The trim is still an ongoing project as Paul and his crew work to make every square inch perfect. I learned today that they even do a bang-up job when faced with a random protrusion in the back of a closet. This little box covers up the main HVAC duct to the first floor. I hadn’t thought anything of it until Paul turned it into a furniture-grade shelf. Just to drive this home, this picture is of the back of a closet. This guy cares about his work.

My closet-turned-office/nook/reading corner finally got (most of) its last wall. There’s some code issues that require us to put insulation around that pipe you see. This is “looking around the corner” from the picture in the last post. The window is just out of the picture to the right. For scale, the back wall of the nook is about 2′ back.

The frame(s) of the bathroom cabinets is (are) done. This is the downstairs “master bath”, even though we’re fairly certain that the upstairs bedroom will be the eventual “master”. This bathroom just happens to be directly connected to the bedroom, and has a double sink. There’s also a nice sized built-in linen closet.

The kitchen cabinets are also coming along. As you can tell, all of the cabinets are being built by hand on-site. It’s pretty cool to see these come together. The kitchen layout is standard. The sink will under the window and the stove will be on the left wall. The refrigerator will also be on the left wall, at the very end of the kitchen near the porch doors.The island will have an overhang for stools, and will be all one level. We had a short debate about a single-level versus a double-level island. It sounds like a dumb decision, but it affects the aesthetic, the height of stools, the size of stools, and the number of stools that can be fit in the kitchen. The single level counter will allow for more people to sit at the island, and will also allow for shorter, smaller stools that can be tucked out-of-the-way under the counter. Visually, I like that there won’t be anything to keep someone from looking past the kitchen to the view out the back doors.

Last, but not least, the house finally has some color! The exterior staining is about 50% complete, and the color turned out perfect. It works great with the cedar shakes and the darker roof. I wasn’t able to get a picture of the whole front because of all of the trucks, but you won’t be disappointed when you check back in a few days for those!

Overall, we’re about 85% complete going by the budget. We’re expecting to have everything wrapped up in 3-4 weeks!

There were a few big milestones for the house today, although one of them was not a snow-covered picture.

• All of the wood floors are done.
• The house is locked up for the first time and has a lockbox.
• Their is trim around all of the windows and doors
• The kitchen and bathroom cabinets are underway

The downstairs bedroom looks big again. It looked big at the beginning, but then looked small when the walls went up. Now it looks big again. For the record, it is a big bedroom; 12.5′ wide and almost 20′ long.

The closet doors are swinging hinged doors instead of bi-fold doors or track doors. These match the bigger doors, they’re just narrower. For scale, the closet opening in the picture below is 48″, so the doors are 24″, and a normal door is 30″. This way, there are nice looking closet doors, but they don’t swing out too far. You can also see the beginnings of the bathroom cabinet through the door.

Upstairs the closets have the same doors, and the wood floors continue.

I don’t know why this picture turned out fuzzy (I’ll blame the phone), but I want to include it anyway because I’m convinced this nook will be the final selling pint for someone.  Instead of a closet, there is a cozysitting area, a window, and tons of light to the hallway and bedrooms. The nook continues around the corner for about 2′, so there’s room for a small desk or bookshelf and a chair.

The cabinets will be done this week. Stonework will start on both of the fireplaces on Wednesday. We also made final picks for the stain colors, including the cabinets, which will be a grey-ish stain. Exterior staining will be weather dependent, but we’re hoping to see that completed in the next two weeks. We also have the well diggers scheduled, which will check off a minor necessity.

Overall, it’s looking pretty good, and it definitely feels like a house now. Maybe there’s something to be said for having the ability to walk into a room and close the door behind you?

I also need to make a correction to my #shoplocal diatribe about the floors. It turns out that the floors are actually Ponderosa Pine, which is not from Blue Ridge. The upside is that it is a much harder wood than the local pine. However, the downside is that I lied, and the wood actually did make quite a trek on a truck to get to Georgia. So, apparently, I failed to FloorLocal, even though I did shop local!

We stopped by the house yesterday, and I’ll tell you what, I was absolutely floored. There was piles of wood everywhere!

