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:

Landscaping and Wood Flooring

Every week is so exciting around the house, there have been some major changes! A big thank you to Fred Gratto for helping us get and plant all of our trees, bushes & flowers. It really changes the look of the house. See for yourself . . .

Curb appeal.

Butterfly Plants, Knockout Roses, Fall Cassia, Muhly Grass, Juniper Parsoni . . . We are also going to put down a pavered walkway from the driveway to the front porch, explaining the large expanse of dirt.

The plants on the right side of the yard: more Knockout Roses, Changs Ruby Loropetalum, Gardenia, Juniper Parsoni and Fall Cassia.

I guess there’s a reason they call these butterfly plants. The butterflies came out before we even got all the plants in the ground.

We have a Lace-bark Elm in the front yard, it’s doing well.

We put down another four pallets of sod on Friday. The backyard is staying like this until next year (give or take) and we’ll finish the sod then. We’ll probably put some seed down in the mean time. We planted an oak tree in the back and it’s not looking so good. I’ve been trying to water it a bunch – any other tips out there?

Here’s the side yard, next to our neighbors. This was part of the four pallets we put down last week.

On the inside of the house, we’ve started the wood flooring! Here is the office, about half-way complete.

We finished the office, hallway and it’s two closets. I didn’t take up all the cardboard flooring protection, but you get the idea.

Here’s the hallway – ignore the cardboard. We’re glad to get out of little spaces with this flooring; the larger rooms should be easier.

We have also been preparing for carpet. This floor is much cleaner now than how it started, trust me. The two back bedrooms, stairs and master closet get carpet. It is scheduled to be installed tomorrow!

The stairs are clean and the trim is caulked and painted. Adam installed the brackets for the handrail, which is stained and ready to be put in after the carpet.


Brian has been installing the hardware on the cabinets – like our pulls? Also, notice the gap above the refrigerator has been filled in, looks much better.

What’s next – since there’s so much already complete, you ask? Well, we have to do the wood flooring in the Dining, Living Room and Master Bedroom. Then, finish all the baseboards. The shelving, mirrors, towel rods, paver walkway, front porch columns and railing also needs to be installed. But, we don’t need all that done for the final inspection. So, we’re going to push for our final inspection to be next week and then get the bank inspector out here. We’ll see what they say – please pray that everything goes smooth and we get our Certificate of Occupancy next week and the loan process goes well. We’re excited to get this thing done – or at least done enough to where we can finish the rest at our own pace.

Also, tomorrow is our 5 year wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary, Adam - I love you!!

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!!

Weekend with the family

Thanks, Mom for the following guest post and blowing my cover. Okay, so I don't work on the house EVERY weekend, but Adam was there picking up my slack.



Here we are at Bahama Breeze.....Stacy came in for the weekend....We had a fun time....We started off the day with an hour at Jazzercise.....the girls could barely keep up with their mama (yeah, whatever)....and then off to lunch(the fish tacos were crazy good) and then shopping at the mall(I actually bought a bathing suit.....)...Does it get any better than that?....I think not!

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.