Well, I feel bad that I haven't written anything on here for awhile. You see, the house was supposed to be done in January, and then it got pushed to February, and so on. The most recent estimated date for the final inspection was supposed to be next week. So I'm thinking "sweet! the carpet is going in Thursday, George is comming up this weekend to put in the smoke alarms and finish up all the electric, we can clean everything up and be moved in over the following two weeks and then we can get the dogs." That was a long, but wonderful thought for about two days...and then there was mold...again. Are you freaking kidding me?! Apparently hawk eyes Nick found some more black dots where there was mold on the ceiling previously (long story, pretty much, humidity + no AC = mold, the mold guy came and sprayed and supposedly killed the mold). So now the mold is back. I have to say, I couldn't really see it until they opened up the floor above the ceiling where the mold is (there are some little black dots). So the AC guy came and changed out the dehumidifier and the mold guy is comming back at the beginning of next week to do some super mold treatment. I appreciate Nick for finding it (I still don't understand how he saw it) because both of us have allergies and I'm sure sucking in mold every night probably won't be the healthiest thing (the mold is in our bedroom). And, according to my mother, my allergic shiners are much lighter now. I'd prefer not to walk around looking like someone punched me in both eyes. So I guess putting off the final inspection for another week or two in order to demold our bedroom is ok. But it's still annoying. I think the carpet installation has to be pushed back until after this mold thing is taken care of. At least George can still do his thing this weekend and then the only thing left will be the carpet and hooking up the gas appliances. Even though this whole house building thing is a pain, I love every part of my house and I can't wait to move in and have my dogs back and do something other than painting on my days off. Like lay out and get a tan. My mother also commented on how white I was...grasias. My comment back was that I have no tan lines now...my face is the exact same color as my ass!!! hehehe So, here are some pics of the house. Sorry there are so many, I tried to put one of every room (except for Ricky's suite upstairs, and Harry Potter's room...I couldn't get a good picture with all the stuff that mom brought in there). I'm also sorry that the pictures are in absolutely no order...I was proud of myself for just getting them onto the page :)

Update

I feel like I should give an update on the house. It's moving along pretty fast. The drywall and plaster are up on the walls. I would have liked to have a smooth plaster but it's a couple thousand dollars more and I thought that was just ridiculous so we went with knock down but I told them to make it as smooth as possible. The stone work is almost done outside. They just have some of the columns left to do. Also on the outside, the hardy board is going to be painted this week (hopefully). It would have been done last week but after half a wall of painting we decided that the color was too light so I had to take it back to be darkened. I'm going to the paint store again tomorrow to get primer for the inside. Nick will probably be the primer guy and then I'll follow him with the color (which we are still in the process of picking). We have met with the flooring guy but we haven't actually ordered anything yet. He has given us a good price on the fusion bamboo that we want for the great room and hallways but we are still pricing out tile and carpeting. We also met with the cabinet guy who is going to make a door sample for us and next weekend I think we might drive up to Georgia to look at stain colors, trims, hardware, etc. The granite counter tops are already chosen but they will have to measure and cut everything after the cabinets are put in. Oh, and we bought all of our appliances (except for the range) at Sears the day after Thanksgiving. We got 25% off plus Grandma's ex-employee discount (thanks Grandma!!!) so that helped out in the budget area. Pretty much how its going to go from here is: prime and paint the walls, install flooring, trim/hang interior doors, cabinets, counter tops, appliances. Somewhere in there we have to order and install the lighting and make up all the outlets and finishing out the plumbing is probably important too. As for furniture, that part of the budget was gone a long time ago. But we figure we can always add that stuff later. Having walls and a roof and insulation is more important right now. Ricky will just have to wait a little longer for his couches!!!! Sorry there are no pictures yet, my camera is in our room and Nick is sleeping. Some time this week I'll try to get some pictures up. If anyone has any ideas or advise about anything PLEASE let me know!!!

