Week 21: Prime Paint, Tile and Wood Floors

Week 21... what a show off! We are officially getting down to the "pretty" parts of this home building process, and I couldn't be more excited. Interior design? Yes, please! All of our ideas are starting to take shape and our dreams are becoming reality - what a remarkable experience!

To get started, let's back up to this past Thursday. Tyler and I had to stop by the house after work to move a few items into the basement as we were informed that our wood flooring had been delivered to the house and was scheduled to be installed on Saturday - eek! We were greeted with freshly primed walls in the basement, first floor and second floor.

We also found quite a large pile of flooring acclimating in the living room and kitchen.

On top of that, our permanent electricity service was also installed. Woohoo! We have a meter and everything. :)

As if all of that wasn't enough, we were also greeted by the tile installer who was in the process of putting in the master bath and guest bath floor tile! I had no idea they would be so far along, but it was quite a nice surprise. We will have 8" light gray hexagon tile on the floor of the master bath (shown below) and 2" white hexagon tile on the floor of the guest bath.

It was one heck a Thursday, but the updates didn't stop there...

Tyler and I were out of town on Saturday for a dear friend's baby shower, but we did manage to swing by the house late that evening because we just HAD to see what "install the wood floors" meant. Surely they couldn't do that in one day, right?

Wrong. We walked in to find our beautiful flooring installed through-out the first and second floors. It was so dark outside that we were using the lights from the car and some flashlights to see everything, but it looked AWESOME. We had to see it in the daylight, so we drove back to the house today with Tyler's Mom and took a look at everything in the sunshine...

You guys!!! Just look at those floors! We love them. All of that worrying and negotiation to get to a floor choice that wasn't going to bust the budget... yeah, I'd say we made a good choice. The color is perfect and they feel amazing! We went with a European white oak engineered floor in "natural". The brand is Timeless Designs and the planks are 7" wide. LOVE.

We are using a heavy duty corrugated cardboard to cover everything for the next several weeks to protect the floors as construction activities continue around the house. The floors typically wouldn't have been installed quite yet, but we wanted to keep our baseboards very clean and simple - aka, no shoe moulding. In case you don't know what that means, shoe moulding is the round edge piece that is often at the bottom of your base moulding. It is used to cover up imperfections in the flooring as you often can install the base trim and THEN install your floors and finally cover up the difference with the shoe moulding. We didn't want a shoe, so our floors had to be installed first and then we will install the base trim.

Guess what else we were greeted with today? More tile! The wall tile was installed in the guest bathroom. We are using standard 3"x6" matte white subway tile in a brick pattern. It still needs to be grouted and all of that good stuff, but it looks great already!

The floor tile in the master shower was also installed. This is 1" white matte hexagon tile and is the perfect compliment to the 8" gray hex tile on the floor.

I would guess the master shower wall tile will be installed this week. We are using 2"x8" white subway tiles in here, so it will be a similar look to the guest bath but slightly more modern.

To be honest, I'm in awe... and proud. I'm so proud of us for sticking to our guns, saving every last penny over the past year, and going after our dreams. This has been one heck of an adventure and isn't over yet, but  Tyler and I are one heck of a team.

Funny enough, though, I was telling Tyler that I suddenly have a very misconceived notion about the time with which it takes to complete projects... poor Tyler. :) Check back next week for another update!