Now some outside progress

It's been a month since my last post. Time flies when you're having fun nailing boards to the wall. But first, we made some visible progress on the exterior this week. We hired a mason to put up the stone on the front walls:



We picked a locally quarried limestone (if you consider Fon du Lac local to Waukesha) called the Fon du Lac Kensington Blend thin stone veneer from Buechel Stone in Fon du Lac, Wisconsin. We thought it would go well with both the siding and shakes:


I think the house looks a little less green now because of the gray in the stones. Okay, maybe not. Regardless, we love the look. We also had our driveway, front walk, and patio poured. The contractor started with the patio on Tuesday:


Megan finally gets the curves that she wanted. It rained yesterday, and we had a bit of a scare from the inspector. I thought we would have to move the driveway after the forms were set... But it turns out that we just have to relocate a tree instead. So they were able to pour the driveway today:



Although stamped concrete would have looked better, we didn't want the up-charge. So we had them finish it with a "swirled" texture:



Not as good as a stamped look, but we like it. And it was a lot cheaper.

On the inside, I've been making slow progress on the finish carpentry. I pretty much finished the first floor window and door casings and should finish the baseboards tomorrow. Here's a picture of the dining room, with trim and light fixtures:



The front door stained and mostly trimmed out:



And the fireplace with columns in the family room:



This weekend, I'll move upstairs and start on the trim on the second floor. Hopefully, it will go much faster than the trim on the first floor.

We plan to move in on June 27th (3 days ahead of our original schedule). There's quite a bit of work left to be done, and most of it has to be done by us. I have to finish installing trim, so we can varnish the baseboards before carpet goes in and the floors get their final coats of finish. We have to caulk the windows, doors, and siding. The electrician needs to install a few more fixtures. We need to fix the "remodeling" done by the plumber to finish installing fixtures. And we need to cover all of the exposed foundation insulation with stucco.

Other stuff can wait until we move in. I'll try to post again before we move in, but don't be surprised if the next post has our furniture and Zeke's toys scattered around (after we move in).