Happy New Year! We moved all of our stuff from the studio into the house over a year ago (in the fall of 2017), so it’s probably about time I share the rest of the house building photos, and final results! It’s been a while since we’ve done all of this now, so it’s kind of fun to look back at where we came from.
After painting & tiling the floors and bathrooms, we put in the rest of the flooring throughout the house. But meanwhile, our custom cabinets were being built over at the Crockett’s Cabinetry shop! Having cabinets built custom was one of the best decisions and splurges that we made. The shop was only 10 minutes away, so we were able to visit and check on their progress which was super cool (I won’t lie…I felt a little like we were Chip & Joanna Gaines for this part of the process)!
We originally had an eco-friendly bamboo flooring picked out from Lumber Liquidators. Unfortunately in my haste to get things done, I hadn’t done my research well enough, and we realized right before we started installing that 1) the flooring we purchased got pretty crummy reviews (outside of the Lumber Liquidators website of course…L.L. only posts favorable reviews, so be careful of that when you’re researching products online), and 2) natural bamboo floors expand and contract a lot, so you have to be really careful when installing them directly over a slab foundation like ours. So to be safe we returned the bamboo and opted instead for a laminate wood floor.
First vapor barrier, then cork underlayment, and finally the floor could be put down. It took us 2 days. The prep and great room took a day, and the second day we did all of the bedrooms!
Before our stove hearth was installed Jason put down concrete board cut just slightly smaller than the hearth stone. This way the flooring could be run underneath the lip of the stone and still have room to float (you don’t want anything this heavy installed over a floating floor otherwise it won’t be able to expand and contract the way it naturally should).
While the cabinetry was being installed, Jason worked on installing all of the house trim. Baseboard trim seemed to be the easiest. Window and door trim seemed to take forever! It’s a lot of precision work, and kind of tedious, so good thing Jason is a perfectionist! After he installed it we had to fill the nail holes, sand them smooth, and touch them up. This took me WEEKS! No joke. Next house the trim will NOT be painted white. As much as we love the final look, it took way too much time.
Our cabinet maker, David, and his crew, were meanwhile fitting the cabinets to the walls, making sure everything was perfect.
It took a few weeks for all of the cabinets to be installed, but we had a LOT of cabinets built. We had upper cabinets installed in both bathrooms for extra storage. We included hamper and trash can pull-outs in the bathrooms also.
After cabinets it was just finishing touches – granite countertops, sinks, faucets, lighting, etc. I didn’t take photos of the installation process for most of these, but you’ll see our choices in the final photos coming soon!
The Pfeifer Family 