we just finished a design/build project in the mountains, just south west of lake tahoe. great client, fun project, need to landscape and finish up a few items and then off to the next project.

@Liz888 - Our beams in the living room are fir. We had initially thought three would be good, but our builder suggested four after we asked his advice on what would look most natural. I don’t know how big the beams are. I’d have to ask. The living room is 22’7x20’2. They seemed smaller when they were not on the ceiling. Lol. I assume they’ll look more normal in size when other things are in the room.

Laurel C - thank you. We have leftover cedar from the outside porches that we could use in the tray. I don’t know if we have any leftover fir from the beams. I’ll have to ask.

janet, love the beams, you may want to think about secondary beams and decorative corbels...... stay inspired !

Progress pics. Trying to make a shingle decision soon. It’s between the two samples we have laid out on the stone. Also, so glad I went with 7’ knee wall. The 6’ walk into the dormer to get to the window truly doesn’t feel tight at all (at least with framing) bc the ceiling is 7’ inside of it. That was a relief!

We have been busy over the past couple of weeks. I chose the cabinets (for the kitchen and other areas) and finalized the layout. I got the quote for cabinetry yesterday, and it was actually a little lower than I expected (which was a nice, unexpected surprise). We narrowed down our brick choices to two options. We are going to do a driving tour to look at a few homes that used that brick. I've (re)started an Excel spreadsheet with our choices for appliances, fixtures, lighting, etc. I've also started looking at windows and sizing. There are some changes I want to make from what the plans call for.

Looking good! There are a couple of approaches to built-ins on that 7 ft knee wall. One of them is built-in cabinetry high enough to put furniture under so you can display or store things in it and still put a chair or sofa or what have you against it.

The other one is full height and I am fond of putting drawers up to just about waist level so that they're easy and then cabinets above or open shelving. Whichever suits you.

My decision fatigue has gotten even worse, but we are closing in on not needing to make decisions anymore.

Yesterday I went to the counter fabricator's yard and selected remnants for our 2 bathrooms. Our hall bath has grey tile on the floors and walls of the shower, white walls, and walnut look ikea cabinets. We got a black vadara quartz composite for this bathroom.

The primary bath has grey floor tiles and offblack wall tiles, and hickory cabinetry. Neither of us were super hot on white counters in this room, but wanted something lightish as we have a white toilet/sinks. We ended up picking a really stunning dolomite which I'm sure is going to kind of suck to maintain, but the price is right and we both like it. I'll just try to be sure to use any hair dye or anything in the other bathroom.

I drove an hour and a half to louisville this morning to check a couple of stone warehouses for soapstone. I found some really gorgeous stuff (most of it's probably out of our price range), something I like but the cost group seems lower than I'd expect. It doesn't have the exact same name as a commonly fake soapstone, but it's similar, so if that ends up being an option for us, I might have to go back when I confirm my slabs and double check to make sure it doesn't etch. I also saw a fair bit of honed black granite that I don't hate, I'd just prefer soapstone. I'm not sure if honed granite can be oiled in the same way soapstone can? We had poorly sealed beige granite in our old house and it definitely had a patina where it saw oil, but I don't know if that negatively affects the stone.

Too expensive for me

Honed Granite

This might be doable, but we shall see. This and the potentially fake soapstone both had these gold-like inclusions that I really liked.

This Ocean Black is the one I'm worried about.

And another pretty honed granite.

Ranch house remodel - it's unlovely now but I love seeing some progress!

We raised the ceilings and have drywall. Tile in former kitchen has been pulled up as has hardwood in the family room (because it was on a higher subfloor than everywhere else.) Hardwood was delivered previously and is acclimating in the house. View from DR toward FR; the gaping hole at left is where we're replacing one window with two larger windows:

FR looking toward DR. The hole at left is for a broom pullout behind what will be a coffee station:

DR looking toward front room, front door, and new mudroom / closet to the garage:

Lower level electric work; we're adding several gimbals and wall washers because my SO has things he has collected for decades that will go on the walls; back wall in front of window will be a wet bar:

Lower level shower area has been tiled. I'm very happy with the work they did, and when my budget recovers I want them to do the primary bathroom. Pictures are bad because the electric is off / no lights.

