One Year Later (Plus Downstairs Bath/Laundry)

Here we are, snuggled-up in our king-sized bed, one year after shoving it up the stairs into our new master bedroom! It has been an incredibly stress-free year after what we were dealing with the eight years leading up. We drove past the Adair office this afternoon on our way back from Great Wolf Lodge and shouted a big thank you to the team that made it happen.

To celebrate, here are the last photos of the downstairs rooms!

Looking into the small hall from the Great Room that leads to the bathroom, laundry and garage.

The laundry room. To the left is our hot water heater which has its own built-in heat pump. It was part of the Energy Star package that we purchased for the whole house. We also added a utility sink. At the time we ordered with Adair, we told them we wanted that plumbed. Then we paid the plumber on our own to have him install it (I don’t mess with water anymore).

 

Peeking into the downstairs bathroom.

Another shot of the downstairs bathroom. We have different vanity lights. If I ever get around to installing them, we’ll post pictures.

Last photo of our beautifully appointed downstairs bathroom 😉

 

 

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Kitchen & Great Room

Entering the kitchen from the dining room.

On with the tour! For those of you interested in building an Adair house, upgrades in these photos include the gas fireplace, can lights on either side of the fireplace, Livingstone counter tops, the stainless appliances, and the gas range. The cabinets and the flooring are both hickory. We love all the variegation on the cabinets. If we were to build this house again, we’d add more can lights to the great room and some type of light in the closet under the stairs (which is DEEP and DARK). The subway tile backsplash in the kitchen and the fireplace tile and wood mantle were not done by Adair.

 

 

Standing in front of the under-stairs closet looking into the kitchen.

Looking into the kitchen from the sliding glass doors. The dining room is in the back left part of the frame. The amount of cabinet space and the large pantry are fantastic.

 

Standing between the sink and stove looking towards hall, closet and fridge (pantry on the right). We especially love the large island. When we have had parties in the house, we have easily had 10 people standing around eating and drinking, cooking, and just hanging out and it feels roomy and comfortable. We originally thought about extending the counter to make bar seating, but we’re  glad we didn’t because we would have lost easy access to the cabinets on the back side of the island. The kitchen eating area is close enough to the island to make people feel like they are truly in the kitchen area when they are seated there.

 

Same spot, but looking into the great room.

 

Looking towards the great room from in front of the pantry.

 

Looking into the great room from just beyond the under-stairs closet.

 

Looking into the great room from in front of the sliding glass doors. We added the gas fireplace and 2 can lights to the sides of the fireplace. Very glad we made that change as there would be no other built-in lighting in the room. If we built this house again, we’d add more recessed lighting to the other corners. The hall on the right leads to the garage, laundry and bathroom.

Watching our monkey jump on the coffee table from the hall to the garage.

 

Standing to the right of the fireplace looking into the kitchen.

 

Looking toward the kitchen from left of the fireplace.

Living & Dining Rooms

Welcome to the Bischoff residence! Looking through the front door into the entry and staircase.

Let’s start the tour! Walking in from the front door you first enter the living and dining rooms. We really didn’t make many changes in these rooms other than the dining room pendant light from Ikea and the small track light in the living room (which will eventually illuminate a grand piece of art, we hope!). We paid the electrician out-of-pocket to add the wiring and switch for the track the day he was there wiring. Then, the night before lights were to be installed, we left the fixtures under their future homes and Adair installed our lighting instead of the lights that were to come with the home.

The truth is, we don’t spend a lot of time in either of these rooms, and mainly use them when we have company over. We have big plans to add comfy side chairs to the space between the living room and dining room, add more artwork to the walls, do something different on the wall below the stairs (maybe add along bench), and change out the rug under the dining table. When you move from 900 square feet into almost 3,000, it takes some time to fill the space. For now we are enjoying the lack of clutter and all of the breathing room!

Looking from the entryway toward the dining room and kitchen.

Standing in corner by front windows looking toward dining room and kitchen.

Closer view of the dining room.

Looking from dining room toward living room and entry.

Looking from kitchen into dining and living rooms.

 

Closer view of the living room.