Today I...

drove a tractor. Yeah, that's right, completely not kidding. Today I drove a tractor. It's not my tractor (obviously) it's Randy, our project manager's. He's kind of like a contractor but not so intense. Anyway, he came by the house yesterday to drop off his tractor for us to use to clean up and get ready for the stone to be put up. The dumpster we have is for building materials only (it get's recycled) so there's random trash all over the place, it's pretty gross. The idea is that instead of picking up each individual piece of trash and walking it over to the trash pile to be burned, you just fill up the front of the tractor and then drive it all to the pile at once and dump it. Because of Nick's back he hasn't been at the house (how convenient) so Randy gave the key to me. He asked if I had ever driven a tractor before and I told him that I had driven a fork lift. He chose to ignore my comment (I don't know if he thought I was being sarcastic, or if he just ignored me) and he said to tell Nick that it was here for us to use if we wanted. Well this man clearly underestimates me (hehe) because today I drove his tractor, ha. Well, Nick had to tell me how first. It's would be self explanatory if anything was labeled, but I had to make sure so I wouldn't mess anything up. It's pretty much like driving a fork lift except it has a clutch and the fork lift goes faster. Anyway, I was there by myself because Nick was on his bedrest and there was no one to take a picture of me so here is a picture of the tractor and me driving it from my point of view. If you ever need anyone to operate any farming equipment, I'm your girl. You don't even know.

Because I have to...

I am writing this blog because Katie, the only person that looks at this web page anyway, wants me to put something new up. Not that I don't appreciate you looking at my page every day and not that I don't appreciate the one comment you left (which was pretty rude, I have to say), but I don't have anything to talk about.

I've been working at night. It pretty much sucks because then I'm asleep all day and up all night but at least I get stuff done for the house. If you have been following my highly exciting blogs, we did get a bathtub. In case you were wondering, It's a corner tub and it extends five feet from the corner in either direction. My new thing is lighting. We went to the lighting store to discuss options for the kitchen lighting (there's a vaulted ceiling, it's just a pain) and we ended up picking out fixtures too just to see how much it would cost. Let me tell you, this shit is expensive! I'm just about ready to go to Wallmart (yes, that's right, I said Wallmart - I feel like it just brings my cheapness to a whole other level) to get ten dollar crap fixtures for everything. So needless to say, back to reality, I've been going online to try to find discount or closeout prices on the things we picked out at the store in Tallahassee. You have no idea how time consuming that is. Thank god I don't have a life because it would be in some serious trouble from the multiple hours a night I spend looking for good deals online. I can't imagine how people do this house building thing when they actually have friends! geez, I feel sorry for them!

Well that's about all I have to say for now. George came up again this weekend to work on the electricity, he said that one more weekend and he'll have it done. Ismel (sp) came over to help too, thank goodness. I appreciate him for just being there so that Nick and George don't kill each other, not to mention that he actually works when he comes and it's not even his house! Janell, if you're reading this, please reiterate to Ismel how much I appreciate him. The framers are supposedly finishing this week on stupid little things (like my fireplace, which I've had a drawing that has the exact dimentions of what they have to build up for a week and there's still nothing done on it) and the stone and the hardy board are supposed to go up sometime soon too. Other than that I'm just working and trying to plan a night when I can scrapbook instead of doing house stuff. For now I'm going to go watch "Planet Earth" on the DVR and try to go to sleep.