Frustrating, but reasonable updates. Our build looks like it's going to be coming in ~$100k over budget (this makes me want to throw up). It is what it is, but we are now trying to cut costs where we can. The soapstone slabs for the counter are all roughly in the $140/sq ft range (this comes out to about $7,700 just for the material. The granite is about half that, and if we can save ~$4k, we are going to. The less expensive "soapstone" is almost decidely phyllite, and while my counter fabricator said that he can and would install it, he recommended that it's likely to cleave and the edges will crack, and overall it's likely to get damaged easily and be hard to repair, and I just can't justify spending several thousand dollars to install a counter that I really might hate, in the room that I spend the most time. We are probably going with the Milky Way honed granite. I'm waiting to hear back from our installer to see if they have any idea how it compares to other black granites regarding porosity, and if it's relatively porous, can it be oiled without causing negative effects. The hope if I can oil it is to minimize the appearance of fingerprints, spatter from cooking, etc. The granite in our last place had developed a patina where I worked most, by the range and my prep area, and directly around the sink, with a noticeable light spot under my drying mat. I'm hoping I can kind of replicate that darkening intentionally how you would with a soap stone.

@Laurel C thank you for that picture of the hickory veneer. I think it looks great!

Our granite has been a let down, as it has a lot of features and inclusions that are also prone to chipping out or just being less durable. DW wants quartz in the new build. I don't think she will move off of that.

I learned the hard way that sometimes less is more when it comes to the movement and color.

@Kelly M I swore I would never again use granite after our old kitchen. I was pretty set on quartz, but when we pivoted from black cabinets with marble look quartz to wood cabinets with matte black counters and I found that the matte quartz is legit awful, we had to explore our options, and they basically boiled down to honed granite or soapstone, and it seems we've priced ourselves out of soapstone, so we are stuck with granite. I'll get over it.

I've never seen honed black granite, I will make a point of looking at it some time.

@Laurel C - My heart dropped when I read your post about your cost overruns. I know how that feels, and that's not a small number so it must be tough.

@chicagoans - that's exciting to see the remodel starting!

I'm still in the early stage of the build and decision fatigue is already setting in. Sometimes the stress overtakes the excitement of the build. How are you handling the stress and any advice on how to combat this?

Exterior framing is done and they are making good progress on the interior framing. The roof truss will arrive late next week now. It'll be great to see the roof truss up and get a good visualization on how the house will look.

back of the house

FRONT OF THE HOUSE

Our house is wide

Love seeing everyone's progress!

@a.gbhw your electrician's price sounds awesome to me. Not sure where you are building, we are in the mountains of Colorado and our electrician quote is $100k for 5900 sq ft, so your's seems like a bargain. Our electrical quote doesn't even include the cat5 and all of the smart home stuff that DH is doing. We don't yet have a painter quote, I'm anticipating 50k at least.

@K_ Dub I feel your pain about the project dragging on. After waiting for the building department to take 8 weeks to issue our permits last summer, we finally broke ground in August 2022. Unfortunately with multiple other delays, they only got the foundation in before winter set in and things came to a hault for a few months. Now we are moving along with framing, and hopeful that they can get this thing weather tight before winter sets in again. I find your's interesting that they are installing the windows before finishing the framing. I've never seen it done that way.

@Laurel C I think those pieces of honed granite look beautiful! My sister has had honed black granite in her kitchen for 20 years and it still looks great. She has it with cherry cabinets and the whole thing has aged well. The only problem she's had is she does have very hard water and there is some white (lime) accumulation around the faucet. I don't think she oils it.

We had an exciting week here in Colorado where our timberframe was erected. For those not familiar with timberframe construction, this is an ancient method of building using mortise and tenon joinery. They build "bents" which are basically the wall supports that get erected and then connected together with beams across. In the olden days the entire town would come to erect the bents, now days, they use cnc machines to cut the joinery and a crane erects the bents. The walls will be wrapped around this frame so it will all be visible from the inside.

Assembling one of the bents

craning the bent into place

this made me soooo nervous!

