House Update - Lots of Things

It's been a couple weeks and lots has happened so I thought I'd fill you all in.  One day I will print all of these House Update posts and put them in book to keep on our coffee table.  Won't that be fun to see how far we've come?  My goodness, it's been a long two years in the making but I'm trying to push through these last weeks!  

Let there be stairs into our house.  The masons did the three sets of garage stairs, front stairs and stairs off the rear porch.  

They are going to come back and smear mortar on these front stairs so it will match the house.  We weren't sure if we wanted the contrast of the regular brick or if it should all be the same we decided we want it to all be the same.  It was one of those things that we couldn't go back on if we told them to go ahead with it so I'm glad we were better safe than sorry!

We've added 7 loads of dirt to the front and back yard, plus used some other dirt that we have cut out of the yard to fill in and make drainage flow better.  Yall know this civil engineer has to have the drainage right and we'll be golden after all this.   

The back porch with no slate....

The back porch with slate.  This came out so much better than I could have expected.  This is when they were washing it so I don't have the best pictures but it's very pretty!

The grilling station.  We had to buy a grill a couple weeks ago for this because we decided it wasn't safe to have our existing grill built in.  Technically it could have been but I'm not really interested in gas issues that close to our house.

On the hearth of the outdoor fireplace above and the grilling station, we got these 2" slabs of bluestone to put on them.  I think these will really look awesome.  We're waiting on the tile guys to cut the piece for the hearth.  

Railings for the inside stairs.  Boy were these a big debacle.  Having a rounded set of stairs and a square newell post.  We broke all the rules....

But I like the outcome!  Well sorta.  I like the bottom half and how pretty the curve looks.  They should have gone up the left side of the stairwell which would have been easier for them and what we wanted but they went up the right.  I wanted the railing to be on your right side as you walk down for obvious reasons.  This is a still TBD, they may be changing this.  Right now, it's staying so we can get a certificate of occupancy, hopefully this week.  Of course the newells will be painted white to match our trim and the railing will be stained the color of the floors.   

Exterior lights were put on.  I feel like I may have shared these already?

Can I be honest?  I think these lanterns are too low.  And it is a huge problem and not easy to fix.  It can be done.  But $$$.  Do not decide a standard height on something like this until you have the lantern in your hand.  Due to how it all worked out, honestly we couldn't have done anything differently so yeah...this is ... I don't know what to say about it.  This house isn't perfect.  Yeah okay.  I do LOVE the lanterns.  They're gas and switch off with an electronic switch too.  Best of both worlds.  

Mudroom station which isn't finished.  It will be zazzed up with trim etc.  

Working on blinds and shutters.  We are going to only do blinds in certain places for now that are really necessary then live there for awhile to see what we think before we go nuts on plantation shutters.  Think that's a good plan?  So on shutters you can do fake woodgrain or plain.  We are leaning toward plain.  We have fake woodgrain in our house now but the only reason I know that is because I went and looked.  Ha!  

Hopefully I'll have pictures of interior lights hung by Thursday!  Those will be sooooo exciting to see!