Random House Updates

I don't have anything specific to talk about today or any pictures but here is where we stand.  It has been a busy week and we have so much more to do.  This house is definitely a lot of work!  

1.  We had a couple issues in our master shower and toilet room.  The transom window in the shower wasn't centered which drove me insane and I could not deal with it being that way forever.  There wasn't room to center it because of the brick on the outside so we had to build another wall for the shower and it'll be squeezed in by about 4-5".  It isn't the end of the world to have our shower get smaller but it was a little disappointing.  But the window is now centered!  The toilet plumbing wouldn't work because of an I-beam below it so they had to build the wall out for this too and move the toilet forward so the plumbing would work.  

2.  We talked about making our master bath wider and laundry room narrower and longer.  In the end, it doesn't really make sense to do.  We were doing it so the laundry room was more efficient and had room for a bar to hang clothes.  It would also make the master bath feel less long and narrow (this is the most disfunctional space in the house if I had to pick one yikes!).  In the end, we will still have room for a bar in the laundry room and the master bath is honestly fine.  Most of the time master baths have so much wasted space.  Ours won't.

3.  Sliding doors between the den and covered porch.  We are about 80% sure we are going to do the 12' wide opening.  We found out that the cost wasn't nearly what we thought it was going to be so it almost became a no brainer so we could have the flexibility.  This way we can have it open 3', 6', 9' or 12'.  For less than $3,000 we think it may be worth it.

4.  We decided not to do copper on the returns on the outside of our house.  Going with shingles and saving a few thousand dollars on that.  We can always add the copper later but probably not necessary and we won't do it.  

5.  Plumbing happened this week.  I met the plumber there on Monday afternoon and we ran through everything.  Trying to think of it all and plan ahead for what we may want to do in the future.  A lot cheaper to run an extra couple of lines now than later.  We also selected the places that the hose bibs outside will be.  We want to be able to wash our cars - on of Kevin's favorite things to do ha!

6.  I think we've finalized the audio video stuff.  This has been our biggest shock of how much it is and it's not included in our loan.  Well, some of the pre-wire is but that's it.  Basically we are going to pre-wire EVERYTHING we can think of in our house.  Speakers in every room and outside, 12 TV locations, surround sound in a few areas, Ethernet stuff, cameras, the whole shebang.  Then we can decide later on the exact equipment we will install now.  We have a good idea on that but need to see where we land on other financials (aka Granite, cabinets etc).  

7.  We are working on picking out what material we will use on the floor for our covered porches.  Travertine was included but it won't really look right with our white brick on the house and fireplace.  We are leaning towards a gray slate or bluestone.  Need to decide this soon.

8.  We have to pick the type of inside fireplace we want this week.  The options are vent free, direct vent or b-vent.  Yeah, I had no clue what any of these were but I spent Monday night studying fireplaces and barely watching the Bachelorette premier haha!  I'm much more educated now.  


Our next few things to decide - finalize cabinetry, finalize tile, look at granite and start looking at appliances.