For those of you who have asked about new photos of our house in progress, here are some photos from the past week.  Every single day I thank God - not only for the new house but for the experience of building it.  There have been frustrations, but, for the most part, it has been an enjoyable process.  RT is THE hardest working person I have ever known.  There isn’t another MAJOR thing to be done - other than paving the driveway all the way to the road.  That will be done after we move in.  There is still at least 2-3 weeks left of painting.  And there is still another couple days left with the landscaping.  Then the plumbing has to be finished, the carpet and tile done.  The wood floors have to be sanded and two coats of finish done.  Then all the light fixtures and appliances have to be installed.  We figure probably the first of September will be the move-in date.  Maybe.  Everything takes longer than we anticipated.

The house is progressing nicely, though, and this past week saw some major work - and also a couple of touching (to me) moments.  Here are the pics:

(1) The paving crew put up the forms for the sidewalks and driveway.

(2) Our landscaper (who happens to be our son) sketched out his plan for the landscaping.  This is one of the touching photographs - because it is our son.  He owns his own landscaping company and is doing so well with it.  This past week he had ten of his employees here working on our yard.  I loved watching him design our landscaping and then implement that design.

(3) Here’s the same general area as the above photos - just three days later.  There is a crepe myrtle, a white dogwood, a tall holly and lot of lilies and daisies.  All the colors and shades of green are perfect.   The sod will be installed later.

(4) Here’s the back yard and porch.  Since it is shaded most of the day, there are azaleas in the foreground along the sidewalk, more lilies - and a green Japanese dwarf maple.  He didn’t plant a red Japanese maple because he felt it would be lost against the red brick.  Smart landscaper!

(5) One of the workers called RT to look at a place near the barn where a volunteer tomato plant was growing.  The plant was large with several blooms already on it.  No telling where it came from.  Maybe from a tomato from a sandwich that someone threw out long ago?  The worker put rocks around the plant to protect it.

(6)  This was the paving crew in the middle of paving the driveway.  Truck after truck of cement came up the long driveway and delivered its load of cement and the guys worked so hard spreading it, making sure the grade was right so water would drain correctly off the cement, and then smoothing it out.  It was fascinating to watch.  We only paved to about where the truck is parked in the picture.  The driveway is about 1/3 mile long.  So we will probably blacktop the rest of it - after the house is built.

(7) Here are our kitchen cabinets - not finished yet.  They’re waiting for some of the materials to come in.  The wood is cherry - like the floors, but darker.

(8)  This is the fireplace that RT built in the great room.  Since this picture was taken the other day, the painters have put the primer coat on the walls.  So it already looks different than this picture.

(9) This next photo is looking from the backyard towards the barn.  Our landscaper is standing in the background, watering a tree.  You have to look VERY closely to see him.  The little tree in the right foreground is a pink dogwood, and the bushes planted at the end of the parking area are forsythia - one of my favorite flowers!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 8:54 am and is filed under New House, Photography, That's My Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.