Chestnuts Roasting On An Apartment Fire

Sorry for the long delay in between posts, friends!  The last few days have been interesting/busy, so here's a brief update:

The house has been delayed.  It was scheduled to close this Friday (December 20) and now it has been moved to Monday (December 23).  However, Brian and I are anticipating we won't close until after Christmas because the ground has been too wet for the concrete to go in.  The builder will be calling me later today, so I'm preparing myself for bad news.

Some have asked the reason for the delay.  There are actually several:

1. Delays in utilities. A gas/electric meter that was ordered on November 22 didn't get installed until this past Wednesday (December 11).  It usually takes 2-3 days.  For us, it took 3 weeks.
2. Inspections and the process of building a house.  The driveway can't go in until the meter was inspected, the meter can't be inspected until it's installed, it can't be installed if it's not there, etc.
3. The weather.  We had a nasty ice storm on Friday, December 6.  The ice and snow melted, leaving large puddles in the front yard and the driveway area.  It didn't help that on Friday, December 13 it rained.  The concrete crew can't get in and do the work until it's relatively dry.

I was in the house yesterday finishing up painting, and I happened to hear water dripping. It appears that the toilet upstairs wasn't installed properly (or the water line to the tank was faulty) and water was dripping through the ceiling vent in the laundry room directly below.  Not cool!  I should be getting an update from the builder on what exactly happened when I talk to him today.

With that, here are lots of pictures of the progress.  It's looking beautiful and we are very excited to finally move in.

Thanks for your love, support, and prayers!

Light fixture in the eat-in kitchen.

Main living room/great room/whatever you want to call it.

A fan!  Nolan will be so thrilled.

Formal dining room light fixture.

The hardwood/laminate flooring.  It's all covered with
cardboard right now to protect it.

View from the stairs into the kitchen/great room.

Loft area.

Sophie or Nolan's bedroom.

Sophie or Nolan's bedroom.

The faulty toilet.  The dark spot in the
center of the photo is wet cardboard.

Faulty toilet.  When I looked at it, it almost appears as if the
toilet is sitting flush against the wall.  You can also see how
the water line cover isn't flush against the wall.

Water that had seeped underneath the wall and into the upstairs
loft area.  Thankfully, no carpet has been installed yet.

White fluffy insulation in the attic storage.

Master bath.

Master shower.

Master bedroom.

The red tape (just to the right of the center) is marking a huge
hole in the ground.  There's a PVC pipe in there that has a
big hole in it.  I wonder if the bulldozer smacked it when some
of the grating was getting done.

I think our house will look gorgeous with Christmas lights on it.
Next year!

5 Things I've Learned About Race (Since Moving To Texas)

I've put this post in a separate blog, as it does not fit the mold of what I want for this particular site.  Please check your inbox for a direct link to the new blog.

Thanks!
Margie

Adventures In Overhausering

Random updates in no particular order:

Thanksgiving Eve: I decided to get all fancy and actually make some of the food ahead of time.  Unfortunately for my electric mixer, I forgot that the oven vents heat through the back burner.

Thanksgiving:  We had a very enjoyable day with Brian's Italian coworker and his Colombian-American fiancee.  Since I didn't take pictures, here are some illustrations I found to depict our day:

 Here is a likeness to Federico:

  And here is a likeness to his fiancee, Cristi:

What we talked about: (Thanksgiving got a little morbid and depressing)

And then the conversation got a lot funnier:

Boopitiy, Boppitity!

(except for it didn't make us sad.  It made us laugh.)

And then we settled in for this marathon on AMC:

Which, to be honest, was quite a bit like watching it in surround sound as both Federico and Cristi explained the differences in normal Italian versus the Sicilian dialect.  I demonstrated my Sicilian-language skills by reading aloud the English subtitles.  I feel I did a good job.

Black Friday:  Brian insisted on going with me shopping.  He felt that he should have a say in the Christmas gifts.  I concurred, and he and Nolan went out to the mall with me on Thursday night.  Brian lasted about three hours (although he tried to blame his tiredness on Nolan).  I ended up staying out until three in the morning.  

The Rest of the Weekend:  We enjoyed an expensive evening at the Gaylord (tee-hee!) Hotel.  It offers a huge Christmas display (not holiday. We're in Texas.  We say Christmas.) made out of two trillion pounds of ice.  Or maybe two million.  I don't recall.  For only $30 a person and $10 for parking, you can walk through 9-degree weather and look at frozen water in the displays of the nutcracker.

They had this super cool (literally.  Hey-o!) slide made of ice.  Nolan went on it twice.

It  was a really cool (literally.  Hey-oh!) display.  But I'm not quite sure how the Statue of Liberty wearing a Santa jacket fits in with the Nutcracker theme.

Also, the place was crazy-crowded, which made for some awkward photo ops (and I was seriously getting annoyed with the large group of people in front of us who had to stop in front of every display, pose for a picture, and then move three feet to get the next made-of-ice toy as the backdrop).

But we still managed to get a couple of decent shots.

The last display was of the Nativity, complete with lights and narration.

The house:  Things are still coasting along with our new home. We are still scheduled for a Friday, December 20 closing.  Huzzah!  I was in there last night and I noticed that they had put up the tile back splash in the kitchen.  I'm very glad I decided not to install it myself.

 

That is all for now, friends.  Thanks for reading!

BOOM! Goes the Fireplace

Happy December!  I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving.  We did too; I will be posting photos of our recent adventures in a separate blog post.

Moving onto more important things, such as our totally gorgeous house:

We have granite!

And an under-mount sink!

I can see myself pretending to be a cook at this surface.

Hello, kitchen!  I hope you're prepared to be used!

The big updates that have been done to the house the past few days are the granite in the kitchen, the completely gorgeous fireplace, and the sinks in the bathrooms.

Do you love how the fireplace appears to have a glowing effect surrounding it?  The angels all came down and sang sweet songs of stonework.

I'm glad we chose grey stones.

I decided to decorate for Christmas.

 No granite in the bathrooms, but it is some sort of weird fake marble.  Or maybe it's real marble.  Whatever it is, it's white (and hopefully it will stay that way for longer than five minutes).

Master Bath

Guest Bath

Kids' bath.

 The painting has been coming along really well. Today I worked for about 5-6 hours.  Not surprisingly, it is much easier to paint during the day than it is at night.

Foyer.  Ladder.

 We are still on track to close in two-and-a-half weeks, which is kind of bananas considering the floor isn't installed, we don't have a driveway, no fixtures or light switches, and the yard is dirt and mud.  Technically, our final walk-through is two weeks from tomorrow, so they should be all done in 14 days.  That is bananas.  And crackers.  It's banana-flavored crackers.

I think Nolan is very excited to be moving out of the world's tiniest apartment and into a new house with a totally gorgeous fireplace.