I should probably update on the house, so here goes. While I was in Orlando this past weekend they did a lot! The roof is dried in and ready for shingles, all the windows and doors are in place and all the main walls in the house are finished. There are finally stairs to go up to the "bonus" room (which by the way, they are making us finish now) which is exciting because climbing up the random ladder which was leaning against a yet more random wall was not my favorite thing to do. Not to mention I was tired of declaring that I shouldn't be on the ladder in the first place because head traumas run in my family. Speaking of randomness, we have to buy/tell them what we're going to buy for the strangest things. I mean, I understand the concept of wanting to know the size of the bathtub we are going to buy before you build the wall that will encapsulate it. However, is it completely necessary to know the exact dimensions? Why can't you build the wall according to the plans or what will fit in the space and then tell me what size bathtub will fit. That seems so much easier. Whatever, it's just annoying because they ask and if I don't know for example the size of the bathtub then it's a huge deal and how could they possibly continue on the house until they knew the size of the bathtub?! Is this humorous to anyone else or is it just me?! I mean really, who knows the size of your bathtub? I feel like it's one of those commercials where they ask "It's 11:00, do you know where your child is?", well it's freaking 3:21, do you know the size of your bathtub?! I feel like in celebration of it being three hours into the month of October, I am going to declare October "getting to know the size of your bathtub" month. And I think it's important in this very special month for everyone to really have an understanding for the size of their bathtub...you know, just in case anyone asks. There may be a pop quiz. BTY, if anyone has any phenomenal ideas for a fire place let me know. Apparently I should already know the box dimensions, what's going to be on the outside of it, how high off the floor it's going to be, what type of furniture will be in a fifteen foot radius of it and the birth dates of my future unborn children. Simple things like that. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Interior Walls and Trusses

So we have interior walls now, and most of the trusses up. I got a little freaked out because the window in the media room was off center which would make me crazy. Turns out when they made the frame for the front door there was a miscommunication and they framed it to be 6 inches too big. How that can happen? I don't know, it makes me think what else happened that we haven't caught yet. Anyway, they are going to frame out the front door the correct way and move over the wall of the media room wall 6 inches (to where it was supposed to be to begin with) which will make the window center. On a good note, we gained 4 feet by dropping the trusses on the east side of the house by one foot. Now the "bonus" room upstairs will be 16 feet wide as opposed to 12 feet wide. That means even more room for people to come visit! please. ;)

We have walls!!!

Monday, even though it was labor day, they started putting up the walls on our house. They are called ICF walls, pretty much it's blocks of styrafoam (how do you spell that?) that get stacked up on top of one another and then they pour concrete down the center of them. It's pretty cool, they look like big 8 foot legos. Supposedly they will get them all into place with all the windows cut out, etc this week and then they will pour the concrete on Monday. Now if we can only get this rain to stop that would be great. I just came back from being over there and there are puddles where the trucks came through and the amount and the size of the mosquitos is unbelievable! They are like small birds flying around biting my legs. And of course they only bite me. Nick and I were out there this morning putting up the temporary electric pole, he got bit once or twice and I got bit like twenty times! They even bite through my clothes! I have a bite on my stomach that the thing had to go through my shirt and the elastic of my sports bra, now that's rediculous! And they're so big I feel like I can pick them off of me and throw them! Oh well, I guess I need to invest in some industrial strength bug repelant. Either that or I can put thousands of citranela candles all over the property, one or the other.

We Moved!

For those of you who did not know, Nick and I just recently moved to Crawfordville, FL. It's about halfway between Tallahassee and the panhandle, for those of you who don't know where that is (I would assume that's just about everyone). We have 5 acres of land that we are building our house on and in the meantime we are taking over at Nicky's house. Hopefully the house will be done in a couple of months (they said 4-5, so that puts it to be done in January) because as much as we love Nicky, living in a small room with all of our stuff kind of sucks. They actually finished pouring all of the foundation today, we had a minor set back in the form of tropical storm Faye. Between Faye and other storms, it rained here every day for two weeks, which apparently is not good when you want to lay concrete...who knew. Anyway, Nick is teaching 5th grade at Riversink Elementary (I think that's a horrible name, it sounds like someone is going to sink in a river) and I am currently orienting in the PICU at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. Nick seems to really like his job, there is another male 5th grade teacher, which is nice for him. Someone to talk football with. The PICU at TMH is interesting so far, its very different than Joe D. A lot of things that I'm not used to and not a lot of things that I am used to. I guess it will work out in the end. Most of this for now will probably be about the house, which I know is not very interesting for most people, so I'm sorry ahead of time. I'm also sorry for how nasty this blog thing looks, I'm still trying to figure it out...