All of this in a day! What a transformation. This picture was taken from where our front door will be, walking into the area with the stairs to the left and then into our great room. The dining room will be in the area to the right where the rafters are placed making the shed roofline. Our kitchen will be to right in the area where the ladders are sitting. Our dog Lily thought the wooden pegs made great chew toys :)

Very pleased to see that timber framing. It is fabulous!

I would be honored to get a chance to erect some of that. Possibly I can do that in retirement.

The pegs, all of is just right.

In my craning career I only handled steel and glass.

@bmanning That is so cool. Thanks for posting the pictures. Can't wait to see the rest of your home.

I’ve been away for awhile too. We had a frenzy of moving and selling our former home and things are just now calming down a bit. House is finished, except for some minor punch list items.

On to the detached garage! Foundation walls were poured yesterday and it’s at kind of an ugly stage right now. Forms will be stripped this week, then on to dirt work.

it’s at kind of an ugly stage

Only if one thinks that getting just that right quartz slab for the kitchen is the be-all and end-all of home building! (apologies to Hallet & Co.)

Haha Speaking of getting just that right slab, I'm back with some slight countertop woes. We decided to go with the less costly material for our counters and use honed black granite instead of soapstone. I called the stone warehouse and made an appointment to select the 2 slabs that we need, drove the hour and a half to the warehouse, and picked out 2 slabs that I like. We have a run that's 126" long that we've been hoping to run a single with to eliminate any unnecessary seams. The slabs were ~10" short of that, which would just put our seams where the sink is instead, which doesn't bother me much, but I started looking around at other slabs to see if we could find something big enough to put the seam where the fabricator wanted it.

I found some via lactea in a leathered finish that I kind of liked (but am hesitant to go with the leathered finish). Texted husband, who was on a conference call and said to pick whatever I want. I put the leathered via lactea on hold, and went about my day. About an hour later I was having misgivings and decided to put the 2 honed slabs of milky way back on hold and not go with the leathered finish. When I called the stone warehouse, it turns out the honed slabs that I was looking at weren't available (they just had them out, unmarked, in their warehouse with the rest of the slabs and the guy showing them to me never said anything) and the other slabs they had from a different lot have a weird inclusion. When I got home and was able to talk to my husband about the leathered texture, he was a hard no on it, so now we are back to square one with regards to slab selection. I'm headed up to Cincinnati this weekend to look at another supplier who seems to have a large warehouse and many different slabs we'd be perfectly happy to have in stock.

Our template

Already claimed Milky Way

The leathered Via Lactea we were considering.

They started putting up the baltic birch panelling in the office, and we finalized some kitchen cabinet and closet details (we've decided to just do cutouts in the doors and drawer fronts vs installing cabinet pulls).

Added bonus, the dogs started actual playing for the first time today after a week and a half. And a video in the link below.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ctyug-YrL17/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== 

That's a hilarious action shot :D

@Kelly M I can't look at it without cackling. They've been going at it off and on since yesterday morning. Ciri's special skill is making absurd faces, so it's perfectly on brand for her.

As a surprise, our electrician sent a couple of guys over to fix the wiring on our kitchen pendant lights. The builders hung one of them to get an idea for height, and when the electrical crew came through and wired things up, it seems they didn't understand when we asked them to also wire up the already hung pendant, and as a result, neither of them would turn on. These pendants were one of the things that I agonized over for months. I really wanted PH5 pendants but they were so far out of our price range, I spent ages trying to find something that I liked as much. And a couple of weeks before I needed to order all of our electrical fixtures, the company I bought our reproduction Arco lamp from (I hate buying knockoffs, but I really cannot justify multi thousand dollar light fixtures when the designers are already dead and won't be getting paid for their designs) had JUST released PH5 style pendants. I wish they had them in black, but I'm happy to settle for white/gold/pink. Most of our lighting/much of the stuff in the house (where it makes sense to us) is smarthome/automation type stuff, timer switches on bathroom fans, robot vacuum, many of our fixtures/lamps have Philips Hue bulbs. To try to save some money on the hue bulbs and also have the ability to use a physical light switch to turn lights off and on in the kitchen, we got a couple of leviton smart dimmer switches, which pair with your home assistant of choice, are dimmable, flip off and on like normal switches, and look like normal switches, but I can shout at the home assistant to turn the lights on (our wall lights and island lights are switched separately), or if I've just settled down on the sofa and don't want the kitchen lights on anymore, I can turn them off from my phone. So far we're very pleased with the switches.