Wood in the driveway…

Wood in front of the house…

And more wood on the porch…

On closer inspection, those piles of wood are 1×12 pine planks! In a matter of hours, Paul and his crew will turn those planks into floors for the entire house. 8 days ago, they were trees, and 6 days ago they were milled just 3 miles away.

Inside, the upstairs floors were almost done, and they were getting started on the living room.

The main upstairs bedroom has floors, and also has all of the walls closed in. The ceilings are the same as the downstairs bedroom and the walls are all 12″ log siding with the exception of two sections of board and batten that match what’s on the outside of the house and in the living room.

We decided to run the wood flooring through the entire house including the the kitchen and bathrooms.

The living room is completed enclosed now as well. Board and batten makes another appearance here around the upper window, the barn door bedroom, and the inside wall.

   

The new upper window adds a lot of light and also visually breaks up that wall. It’s good light for the living room and the barn door bedroom.

Next weekend, we’ll have pictures of the completed floor, door hardware, and the work-in-progress kitchen cabinets! There’s been a number of people through the house looking, so we’re hopeful that as it approaches completion someone will decide that it’s perfect for them!

With the exception of the staining, the exterior wood is done!

The mix of log, board and batten, and cedar shake turned out great. There’s cedar on the front, above the porch…

..and there’s cedar under the porch roof.

What you can’t see until you look closely is the crazy amount of wood trim that goes around every inch of the house. Paul and his crew did a bang up job, and it looks great all around.

The inside looks the same, except the tongue and groove is 99% done instead of 90%. We also picked the floors finally, and are going to use 12″ wide pine planks. It will be milled locally at the same place that milled all of the log siding. Most of the cabins we’ve seen in the area use a similar or identical floor, and we’ve liked the look of it every time we’ve seen it. It is softer than the oak floors that the builder suggested, but we think it is more consistent with the house. Since it is soft, in a few years it will have even more character! We also think it’s the ultimate version of #shoplocal; local trees milled locally, it doesn’t get any better than that! This is not floor on a boat from the far east.

…Until you’ve sold the house you’re currently building!

If you’re keeping up, you’ll know that we’re (somewhat) actively looking for what the next project will be. If you’re feeling lost, you can read about What’s Next and The Compound. What this really consists of going hiking every Saturday on random pieces of land followed by lunch in Blue Ridge (or Chik Fil A even though that is against #shoplocal). Usually, we find nice trees, an interesting view, and lots of thorns.

This week, with our special guest hiker, Alyssa Sista, we started out looking at some land that we saw before. I showed her where a house could go, some cool rocks, and then she ditched me while I went traipsing through the rocks and briar bushes. The girls were ready to go, but I insisted that we continue on and see if we could find anything else, so we decided to check out a 10 acre tract that’s been on the market for a while but that we’ve never looked at. After trekking/crawling/bouldering up a hill, over rocks, past some bears (I didn’t see them, but I know they were there), around the rattlesnake pit (they were sleeping underground), we came to the top of the waterfall we’d been following.

The stream went downhill for about 1000′ back to the road. It was steeper and wider towards the top, but was pretty impressive the whole way down.

Rocky and Alyssa wanted to pitch a tent and move in.

The exterior is almost complete! Paul and his crew were working hard today to get the last sections done.

There’s a small area of cedar shakes under the porch, which is the first color on the outside. This should look even better once everything is stained.

Inside, the new window adds tons of light to the living room.

The first floor bedroom is all wood now, which continues through the attached bathroom.

Even the laundry closet is wood!

To break up the horizontal wood, the vertical pattern goes all the way up the inside wall of the living room.

The vertical wood is also on the side of the steps, so that everything along that side of the room lines up.

The closet turned office is a cozy wooden nook now. For the 10th time, I’ll say that this was the best change that we’ve made during the whole build!

The main bedroom upstairs looks great. It’s the last room that’s not completely enclosed, as they’re using the ladder scaffold to reach the living room ceiling.

The new deck has a good view. Looking down the hill to the river isn’t bad.

Looking up isn’t so bad, either!