It has been almost a year…

…since we moved into our new home!

I can’t believe that a year ago today, our cabinets were being installed and we were in the final weeks of living with my parents. The year went so fast!

My goal is to mostly wrap-up this blog before the one-year anniversary of our move-in. I imagine that we’ll occasionally update it if we happen to decorate/redecorate, landscape, etc but the overall build is WAY over and it’s time to show where we ended up. We still are getting lots of visitors to the site and occasional questions, so we want to have it done so that future Adair customers can see our whole process. I’ll try to point out things in these next few posts that show changes to the official Adair plans.

Stay tuned for new photos over the next weeks. I’ll refer to the photos by the names on the Adair floorplan so that you can follow along. Also, if it looks odd to you, it’s because we did a reverse plan, so if you’re used to looking at it on the Adair site, this will all be backwards.

Open House and Occupanc…

I’ll save the “y” for when we see Doug’s signature on our Inspection Sheet, but we got temporary occupancy today! We had our final inspection and he was able to sign-off on everything except the duct test because we didn’t have the paperwork on-site. As soon as he can see them, we’ll be completely official! Yahoo!

We had our Energy Star tests earlier in the week and passed with flying colors. The state looks for a rating of 200 at a minimum to pass. We were a 90!

It will still be another week until Adair is fully done, but by next weekend we’ll be back in our old location, in a beautiful new home!

But first…

This Saturday Adair is holding an Open House at our abode. If you’ve been following along and want to see it in real life, this is your chance! If you’ve been driving by and peaking down the driveway, this is your chance to snoop! If you’ve been stopping by and poking around when we weren’t home and are frustrated now that there are locks on the doors, this is your chance to come on in and see the progress!

Jackie will be on-hand to talk about Adair and Sara will be there to talk about our experience and lead tours. I’ll be there too, but not until after 2pm or so. Details:

You’re Invited: OPEN HOUSE!

Saturday, October 22, 2011

10:00am – 4:00pm

4837 Blakely Avenue, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

Light snacks served.

Next week we’ll have any necessary subs back up to tweak things, our fridge will be delivered and we’ll have our walk-through with Chad where we learn more about the products that were installed and learn about what happens now that we’ll be on our own.

Mantle before Robert’s handiwork

Robert making our beautiful home beautifuller

The finished mantle. Just needs some paint and some propane so we can light that beauty up! I wish I could say it was going to be painted by the open house, but I can’t…

The kitchen again! We love the floors and cabinets and… ALL OF IT!

The kitchen as seen from the dining room

Looking from behind the island into the living room

Master bedroom

Sara’s crafting room

The play room, already getting a ton of use for wrestling

Looking down the stairs

Looking from dining room toward the front door

See you Saturday!

The Finish Line is in Sight!

Wow! Wow! Wow!

We’re almost done and can hardly believe it!

Today is the last day of real work on the house! From here out it’s just fine-tuning, inspections and paperwork. Amazing!

Last Thursday was crazy! Awesome. But CRAZY. I took the day off to complete some work (exterior painting is DONE!) and meet Dale Flodin to look at some driveway drainage work that is our responsibility to complete. I was also expecting the electricians to show up to complete their work. At about 8:30 a car pulled in and I assumed it was them. Nope. It was the flooring crew, here early to get a head-start! Awesome! That was the last major thing to see go in and we could hardly wait one more day.

About 30 minutes later another car pulled in. I went out to talk to him about our lights but, no, it was our tile guy coming to get a head-start on the backsplash! Exciting!

Another 30 minutes later yet another van pulled in and it was our three electricians. The problem was that all seven guys wanted to work in the kitchen on the floors, walls and ceiling. I decided to get out of the way and back to work and spied through the window on their intricately improvised construction ballet. Then, just to add to the frenzy (that’s what you get when you mix seven workers and a case of Monster Energy Drink), two of our chickens that I let out to roam the yard didn’t want to be left out. They always want to be where the humans are, regardless of nail guns, saws, etc. A couple of times I peaked in and the chickens were in the kitchen standing on the very board that was being installed. (These were big, hungry men too. The chickens were lucky the oven hadn’t been installed yet.)

