light at the end of the tunnel!

[ilanarama]

After a few weeks of pretty much nothing, the crews came back and are working full-tilt on our new house. We have an estimated date for the Certificate of Occupancy, which means we have an estimated official move date: April 12th - six days before the closing on our current house! We've started packing things in boxes and moving them into the back of the new garage. This is meant to save time, which I'm sure it will, but it also means that e.g. I can only cook things I know how to cook, or that I can find recipes for on the internet, because all my cookbooks are in a box in the back of the garage now. (As are my summer clothes, my running trophies and medals, most of our backpacking and camping gear, and all the pretty souvenirs that lived on display shelves in the living room.)

The new floor has been installed:


Here's the installer (it was just one guy!) in front of our newly-uncovered front door:



The kitchen appliances are in, though most things are still covered with protective foam.



The wine room (an insulated closet-sized space off the pantry, with a tiny air conditioner to keep it at the right temperature, and yes, I know, make fun of me, but I do like my wine) is almost done - a little trim needs finishing, but that's it. (There is a matching rack on the left side that you can't see from this angle.)



The guest bathroom is done:



The master closet/laundry is almost done - I don't know why the dryer hasn't been installed yet. The cabinets next to the washer are all pull-out clothes hampers. I am so psyched about not having to go up and down two flights of stairs to do laundry any more!



The home automation infrastructure's been installed and needs to be set up. The idea is that we can control everything from an app on our phones as well as the switches on the walls. The windowshades have been delivered but are not yet installed. These will be on settable timers so that for example the west windows will automatically get shaded on summer afternoons. (Colorado sun is quite strong, and in the house we're in now, if we forget to pull the shades the house gets unpleasantly hot.)

Outside, the snow's melted, leaving a lot of mud behind, but the landscaper has been working on the flagstone patio. The grill has been installed, as has a little shelf outside a kitchen window for passing things through:



Britt had a meeting with the landscaper today to go over plans, and he's pretty excited about the way the hot tub will sit out on the edge of the hill looking north up the valley, as well as the plan for berms and plants to screen us from passerby and nearby houses. I will get an herb garden near the kitchen door (there are too many deer in the area for me to want to try to grow anything else!) and we'll have a drained gravel area for washing off our mountain bikes.

I'm starting to get excited now!

Comments

[ambyr]

Looks lovely!

[ilanarama]

Thank you!

[jesse_the_k]

WOW! That's so beautiful. I'm thrilled you'll be able to see what spring is like in your new house.

Don't worry about cookbooks--just ask and we'll tell you what to eat :p

[ilanarama]

Thank you! And heh, right now I am sticking very closely to making a limited number of things that my body is okay with, and I know how to make most of those without a recipe.

[yhlee]

Huzzah! It looks great--y'all must be so psyched. :D I hope all goes smoothly!

[ilanarama]

Thanks!

[yhlee]

If you're willing and have the brain (I know moving sucks up brain!), let me know your new address after you've moved in, so I can send y'all a housewarming gift! :)

[ilanarama]

♥ ♥ ♥

[mrkinch]

I love the wall in the second picture! But that's a lot of space to heat. Are you more concerned with cooling?

Helluva view out your kitchen window. That is real and not a temporary poster, right? Wow.

[ilanarama]

The wood stove is only aux heat - we've got in-floor radiant heating, and fans hanging from the ceiling (they are so cool looking! I'll have to take a photo of them!). We also have hella insulation, including the windows - they are triple-pane and super efficient (and expensive, sigh). We have designed things so that in the winter, sun will come into the "sunroom" (a wide corridor between the great room and the master bedroom) and heat the black floor tiles - when we went up there in the depths of winter it was 10F warmer than the rest of the house! And in the summer, the sun will be high enough that the overhang will shade those same windows.

The views are amazing and the reason we bought the property. The view over the laundry is actually the "sucky" view - the other side is the even more stunning one!

[mrkinch]

Sun angle: making it work for you! Very nice.

[thalia]

Everything looks amazing! I'm sure you're going to love it. Crossing my fingers that there aren't any glitches in the next few weeks.

[ilanarama]

Thanks! Yeah, we're hoping....

[mergatrude]

Looking good!

[ilanarama]

Thanks!

[zulu]

That stone wall with the built-in bookcases is amazing!

[ilanarama]

Isn't it! On the other side (our offices) it's also covered with stone, with little shelves, and the line of it extends outside as a stone wall also, to give the impression the house is built around the solid wall.

[sobelle]

Wow! Looks fantastic! I recall you saying the views were what attracting you all to the location and from what I can see, almost every window has an amazing view!

Congratulations!! Looking forward to more pix when you finally get moved in!!