone mason disappeared for at least 3 months - called today and says he is ready to finish. Kitchen/Bath/Laundry/Bar cabinets are WAYYYY overdue - promised delivery next week. One things hinges on another, so we've been in a rut for some time.

I've taken advantage of the down-time to get most of the house interior painted and to hang a bit of the interior lighting. I'm doing all the painting myself and have discovered that a 4000sq ft house is quite a project! We've stockpiled the bath and kitchen fixtures, plumbing fixtures, most of the carpet/pad/tile and lots of new furniture. The goal is to get enough of the place livable to move in by fall and complete the rest as time/money permits.

I'm not quite sure if I'm "back" on TBN, at least consistently for now ... but here are a few pics of where things stand.

 

[Thall303]

Love your garage doors

 

[KiotiKowboy]

Thanks ... just one of the things we have fussed and fiddled over

The doors are by CHI. The windows we have are actually not offered in this particular set of doors but we said we wouldn't buy the doors unless they installed them. The design is very close to what we chose for some of our other doors and that is what sold us.

This is our front entry door and the doors from our living room to the hallway.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Welcome back, we missed the updates.

 

[cat fever]

House is looking great, glad to have you posting again.:thumbsup:

 

[SirReal63]

Welcome back! The house is looking fantastic!

I know all too well about the "quite the project" statement.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Welcome back, I've been wondering how it's going. Everything looks great. Some really nice touches. On the exterior wood, are you going to preserve it's color or will it turn grayish?

 

[KiotiKowboy]

Plan is to seal the cedar with a natural color stain.

We have lots to do ... I've almost finished the interior painting, just 2 bedrooms and a few closets remain. All the windows and doors are oak - needing to be stained. The vault ceiling will also be oak t&g, about 2200 sq ft of surface area, to be stained. Then we'll have all the interior trim to worry about.

The costs for painting & staining all of this were going to be astronomical. We decided to do it ourselves. The trade-off is it takes a very long time.

 

[wngsprd]

House is looking great. You certainly deserve a pass from TBN with all you have going on, but glad you've returned.

 

[KiotiKowboy]

Thought I would post just a few pics of some of the work along the way.

Upstairs office after spray foam:



One of the exterior walls with 1" of foam, then being filled with spray cellulose:



This shows a finished exterior wall and also an interior wall. All interior walls were insulated for sound.



This is the front/rear views after the porches were poured. Both front and rear porches are pretty much identical, with steps running full width. The steel corner posts are 8" square and buried about 6 ft deep before adding the concrete. Most of the windows were installed at this point and rock work was well underway. The rock is from Hackett, Arkansas and yes it is called Hackett Stone