Exterior in the Evening

I ran out and took some evening shots of the exterior...

The lights coming through the window are from the basement stairwell and the dining room.

This is the dining room light coming through the butler's pantry window.

They had the electric on in the new part of the house the other day, but disconnected it when they left since they are still working on it.  I'm excited to take a shot of the exterior once the electric is up and running!

Electrical Work

The electricians were here all last week and got the electric work roughed in.  They were great and had lots of questions for us that got us thinking about using the space functionally... things like adding an extra switch to turn off a light when exiting the room on the other side, or moving an outlet down a little further, etc.

Here are some photos of the work...

High Hats in the kitchen ceiling

Light switches next to the opening from the living room.
Now that they've removed the plywood, the opening seems HUGE!

These are the switches that will control a bunch of lights in the kitchen & butler's pantry area.

This is the unfinished work of the wires running down to the basement.

Work in progress in the laundry room.

In addition to the overhead light in the attic space, we asked them to add extra electric lines, so that we can finish that off as an extra little room some day.  They also put an outlet on the landing.  I'm thinking that I'll put a little buffet table at this spot, and it would be nice to have a little lamp...

We just moved that black cable wire, so we don't have to step over it each time we go up there!
Mike is also in the process of running a Gig-E cable so that we don't have to worry about spotty wireless service in the media room. We had been considering getting a wireless booster, but this seems like a better idea for the TV & kids'  gaming systems... we didn't need them sucking up the wireless bandwidth every time they were watching/playing.

Back Door

The back door has arrived, and been installed!

We ran right out and purchased the lock set... which was installed after I took this photo last week.

I'll update with a photo of the lockset once I get photos of the door primed, which the builder advised us to do this ASAP to protect the wood.  

The electrician also spent some time here this week- I still need to get photos of that work too!

Fixing Some Framing

There were a few places that the framers had done their work, but needed some tweaking... minor stuff really.

First there was the Butler's Pantry doorway.  The plans called for the cabinets to be stretched along just the back wall.  But then we decided that the antique cabinetry would fit in the U-shape.  This meant the doorway needed to be centered.

Next there was the coat closet/refrigerator recessed area.  The framers had made the coat closet deeper, and didn't leave space for the refrigerator to be recessed (which would mean it stuck out into the kitchen further than we'd like).

After testing that we'd have enough room to hang coats, they fixed that right up...

The only problem is that now I can't fit my wash baskets through the old basement doorway!  

I can not wait until the laundry room is functioning upstairs!

Arched Window

We were away for a few days, and came back to find they finished up the window installation!

The only problem was that they put it in too low.
When the trim is added around the exterior of the second floor windows, it would look too cluttered.



So, they came back the following day and moved it up.

Here's where we are now...

We're much happier with this placement!