The past couple of weeks have been insanely busy, there has barely been time to catch my breath.  The good news is that we are on schedule and we've gotten approval for the mortgage from the underwriter... pretty much.  Still some paperwork to round up for them, each request gets more ridiculous than the last.  Just need to promise them our first born son and sign our souls away to the devil and we should be in the clear.  

There's only one way to survive the final week of construction on a new house:
Chocolate Chip Cake and Ice Cream!

We finally got to pull up the dirty construction paper and see how our oak floor survived painting.  Thankfully there weren't too many hidden surprises.

The exterior painting is all done.  I took this after a day spent staining all of the wood on the front of the house.  Would have liked to get some pictures of that process but everyone's hands were too dirty to handle the camera.

I believe this is after one coat of finish on the floor.  You'll have to wait until the final walkthrough to see it in it's entirety ;)

Another one that I wish we had taken more pictures of - insulation installation in the crawl space.  It was pretty easy to do but really hot since we were insulating the radiant heat pipes.

Clean clean clean, those were the words of the day for Limei ;)

It was absolutely gorgeous this past weekend, I wish I had worn shorts.

Believe it or not this is my wife mere moments later.  She was not excited to be cleaning that day...

I think she had something more like this on her mind :)

And finally the shower door was installed yesterday, it really tied our bathroom together.  Coming up next - a video walkthrough!

Almost there...

Warm weather finally came, it's time for some paint!

First pic of the back of the house in awhile.
Lots of big windows to let in light and enjoy the view ;)

I was surprised to see the painters working this afternoon, the wind was gusting so bad that
it was blowing the plastic off of the house.  Apparently it came up out of nowhere and they had just finished up.  There's still a little trim to paint, and I'll be staining the wood this weekend.

Meanwhile inside the cabinets and countertops are mostly in.  The backsplashes for all of the counters were the wrong size :P

Limei checking things out.  She's really happy with the way things are turning out....

...as illustrated here :)

Trim in our master bedroom.

Trim in our master bedroom.

A long piece of trim is tacked to the top of the doors so that they will hold each other up,
leaving easy access for staining and finishing.

Sanding between coats of finish.

We had to lay all of the doors down for the final coat of finish,
it was the only way we could get it to spray on smoothly without running.

After a long day of wrestling with the paint sprayer on Saturday.  For obvious reasons it's not a good idea to take pictures while actually painting.  Got it all done though ;)

And the cabinets are going in next, along with electrical and plumbing.