Rewind: Driveway Pour

Adam informed me that my blog fans were rioting over not having these pictures. So, without further ado . . . here are the pictures from placing the concrete for the driveway on Sept. 9th:

Welcome to Our Yard

We officially have a yard, and I love it! The concrete was poured on Thursday, Sept. 9th – we also had 8 pallets of sod delivered last week. We spent the last week fine grading our yard, renting a trencher to put in sprinkler pipes, gluing together over 500’ of pipe, filling trenches and placing sod. We are plumb worn out . . . but look at our pretty yard . . . we’re getting close.

Adam’s dad got some pictures of the concrete guys pouring the driveway, I hope to get those soon. I forgot my camera this past weekend, so I don’t have any action shots of yard work. I managed to get a couple things on my phone, would of gotten more but we stayed busy working.

Here’s one pallet of sod. We get the Empire variety of Zoysia. It’s softer and more resilient than St. Augustine. We like it a lot.

Here’s one of the trenches in the back yard for irrigation piping. We rented a trencher from Home Depot, but I don’t have any pictures of it. We were in a rush to get the trenches dug before it started raining and our rental time was up.

Here’s a few pictures of our new driveway, sidewalk and grass. The stakes are marking where there are tees in the lines to attach the sprinkler heads.



The black line across the driveway is the hose - we're moving a hose mounted sprinkler around until our sprinklers are finished.



The side yard.

We have about 10-feet of sod off the back porch. We were originally going to seed the rest of the yard, but we’re probably going to put some more sod down instead.

I had a memory stone engraved for our little baby we lost four months ago. We placed it under the largest oak tree on Sept. 8th – her due date. I think it’s a really great spot and look forward to remembering Hannah in this way.

This Saturday, we are planting trees, bushes, and flowers. More pictures to come.

Playing in the dirt

We have spent the last week preparing our yard for the driveway, sidewalk and sod! Let me show you some before and after pictures.

Here is our house with overgrown weeds. You can see the orange stakes that mark out the driveway and sidewalk. This is what the concrete guys used to give us a price for their work.


We rented a tiller to break up existing grass/weeds. You can see the front yard is about halfway done.

This is what the ground looks like after it’s tilled – very soft.


This is the tiller.


We brought in three loads of dirt on Friday and we were able to barrow a Bobcat from Adam’s cousin Rusty (thanks, Rusty!). Adam moved dirt around Friday and Saturday to get the grading right for our lawn (make water run away from the foundation).


Adam was inspired by his baseball days and hooked us this contraption to smooth out the dirt. It worked pretty well.


The concrete guys put up the form boards on Monday. It’s really great to be able to define the yard and see what the finished product is going to look like.


The form boards up close. We had hoped to get concrete today, but ran into some problems with permitting, bonds, etc with the county. We are getting everything worked out and should have concrete (and sod for that matter) this week. We’re very excited!


As for the inside of the house, we got the baseboards in the areas with carpet the weekend before last. Here is the guest room.


This is what our window sills look like with the base.


We also received the rest of our kitchen appliances. Here is the refrigerator. We love it – much more high-tech than what we would typically buy, but we got it on sale – yay!


The microwave and range. Just so you know, I did everything to install the microwave myself (while Adam was moving dirt). I did have to get Adam’s assistance to lift it in place, but the rest was all me.

We passed our electrical and plumbing finals. Like I said before, we should get concrete and sod this week and hope to get the landscaping plants/trees in this weekend. Then, we just need to finish up flooring and trim. We are getting SO CLOSE!!

Now, it’s looking like a house . . .

The past several weeks have been overwhelming at times, from the loss of our baby to the business of the house. But, our God is faithful and is carrying us through our grief and easing the pressure of our construction schedule.

To catch you up on all of the work completed on our house, there is no better way that pictures . . .

Our cabinets were delivered mid-May and they look great! Here’s an example of what is going in the kitchen and master bathroom.

The garage door opener was installed; it’ll even work right now if you use an extension cord.

We installed a built in ironing board in the laundry room. A cabinet door was installed over it.

We have been working hard to install the light fixtures, switches and outlets. Here’s a light and exhaust fan in the master bathroom.

Lights in the hall. These have a glass globe that we will install after we get bunches of light bulbs.

Jeff came over one day to install our ceiling fans (Thanks, Jeff!). We will install the blades and light kits after the air conditioning turns on – we don’t want our blades wilting in this heat.

Adam bought a wet saw to cut tile and has been working hard on installing the tile floors in the bathrooms and laundry room. We subbed out the tile in the kitchen and entry area off the garage.

The tile looks great in the guest bath.

The cabinet is installed in this bathroom, along with the light fixture. Now, we just need a marble countertop and toilet.

The Jack and Jill Bathroom also has completed tile. Here you can see the tub/shower after I cleaned up all the drywall mess covering it. The cabinets and light fixtures are also installed in this room.

The tile in the kitchen is set on a diagonal brick pattern. It really makes the room look nice, we can’t wait to install these cabinets!

The faucet in the Roman tub is installed in the master bath. The tile floor is mostly installed in this room as well, but we need to do the tile along the tub and shower walls before finishing the floor and installing the cabinets.

Here you can see several outlets, speaker outlets and low voltage wires behind our entertainment area. All of the low voltage, outlets and 99% of the switches are complete!

Our dining room chandelier in front of my favorite wall.

The ceiling fan on the back porch – wish we could turn it on.

We also had gutters installed, so we don’t have a crazy waterfall eroding our dirt anymore.

The gutters look pretty discrete along the roof line.

Back porch gutters.

Our interior doors are mostly installed. I have been caulking around the trim and they are nearly ready for paint.

We chose a larger trim that what is standard and will have a larger baseboard as well. This will make the house look really nice.

The smoke detectors are installed. The red plastic is just a little dust protection.

Adam worked hard to wire the panels. This is Panel-2, the smaller one. We have a transfer switch to this in case we ever get a generator.

Here is our low voltage wire box – it has our phone, coax, internet and security wires. Adam’s dad put this one together.

Here is the big one, Panel-1, in case you ever wondered what the inside of an electrical panel looked like.

This has the first part of the cover installed.

We placed the concrete for the condensing unit pad this past weekend. We are getting close to having air conditioning in the house!

Our mechanical room in the closet upstairs is a bit crowded, but it all fits. You can see two zoning dampers (blue boxes) that will help make the temperature in the house more comfortable. The air handler is installed, we just need to set the condensing unit and finish a few remaining connections.

Our goal right now is to get our electrical inspection; we are very close to being ready. Then, we can get power turned on and the mechanical guys can finish up and get the air conditioning running! Then, we’ll finish up the cabinets and tile . . . along with all the rest of the finishes inside and the landscaping and concrete outside. Our current goal is to finish at the end of July. We are getting close now!