See that chicken? Stupid, stupid bird.

On Friday, the flooring guys came back and finished up their work. My dad brought home his projector from work and we ordered some pizzas and had a pizza/cinema night in the living room. Sara and I then took a trip for the weekend with our friends Ivy and Robert and left the kids with my parents. It might have been a mistake with the amount of work to do, but we REALLY needed it!

Today the trim guys were out to finish the downstairs and grout the tile. I’ll be meeting Robert to finish the construction of the mantle and then I have a little more interior touch-up painting to do. Sara will meet me there later and she’s going to start the clean-up. We could have our final inspection as early as THURSDAY! Andthen we’ve got to make everything pretty because this Saturday is our OPEN HOUSE for Adair. More on that soon!

The Only Thing More Exciting Than a Honey Bucket…

is getting the Honey Bucket taken away! Just a couple of months ago we were blogging that we were excited to see the “Blue Box” dropped off because it meant we were really getting started. Its imminent departure could only mean that we’re almost done!

As I type, the plumbers are in the house, busily installing toilets, sinks, the hot water heater and utility sink. It will be so nice to have the bathrooms in working order now that it is getting dark earlier and, well, COLD!

Inside: plumbers busily finishing up their work!

We were delightfully surprised to see that our hot water heater is one of the new, super-cool and high-tech Heat Pump Hot Water Heater. Who knew we were so fancy?! We’re just learning about it but it looks to be a good money-saver and good for the environment.

Our kitchen counter was installed yesterday. It looks great. Can’t wait to see the dark floors and bright white tile backsplash go in. Things are getting a little too beige in that kitchen. But still… THAT KITCHEN!!!

The kitchen is ALMOST done.

Tomorrow is the final electric installation and Friday is flooring. So close!

Getting Close!

What a week! Besides the stacks and stacks of boxes, carpet and lumber stacked throughout the house and garage, we now have cabinets installed with handles, lights in most rooms, trim around the floor, doors and windows, flooring in the bathrooms and laundry room, shelves in the closets, and the mantle is close to finished. It has been so fun to see it come together. This week will be even more exciting as the heat pump goes in, toilets and sinks will be installed, carpet and hardwood floors go in, kitchen counter goes in, and the rest of the trim-out wraps up. By early next week we should be ready for our walk-through with Chad from Adair to see what kind of fixes are necessary and then the subs will come back to touch things up before calling in for… FINAL INSPECTION!

Bathroom lights and counters installed. We plan to change out the light fixture, but for now we're just enjoying being able to see!

The master tub and shower. We love that the master bath counters are extra high!

New tile around the fireplace.

Now THAT'S a kitchen!

Just a little more touch-up painting outside and yard clean-up before we can call the exterior good until we start landscaping next year.

Aerial Photos

Just a quick update with the photos I promised last week. Korum took these from the Genie Lift. Though there are still some pieces of trim that need to be painted, and the door still needs its orange spice paint, you can get the general idea of the exterior colors here. It has been a busy week. Something new happens every day. The cabinets are up and look great. Someone came and measured for the Livingstone counters yesterday, and another subcontractor was up today putting in the vinyl flooring and laminate countertops in the bathrooms and laundry room. Things are moving at an exhilarating pace right now. We are in the home stretch.

Trim-out Begins!

Sara and I were like kids on Christmas morning coming home tonight, racing to be the first one in the door to see what had happened. And the gifts were the best we’ve ever received. We now have lights, working outlets, switches all installed and a huge stack of cabinets ready to go in tomorrow.

We were SO thrilled with the way cabinets look and CAN’T WAIT to come home tomorrow to see them in place. We went with the cheapest option Adair offers that is real wood and not a thermal wrap. We are super-impressed with the quality and appearance.

In addition to the cabinets going in tomorrow, we’ll also see the tile around the fireplace set. Our friend Robert is helping me re-do the mantle. It looked fine the way it was, but we wanted to take it a step further. More to come…

Looking from the front door, through the dining room to the kitchen in the back.

The line-up of cabinets in the living room ready to be installed in the kitchen.