OK, time to start off the new year with a new blog post. Will and I both took the week off from our real jobs between Christmas and New Year's and actually got a LOT done on the house, which was great.

At this point we are about a week away from getting the rough-in inspection done. The inspector will come and look at all of our new HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and framing that we have done and give us the OK to continue. Then, we can finally start putting drywall up and the rest of the work will be the fun stuff - painting, flooring, installing appliances, etc. We think things will really start to move faster once the drywall is up, so there will be lots more fun stuff to look at as a reader (shall we say, more "aesthetically pleasing" if you weren't totally blown away by the air conditioning unit....haha).

So here's a peek into what we've done the last month:

Our brand new sliding french doors!! These are seriously my favorite...I love them!

And our new side door - wish I had a picture of the old one....it was falling apart, literally.

Will and Nick measuring the wall to add new framing

Laying out the new wall on the driveway.

Making sure it fits before nailing it in!

Will next to the new framing we put in for the tub, which we were waiting on for what seemed like forever.

This is in the kitchen. We added the vent here, which will be for the range hood. The vent has to go all the way up and out through the roof...which means we had to cut a hole in the roof! ...

Will and my Dad on the roof cutting the hole!

I tried to help from the attic below

They have the vent in! After this, we connected the vent that ran up through the kitchen to this in the attic, so when we cook on the stove, it will vent properly out the roof.

That same night we tried to go ahead and mix the mortar for the shower (it was kind of late..)

Will spreading the mortar in the shower. Unfortunately we didn't add enough water to the mortar and a few days later had to rip this all out and do it again. It happens!

OK - here is the COOL part! We have added thermal solar panels on to our house! These 3 panels will heat about 80% of our hot water once we move in. Tilden, Will, and Win all have experience in solar through Tilden's new company SolarDyne, but this is their first complete (of many!) thermal solar installation. So far so good!

Tilden and Will on the roof putting on the brackets for the panels.

Here are the panels just sitting on the roof waiting to be installed.

And now they're set!

Pretty cool looking... :)

Now comes the hard part...figuring out how to set up all the controls...

OK...funniest ever! This is our new hot water heater...it is HUGE!! And it's really interesting because it came with that big blue insulation wrapped around it, which essentially acts as a giant koozie! It's about 4 or 5 inches of foam padding that makes it so we don't lose the heat that the solar panels produce.

Also...Win and Anna helping out!!

As Will and Win were working on the solar set-up, Anna and I were SCRUBBING the walls where we had removed wallpaper. We needed to get ALL of the leftover adhesive removed so that the walls can be prepped for painting. This may sound easy, but it was a work out!! We got one room done and were too worn out to do anymore...but check out the wall below - pretty clean!

And I realize that I take all the pictures here, so just so you know that I actually do work on this house as well....here's me with our newly installed tub!!

Our new master shower, with the mortar reapplied properly. The reason we have to put the mortar down first is so that we can build the shower with a slope towards the drain. So the mortar is thickest around the outsides of the shower and almost not even there right around the drain.

After the mortar dried, Will was able to put in the shower liner.

So the angle of the shower is now set and the liner is in. Next step will be to put in another layer of mortar and then lay the tiles.

If you remember our upstairs floor...we had to cut a hole in it when we were installing the steel beam in the kitchen, so now we have filled that hole back in with a special flooring mortar.

Here is the new bath tub in the guest bathroom!

And this is one of my favorites...so my Christmas present from Will this year was that little gold thing in the middle of this picture. Will is in the master bath right here and that is actually the tub filler! He found it online and just thought it was the coolest thing ever....so sure enough, we have it! My initial concern was that it would splash all over the place, but apparently, Kohler has addressed that with some sort of valve control, so we'll see. We're gonna test it before we put the drywall up and if it doesn't work we'll move it to the wall so it acts as more of a fountain. But what do ya'll think?

Here are some cool pictures of how it looks/works after it is installed

We started sizing up the special flooring for the bathroom (durarock) which keeps the tiles from cracking, etc.

Random picture of Will on the chimney filling in something with new mortar (I didn't go up there, so I can't even really tell you what he and Grainger were doing! haha)

Another picture of Will and Grainger on the roof / chimney

So Will and I kept a few of the old cabinets that we pulled out of the kitchen and actually re-hung them in the garage so that we could have some good storage space there. When we were hanging them I found this (along with lists and lists of phone numbers) taped to the inside of one of the cabinets. "Moved Here 1958 between children's birthday and Halloween". Cute :)

Next on the list - vent for the Dryer! So...the existing dryer vent came out into the garage, which is apparently NOT OK. Code says that it has to vent to the outside of the house. So instead of moving where the washer and dryer will be, we ran additional venting in the garage and cut another hole in the outside of the house for the dryer vent.

Final dryer vent from the outside - looks great!

And here are all of the newly hung cabinets and the dryer vent, which we ran right underneath them.

Well that's it for now - but let us know what you think! Tilden and Will are over at the house right now (I am on my way as soon as I finish here) and actually got the solar system totally set up last night. I can't wait to see how it all works. Hopefully we can get the inspection done soon and then I can start posting the pretty pictures as opposed to the more functional pictures!

Happy New Year!!

Carrie and Will