@bmanning thanks for your input! Those numbers are really helpful. We’ve had a big week at our house! Lots more done in terms of framing the roof. We are going to be gone for a week on vacation and I expect them to finish decking the house then start the garage upstairs while we are gone. Hopefully mason will get started while we are gone too. It’ll be fun to come home and see what they’d done.

Front of house - back of house - side of house

@Laurel C ,

we are so early in that finish game, that I can see a pot hanger where your pendant is in my kitchen too. Somebody suggested it.

Now I see the pendants and "Hmmm"

i have decided to drop the ceiling in our kitchen to about 8' to delineate it and also top the cabinets where we like. I could soffit down, but no matter what we do we do not like dust shelves.

The rest is at 9'. This is arbitrary and I can cut across the space any way we want, even a curve, something angled. The edge of that bump down is also a blank canvas.

One huge advantage is plumbing and HVAC above. I have been busy using ForteWeb and BC Calc software to analyze hole sizes and placements in the I-joists for the mechanicals. It is tricky to get everything going through 11 7/8" of space.

Now I have a bonus space that I can plumb across in any direction.

Been reading about everyone’s progress and loving all the updates as usual. Haven’t had time to respond to most things as I’ve been utterly slammed with life and momming. We are also way over budget, about $160k over is where I think we will end up. 😭 We’ve cut back on most our finishings to avoid going above that, and will just upgrade in the coming years as budget allows. I originally had lots of fun hardware and more expensive lighting/plumbing picked out, but alas, had to carve out cash where we could. Fortunately we had set a large contingency, but alas, not enough.

Concrete is done (had a terrible experience with that sub, but whatever). He did an awful job, took 2.5 weeks, and we have a lot of thing to fix from him. But will do that down the road. He also filled out cracks with orange instead of gold. Not ideal. I’m planning to gold leaf them myself sometime after we move in. Kitchen cabinets are in the house and ready to be installed. Our mud room cabinets got deliver, half are smashed to bits. Those replacements are on the way. I was planning on doing some custom walnut butcher block for kitchen perimeter, but decided to save a few thousand and get birch pre made counters from HD. I’ll stain/finish that myself and hubby will install in the next few weeks.

Cannot wait to get our textured Quartzite installed. Like others, I went down a deeeeep rabbit hole on honed black counter options. Hoping the slab I picked (master bath and island) will hold up well to kids/heavy cooking/crafting.

Hickory flooring is getting picked up today, install is set for next week. All our bathroom vanities are installed. Driveway is done! Back patios are leveled out and ready for concrete pour.

Our glass & steel office walls are still in production. Those will be shipping end of August, so moving in without them.

Electric and plumbing and HVAC will be getting wrapped up the next two weeks. I am SO excited to see how our black circular ducts are going to look.

Also plan to order some Buster and Punch switches for the house. They’re so fun!

I have a few more light fixtures to order… husband hates the one I picked for over our stairs. Need to sell that sucker

Husband went to the house last night to vacuum it all up. It’s just a messy disaster inside. We are there daily cleaning. 5 more weeks till we have to move in! 😵‍💫😅

Hi All, so we are closing on June 30th.. I have had nothing but issues with this builder. His latest is: we pointed out a few things he didnt deliver on (nor is he intedning to fix), so he had his lawyer send us a message saying we now owe 2400 for a garage water table build up or something... he said he will add the mudroom trim but we now owe him 2400 for this. which means hes covering his trimwork cost plus extra... I know he's going to put a lien on the house.... he never once said anything about the water table thing until now (when we said he didnt do a bunch of things form his feautres list.)

Anyone deal with something like this in their previous builds? this builder is extremely dishonest and corrupt (he doesnt pay his subs as i found out, and he fires them as soon as they complete the work -without pay)... We did research on his name and his company but nothing came up.

@bmanning - that timber framing is so cool!

@Laurel C - love seeing your two fur babies playing! that pic is so hilarious - that expression on Ciri;s face - priceless. I completely understand the stress and choices we have to make under budget constraints. Thanks for the tip of the smart switches - I'm going to look into these! What did you end up on the countertop choice?

