Woods-Kimber New Family Experience: House Progress 14 Jan 2006: Exterior Almost Done

We're getting closer to the end on this house business. This week they got all the metal siding up and filled in the last bits of Hardy Plank[tm] siding on the exterior. Now all they have to do is the final exterior paint and then install the remaining awnings and the roof bits they left off during construction. The stone work is finished.

On the interior, the painters have done all the clear painting and are doing the priming this weekend. The interior painting should be done by the end of next week. Once the painting is done they'll install the cork flooring in the upstairs.

They're still working on the bar in the kitchen--apparently the dude who was supposed to do the concrete work went to Mexico for "four weeks" and hadn't come back seven weeks later so Doug the project supervisor is building the form himself and scrambling to get the concrete poured.

The builder says we should be able to move in in early February and everything seems to be on track for that. We met with Ed the finance guy this week and everything seems to be on track for the final close. We've started talking to realtors about getting our current house listed. So it's starting to seem a bit more real. Ed wants us to close by the end of January but it doesn't look like the forms for pouring the driveway can be in place in time for that to happen. As I understand it, to close you have to have a survey that shows all the flat work, in addition to the house construction being "essentially complete." But the builder said he didn't think he could get the driveway forms in place that quickly. All that really means for us is we'll have one more payment on the relatively high-interest construction loan.

They're making slow but steady progress on the finish trim for the screen porch--I've been watching them do it when I'm at the site at lunch time and it is pretty involved work so it's no surprise that it's taking a while.

Julie has been working very hard on getting all the fixtures selected and ordered. At this point everything except a few odd-ball fixtures have either been ordered or are already on site. We still have to select the drawer pulls and towel bars and like that.

Here are a few more pictures of the exterior with the essentially-finished siding: