Moving in to our new home didn’t quite mean it was really the end of the project for us. There were still a number of loose ends that needed to be tied up and more than a few projects that we had to work through before we could truly enjoy our new surroundings. We had…
Crossing the finish line
It’s been a whirlwind of activity these last few weeks as everyone worked really hard to try and get our certificate of occupancy by the end of June. The plumbers and electricians were back installing all of the fixtures throughout the house. It was great to see some of the items that we picked out…
The cabinet chronicles
Like all the other materials in our project, we went through multiple rounds of cabinet selections. Just when we thought we knew what we wanted and had the selections locked in, the pricing came back way out of budget. This was the most frustrating part of building a custom home. Even though you tell the…
Buttoning up the exterior
A flurry of activity is ramping up inside and outside the house. We got the custom designed cedar garage doors installed in early February, followed by the over-sized knotty alder front door at the end of the month. We put in some more sweat equity to stain the garage doors and the front door ourselves….
Sweat equity
We have tried to save money everywhere we could throughout the building process. In some cases we were able to do so through smarter material selections or through sourcing our own vendors. In other cases we decided that we could do some of the work ourselves as long as we didn’t hold up any other…
Laying tile
The tile installers started laying tile by mid May after many months of us selecting and re-selecting just the right tile. We probably went through the tile selection process four or five times if you count our selections very early in the building process. As we picked other finish materials, we started to get a…
Walls, sweet, sweet walls
After looking at the framing for so long it was such a good feeling to know that our walls would be covered soon once insulation began. We used a combination of spray foam, batts, and blow-in insulation products to make sure we were protected from the cold winters at nearly 10,000 feet in elevation. The…
Shiver me timbers
To fully realize our vision of a timber frame home, we needed to make sure we had exposed timbers throughout the interior of the house. The framing crew stayed onsite while all of the mechanical systems were being roughed in to construct and lift all of the heavy interior timber accents. They created classic exposed…
Pipes, wires, & fireplaces
With the shell of the house finally closed in, the plumbers, electricians, and heating contractors began to rough in all of the mechanical systems. The plumbing and ventilation pipes all went in without too much hassle. They ran ventilation to an unnecessary vent fan location, but it was easily removed. We also had to block…