@a.gbhw - your progress is looking great! We are also in a similar stage of the build process! So exciting!

@CSmith - Your house looks amazing and your at the fun stage! I never heard of Buster & Punch, are you installing these throughout the house or certain locations? It's pretty pricey but looks cool! I love the aerial view of the home. I love the black and white house - so pretty!

@cathie2029 - Sorry to hear you are going through a bad experience with your GC. I'm wondering - did you pay your GC for everything or is there any payment held back? If you held payment back, you can use this as a leverage.. As far as putting lien against the house, GC has to follow certain procedures to be valid. There's alot of info on the internet about this that may help. I had a similar situation with my previous GC - eight years ago - who wasn't paying his subs and not following contract agreement. We had to get a construction attorney to understand our options.

We have roof truss installed and hopefully framing will be completed next week.

Hi Cathie, after reading some of your posts I am very concerned about your builder. He is an absolute bully, and probably trying to hide some very sketchy behavior by intimidating you into backing off. My biggest concern is that if he really has not been paying the subs, as you mentioned, that these debts will then be yours. In theory you could end up paying for your house twice. You absolutely need proof that every single sub has been paid in full before you close on the house and give the builder the final payment. These “lien releases” should come from the subs themselves so that you know they are legitimate. I had to fire a corrupt builder myself many years ago halfway through a build, and ended up having to pay the subs that hadn’t been paid “again”. It was very expensive. (But I never regretted firing him - but it was a battle with my husband to do so…I can’t even imagine how much worse the situation would have gotten if we hadn’t.)
Please see a lawyer with experience in construction before you give this guy another penny.

Our build is moving along. Lucked into a nice remnant of Silestone to use on bath 2 & 3 vanities. TimberTech decking is finished. Siding and porch/deck ceiling in process.

We got a couple things done since the guest room window. First the kitchen window is now trimmed out, jambs and moldings. I think I matched the cabinets rather well. Now if I can just find the rest of the window hardware, the locking arms have vanished!

And today my dear husband finished the front porch. It's lower than the requirement for railings and balusters but he decided to put the railing in anyway. Not sure I like it, but I'm not going to complain, I didn't expect it to happen this year at all!

Kaylee likes it, but Ziggy prefers hiding underneath. (he's not there now, so you can stop looking. 😁

@Kelly M Yes, a dropped ceiling anywhere is kind of a godsend in regards to putting things. That soffit in the kitchen (it's echoed over the front door and in the back of the office too) is a great place to stash LED lights for uplighting effects, and we have our HVAC returns sitting horizonally on top of those, so they're not visible from anywhere. And the attic space over the private areas makes venting the range hood out easily.

@Liz888 I think we have settled on a couple of honed black granite slabs from MSI, they're calling them Nero Mist. I don't have pricing back yet, but as long as it's inline with other places I've looked, these should be it. This is the 4th place that I've looked and I am so ready to be done with it. I did see so many gorgeous quartzites but I think they're all a bit too busy for our already somewhat busy open concept living space. This should have just enough movement to help mask damage and fingerprints, but otherwise read as "black." I even got a recommendation from the owner of the countertop fabrication place to use Clark's Concrete Wax, it's a carnauba beeswax blend. Your roof trusses look fantastic! How does the house feel inside now that you have a roof and ceiling plane?

@K V that remnant looks like it was made for your bathrooms! And your deck looks phenomenal. We had a huge cedar deck at our last place and when we built a front porch, we used composite decking and were so glad for it. I'd be hard pressed to ever do another wood surfaced deck again. Too much maintenance. Sorry, the tagging thing doesn't seem to be working properly with folks with just initials.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes about my Mom's passing, and my condolences to those of you who know too well what it's like having gone through such a loss yourselves...

@AV We used Timbertek as well, for we heard over and over that near the water, the city simply cannot stay on top of maintaining wood walkways and steps, etc.; the finishes fade and wear too quickly, so planners finally moved toward composite to cut down on the upkeep. Looking at our neighbors' porches, I even worry about how we used wood on our rails. If it becomes a yearly monster I might splurge on tek for those too oneday.

