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No, this is not our builder or our contractors.  Just a friendly neighborhood copperhead snake that thinks we are encroaching on his territory.  The way I cropped the picture makes him look big, but he is just a tiny baby snake.  We share this property with snakes, deer, racoons, various birds, porcupines, lizards, maybe some hogs (haven’t seen any, but there is some evidence) and probably other critters yet to be identified.

There has been a lot of progress since the last post so let’s start with the exterior.  The stone and stucco are complete.  Some of the soffits still need paint and there is other touch up work pending.

The landscaper met with us to develop a plan.  We want to keep mostly natural / native landscaping and plants.  We hope to incorporate a river rock feature that will serve as a water drainage path in the front.  The front will be mostly native grasses a long with a couple of terraces with low lying greenery.  There will be a few rock retaining walls constructed from rock dug up during our foundation excavation.  In the back there will be some turf grass and a path leading to the trees at the back of the property.

We have garage doors!  Now we can close the entire house.  After all the back and forth with the contractor, the doors are just right.  They are mounted close to the ceiling even though he thought it couldn’t be done.  See Garagedominium Post 31 for a refresher on this issue. We don’t have openers yet. Painters will make the garage door exteriors look like real wood to match the beams and corbels.

I wish I could get a picture without the roll off dumpster, but it is a part of the landscape for now.

The septic system tank and some of its piping are in place.  It is currently uncovered and needs more work, but it passed the leak test.

The interior is coming along well.  U.W. did a great job on the interior design.  We now have light fixtures, door hardware, base cabinets and countertops, tile floors, bathroom tile, and backsplash tile. The tile contractor started on October 12 and is still working on some areas.  There is a lot of tile in this house! 

Baseboards are done and closet shelves are complete.  However, we are waiting on closet shelf supports and closet rods to be delivered.  Also, two of the ceiling fans have the wrong color blades and the ceiling fan in the great room was totally the wrong color.  The lighting supplier has ordered replacements.

We have base cabinets but still lack some of the upper cabinets and all the cabinet doors.

Sorry for the dim and dull looking interior pictures.  We don’t have power yet, so all the lighting is dependent on sunshine.  The house is often very bright, but it has been cloudy lately so getting good interior pictures has been a challenge.  Also, the floors and fixtures are all very dirty making it hard to get great shots.

Electricians installed the receptacles (outlets) and switches. But they had to remove all the receptacles and replace them with the commercial quality outlets that I had specified.  Major pain for the contractor, but they should have read the specification.  What’s the big deal?  Thanks for asking.

A commercial grade receptacle is what you want a receptacle to be like, the residential grade is the cheapest product they can actually get approved for sale.   Everyday Home Repairs does a good job comparing them.  The pictures below from Eaton show the difference between their standard and commercial receptacles.  The electrical components in the GarageDominium are all Eaton products.

Plumbers have installed the toilets, faucets (most of them) and the water heater.  I’m not too happy with the water heater install.  The plumbers told the carpenters the size of the water heater pedestal, but then they did not center it on the pedestal.  It hangs over the edge.  The piping doesn’t look great either.  I’m pressing to get all of that remedied.

It’s beginning to look like a place we would a want to live.  It is getting close, but there is still much work to do. The next major thing is to get power.  My list of things for them to fix is getting long.

There are a lot of pictures in this post, but I figure that is what most of you want.  Let me know if there are too many or too few pictures.  I put captions on some of them, but most pictures are self-explanatory.  Should I add more captions? 

Thanks for reading!