Welcome Home Day

I got a call from Kirk, our construction foreman, today announcing that today is Welcome Home Day. He had just gotten word that our building inspection was complete and approved! He confessed that he'd spent the night tossing and turning and worrying about this inspection even though he is normally a rather calm, cool and collected person. I was touched that he cared so much about us...Then when I arrived at the house, he'd gotten these flowers for us and they were signed by the 4 guys who did most of the work on the house. How sweet is that?! So tomorrow they finish up some carpentry work they have left, Thursday the cleaning crew goes through and takes care of the layer of dust covering everything and Friday we MOVE IN! But I know here's what you really want - the grand tour! I'll give you some of the highlights.

This is one of the tubs upstairs. The original tubs had been special ordered b/c of their unique size which was dictated by the design of the bathrooms. In order to avoid another special order issue, we had the original tubs refinished and they turned out beautiful!



Here's John Michael and Davey running down the hallway. You can see the carpeting on the steps to the upstairs which is the same as the carpeting on the basement steps. Also notice the hardwood floors have been completely refinished. I can't believe how beautiful they are!

And my greatest joy and delight - the KITCHEN! This is a view from the dining room of most of the kitchen. We replaced every single appliance except for the fridge. The cooktop is my favorite - a DACOR 5 burner cooktop which required that massive micro-hood over it. .

The oven is a self-cleaning, double convection oven- woohoo!!! The 10 foot stainless steel prep table goes right done the middle and the shelves next to the oven are for organizing our homeschool materials.

Here's the long view from the front door into the dining room. You can see how much more spacious the whole downstairs seems with the addition (and the hardwood floors - you can't even tell the transition to the laminate in the back of the dining room in this picture)
Here's the reverse view looking into the living room and front door from the new french doors in the dining room addition.

The girls and the toddlers were sooo excited to be allowed in the house and to run wherever they wanted. Up until now, they usually had to stay outside for safety sake or make little trips in with lots of rules about touching stuff. Here's Davey on the landing going down to the basement.


Here they are enjoying their stage which they've missed very much and was finally about 3/4 free of the smoked wood which landed there about 8 months ago. And here they all are just making faces in front of the fireplace. I have tons of pictures like this because they were so excited they just ran from place to place dancing, making faces, playing hide and seek and demanding that I take their pictures!