We too went over budget--about $50K, but it was unavoidable during the supply chain issues and price hikes of the last few years with concrete and wood and labor. . .I'm glad we've been able to go slowly and wait for price drops, etc.. but waiting has worn me out, too.

We are headed to the house next week to finish the last of the floor installs (bonus room, primary, and pantry. . .) and to hang light fixtures and wallpaper the powder. I've been refinishing a pencil post bed I found online and I will post pictures of all our work next week,

Bad news-Good news. My retro pink toilet just keeps leaking--the modern seals just don't fit. So, if we cannot solve that, I thought my powderroom plan wasn't going to come off fully. HOWever, Kohler is releasing some retro colors later this year. Woohoo. I can still have my tacky Fla powder in the end and with a more modern ADA, water saving toilet.

@Laurel C, that is a nice-looking slab! Glad you found it.

@ K V , like your porch, but fancier than mine. Looks like a good color of Silestone, too.

@Liz888. looking good.

@cathie2029 Sorry for your problems, the one time we had a house built for us we lucked into a good contractor. My only experience with a bad builder was as a kid living in the house my parents purchased and a few years later discovering the builder made a few stupid and costly shortcuts. Seems bad builders are everywhere and everywhen.

Been loving the updates of everyone's build, sorry I can't reply to everyone. I still need to read the threads of the months I missed.

@Keen B we are going the same direction with deck materials. I will have wood handrail tops, because I can't stand a world without some wood fibers. I have the fever and cowbell won't cure it.

My solution is to use teak or something similar and oil finish it frequently. It won't be an issue at hand height.

Nice slab @Laurel C looking forward to seeing that installed.

How is time going by so fast! It's almost end of June and July is around the corner! Everyone's progress is looking awesome!

@Laurel C - i love that slab. Can't wait to see it installed. It's strange but when I go walk around the house, it feels small. Did you ever feel that way at my stage of the build? I'm hoping when I'm further along it will feel bigger. But I do love the height of the roof truss and it's looking pretty good.

@bmanning - haven't heard from you in awhile. how is your build going?

This build is kicking my as$$$$. I feel so defeated at times but also can't wait until it's finished and we can move in to enjoy the fruit of our labor.

@Liz888 I think that's normal! When our roof beams went up in the main rooms, the house began feeling "cavernous" just because you could see the height of the ceilings, but the floor space itself looked fairly small. In fact, that room looked so small that my husband was panicking about the size of our island vs the size of our sofa, insisting that the island be shrunk down so it doesn't impede on the living room (he got shut down). The bedrooms all felt tiny, and the bathrooms did too. Now, most of our rooms are not that big, so that probably has a lot to do with it, but we definitely has phases where things magically changed size. Drywall was my favorite phase though, because then true sizes became visible.

Are those piggyback trusses going in on the gables? I'm a truss designer by trade but I work remotely so I don't usually get to see my handiwork installed. I just assumed they were assembled on the ground and then raised, not the other way around. For any that are curious, piggyback trusses are normal roof trusses that are broken up into a top part and a bottom part, usually because the height is too much to transport on the back of a truck (generally our cutoff is around 13 feet including tails).

@ K V - we installed the Pietra Silestone in our beach house build a few years ago and LOVED it! Just the right amount of color and movement, and those gold flecks were really interesting. I hope you’ll love it as much as we did.

@ Laurel C- love your final choice on the slab. In our last build we had honed black granite and loved it. Really resembled soapstone without the upkeep. However, in our beach build we used honed black quartz. It just didn’t work for us. Impossible to clean. We love the honed black look so in our upcoming build we’ll stick to honed black granite instead of quartz.

@TDinNC That is what I've read about honed black quartz, which is what I was initially planning to use. I ended up pivoting and even though I swore I'd never get granite again, here we are lol

Well, here we are 27 days in.

Ready for a mud bath, y'all?

Stalled for two weeks as the surveyor discovered the architect mis-sited the house beyond the zoning variances and had to re-draw the plans.

Meanwhile, the excavation walls slumped and it rained. So now looking at extensive shoring (12 ft. deep excavation and confined by tree protection zones in two areas) of the above and the additional areas so far un-excavated.

Speaking of unexpected costs, the municipality gave us a one-week notice to come up with another C$55,700.98 for water/sewer service connections on top of the C$29,163.84 we already paid them.

