Ta Da! The siding is now all up on the whole house. Most of the gutters (if not all) are up as well. We had a glitch with the gutters because the original color we picked didn’t match as well as we had hoped (according to the builder and gutter people) so we had to pick a different color. There is a slight bit of aluminum trim on top of the trim over the windows (which is difficult to see in the pictures) that was a very close match, so we went with that color. It isn’t an exact color match, and I had to decide how much that really bothered me, and I decided it would bother me (and probably the builder) more to change all the gutters than to live with the chosen color. It is a good match and will probably look just fine when the whole thing is done. It’s kind of a shame that we chose the trim color to go with the gutter color and then not have them match anyway, but such are the trials of building a house and “getting” to make all of those decisions.
In other news, the basement concrete was poured. The tubing for the radiant heated floors is under the concrete and there will be a thermostat to adjust the temperature of the floor. This picture (to the right) shows the basement, looking from the north to the south. The window on the right edge of the picture is part of the large window that will look out to the backyard. The two windows on the far side of the basement look out to window wells. The one partially shown on the left will be in the guest room and the one in the center will be in the craft/exercise/whatever-we-use-it-for room.
There is more progress on the inside of the house. For instance, you can now only enter through the actual doorway from the garage to the house. (You used to be able to enter between any of the studs between the garage and the house.) Almost all of the insulation has been installed and all of the electrical, telephone, television, and internet cable has been run. We are now able to get a better idea of the actual dimensions of all the rooms because very few of the walls are see-through now. We were lucky to get the doors, insulation, and trim installed before we got a big snow, so the workers can work in relative comfort and don’t have to dig their way in!
