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.

Plumbing & Window Sills

There has been a lot going on at the Harris house the past couple weeks.

The foyer and master bath tile have been grouted. Here is the foyer. We also sealed the grout, which should keep it protected.

Here is the Master shower & tub, complete with shower heads. This has grout, but I’m not quite finished with the caulking around the edges/corners. We are getting pricing for a glass enclosure.

Here’s our water heater. We have our electrical final scheduled for tomorrow. We needed the water heater installed for this inspection.

Our kitchen – notice the tile is not covered up and the faucet is installed. We also have the garbage disposal hooked up.

Our dishwaster . . . just kidding, Mom. Thanks for helping out this weekend, Mom & Dad.

Okay, here’s our real dishwasher, hooked up and ready to wash.

Let me show you the rest of our plumbing fixtures:

Double sink in the Jack & Jill Bathroom.

Under one of the sinks. We have to fix the toilet in this bathroom and then we should be ready for the final plumbing inspection.

The vanity and toilet all finished in the Hall Bath. These are now functional and we got our portolet hauled away – yippee!

The Master Bath Sink – this is one of two and the faucets are goosenecks, which is fun.

Master Toilet

We also finished the door going to the toilet room. This door gave us quite a bit of trouble, but it’s all fixed now.

The window sills are all in – thanks for helping us out, Nels!

Guest Bedroom. We kept the edges long in case we ever want to add casing around the windows later.

Dining Room. We ran the sills across double windows to make one large sill.

Our fireplace. This has been installed for awhile now, but it’s been covered up until recently. The hood in the bubble wrap inside goes over the blank spot above the doors.

There was a lot of painting and caulking completed this weekend too. Thanks to Adam’s dad for helping us out so much!! Up next: dirt and concrete for the front yard.

Tile & Plumbing

We finished laying the tile in the Master Bathroom and the Foyer. I think it turned out great. They both still need to be grouted, but hopefully that will be taken care of soon. Now, the only remaining tile is a small patch in front of the fireplace. We’re happy to have it almost done. Check out our work:

Master Tub.

Master Shower. The glass walls and door are going to make this area really come together.

Adam starting the foyer. We did the same layout as the kitchen, a diagonal brick pattern.

The completed foyer.

We also finished installing the interior doors. Here are the doors to closets off of the Master Bath.

Here is our laminate wood flooring. We have all the material delivered and the plan is to install it after the landscaping and driveway are complete.

We are officially not doing any more cutting inside the house – I don’t want saw dust on my new granite. So, we cleaned out the living room.

And we moved the saws into the garage. Here’s our new work station. We cleaned up the garage a bit, so this was a very nice improvement.

We began installing the plumbing fixtures yesterday. Here is the shower/bath in the Hall Bath. We also installed the sink faucet, but I forgot to get a picture.

And here is the Jack and Jill bath. The water heater is also installed. We should have the rest of the fixtures in soon.

We need to complete the tile, casing around the doors and plumbing fixtures. Then we’ll move outside to the irrigation, landscaping and concrete work. 

Cabinets & More

We have been painting the doors and trim white. A special thanks to my parents for coming up last weekend to help paint. We have most of the doors and trim painted now and it’s looking great.

Here is our door painting station.

The doors in the study.

The door knobs are in.

We also fixed a leak under the garden tub by sweating copper – check out our handy-work.

The tile in the master bath is getting close to being done. The final product is going to look great!

The cabinets in the Master Bath are in and the cultured marble people came out today to measure for the bathroom countertops. They should be ready to install in 2 weeks.

Brian helped us install the kitchen cabinets. The cabinet boxes are in and we are working on the rest of the trim and filler pieces. Our cabinets are mostly installed . . . check it out!

Our wood floors and water heater are ready to be picked up. The list of things left to do is getting shorter . . . yay!

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!