Old house (l)now demolished.

Connection from near hydrant to 10 ft. in from the curb for a mere $C84,864.82. City-selected private contractor. Hmm.

All other contracts in line or (lower) than projected. So that's something.

I am so envious of all the Houzz big-country, small gov't. builds here!

I worked at a commercial job today and saw a product from Hardie called woodtone.

This looks promising for the entry area of the home, above and below the balcony.

My rails will be black stanchions with horizontal stainless wire and a wood handrail, but you can picture the effect here.

They installed it over vertical 1x4 PT furring strips so any moisture would just make it's way out the bottom, even though it is under an overhang. This particular color is summer wheat.

I am thinking lap siding on either side, and possibly putting this product across the whole east end of the home too, above and below the carport.

We'll have black window frames.

@Laurel C - i laughed out loud reading your post about your husband feeling everything is too small - that's exactly how my husband reacted. Yes i believe they are piggyback trusses. Here's more updated pics.

@Liz888 They look so good! I'm so glad things are finally moving forward faster for you!

@Kelly M That product looks really cool! We spent some time considering that product. I was lobbying for it due to the low maintenance aspect, but our builder (who is also the architect who designed the house) and my husband both wanted shiplap cedar (neither of them are going to be the ones maintaining it) and I got overruled.

@worthy that is ROUGH. It must be pretty frustrating. Things can definitely happen slower than feels reasonable when building rural, but it's nothing compared to permitting and some of the exorbitant fees with a large municipality. My employer is located near Seattle and started the permitting process for an expansion of our truss plant pre-covid and just recently got his approvals. He's been having a good time following the process as we zip through getting permits for everything.

Love seeing everyone’s progress. Looking forward to seeing what happens in July.

We were out of town visiting family in NYC and MA, and we returned to a slab, garage floor and front porch. Framing is supposed to begin on Monday, but I still can’t get a response from Comcast about moving the low line. I think you can see it in the top left corner of the pic. Very frustrating!

^^^^^^^

Ah, yes. The green, green grass of home!

They worked on the outdoor fireplace and finished the stone on the gas fireplace in our living room. Our builder has been working on our trim and closets. We ordered fans for our back patio last night. Big Ass fans has 20% off for Fourth of July. I still need to buy bathroom things. Yes, I know I’m behind. Last week we vacationed with 20 members of my husbands family. I’m working on designing my pantry and buying those bathroom things today. June has flown by, and I have to get a lot done this July while I’m off work.

Which big ass fans did you get? We have ES6s in the living room and office, and a haiku in the primary bedroom and we run them almost constantly.

Laurel C - we went with the i6 I think it is called. They were the outdoor fans that came in bronze, which we thought was a better fit for us. I’m hoping we love them. They’re so expensive! We haven’t bought indoor fans yet. Maybe we should…

@liz888 Thanks. It’s kinda a fun stage, but also just stresses me out. So many of the subs are careless and just knock walls and knock into things and so much touch up is needed everywhere. They are a bit spendy, so will slowly just replace our boring switches with them. They’re are some really cool industrial switches on Etsy too that I might get.

Our update: Gotta move in in 4 weeks… FML!

Kitchen and mudroom is mostly installed, everything’s been templated for stone countertops, electric is all in (just gotta hang all the misc fixtures), and hardwood floors got installed. Appliances are scheduled to be delivered and installed mid-July.

This weekend we need to sand, stain, and poly our butcher block. Our kitchen has a LOT going on with a variety of materials, so I’m hoping it all magically pulls together somehow. Doing a really unique matte black quartzite island and butcher block for perimeter, bar counter, and pantry. Decided to just do them ourselves. 🤞

Next week: carpet is being installed in the kids rooms and playroom, cabinet install wraps up, finish base and case, install our fixture, get front deck designed, finishing external siding on window wall, and figure out where the hell our exposed ducts are (apparently majorly delayed somewhere). Might also be installing our railings which I am just thrilled (and maybe terrified) to see in person.

Happy 4th to everyone. Enjoy the holiday weekend.

Happy Fourth of July weekend!

July 2023 link here:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6384535/july-2023-how-is-your-build-going