Well, here we are after Christmas. You’re probably not surprised, but I’m grumpy. We desperately wanted to be in our new home for Christmas, but it just wasn’t in the cards. Our list to receive our certificate of occupancy is dwindling, but there is still more to do.

Despite my grumpiness, Kelsey continues to be our guiding light, steady hand, and positive attitude we need to complete our home. In my defense, he gets grumpy sometimes too - just not at the same level as me. :-)

We had a quiet “four family” Thanksgiving - still complete with a huge feast and our favorite tradition of doing an outside adventure. Not surprising, we also worked for a few hours at the house in the morning. The boys even did a parade for us!

Three cheers for outside time on Thanksgiving!

The day after Thanksgiving, we had a big project that we’ve all been waiting for...working toilets! Three cheers for never having to tromp out to the porta potty in the cold and snow again!

Don’t worry…he wasn’t actually pooping in this pic. ha!!!

The next fun project was to complete our railing in the loft. After months of having it open to the living room below, I was certainly happy to have a bit more safety for the boys. We used black pipe and some leftover chunks of our glulam beams. The mill scale on the black pipe was a real pain to remove, but after a couple of days of applying epoxy remover and then scraping the gunk off, we had a nice smooth surface that was ready for matte black spray paint. The railing turned out beautifully and I love how Kelsey had the vision to use ordinary materials and turn it into the modern and clean railing we were looking for. The entire railing cost less than $200. Beauty and budget together!

Removing the gunky mill scale from the black pipe.

Glulam beams ready for sanding and urethane.

The finished product! The pipe is even removable for when we need to haul big items up to the loft.

We kept going on some more electrical and plumbing projects including installing more light fixtures and the plumbing in the two bathrooms - including our awesome new vanities!

Master bath vanity. I love the gray oak against our blue wall!

Final plumbing for the boys’ vanity. And, we also got a third lightbulb for their light fixture :-)

After a ridiculous wait, the first batch of our cabinets arrived on December 9. After a simple and easy design process with Lily Ann Cabinets, we ordered everything on October 7 under the impression that the cabinets would take 2-4 weeks to arrive. Well, 9 weeks instead. Ugh. The really disappointing part is that the four cabinets that weren’t in the first order included our sink base and corner cupboard. So, despite quickly assembling everything we had on hand, we couldn’t start to install anything untilt the missing cabinets arrived. To make matters worse, here it is December 29 and the last four cabinets STILL AREN’T HERE. Grr.

935722BA-FFD2-44F9-BD78-035311A76256 2.JPG — Ready to assemble! We’ve been very pleased with the quality of the cabinets, even if they took forever to arrive.

A kitchen sink is required for a CO, so we’re happy to report that we found out this morning that the final four cabinets will be delivered tomorrow! What a relief! We’ll hustle and get them assembled and installed so our countertops can be ordered.

And, you better believe that we’ll be requesting a discount.

On a happier note, Mom and Dad arrived for the winter season on December 6. They came a bit earlier than normal to help out with remote learning and to lend a hand at the house. We’re so happy to have them both back in town!

We had one final window to install up in the loft for an egress window in that space, so naturally we did it on a 20 degree day when it was snowing! But, after installing 42 other windows, this seemed easy and straightforward. Window number 43 is a nice continuation of the view out the angled windows in the loft.

Our soon-to-be-neighbor, Jake got a few photos of our house from his drone. We’ve never seen the house from this view before, so it was so nice of him to share them with us! Thanks Jake! We’re excited for you, Annie and your girls to live next door.

On December 15 another big leap of a project was accomplished with the start up of our boiler, which meant our in-floor heat is now on and we have hot water! Woo hoo!!

We also have done a lot of fun visible projects like installing the hardware on our front door, assembling and installing our mudroom lockers, doing lots of trim, and installing closet organizers.

IMG_7512 2.JPG — Each family member gets their own locker! Yay for organization!

Last week, Kelsey got started on installing the vapor barrier in our crawl space. We used a nice thick plastic that will help decrease our humidity in the crawl space tremendously. Once the barrier was rolled out, I helped by taping all of the seams and taping each border to the stem wall in the crawl space. The final few posts got wrapped today, so we can officially cross that off the list!

Building tape like this loves to be rolled for even adhesion.

Then, poof..Christmas Eve was here! We enjoyed a fun family ski afternoon at Copper Mountain. Then, time for one of our favorite family traditions, fondue!

The boys opened their traditional jammies and Christmas book from us, then off to sleep before Santa came. They are at such a magical age, it helped soften my grumpiness.

We awoke to fun gifts, new things for the house - even spices to stock our pantry, and beautiful sunshine to make our snow all glittery.

On the afternoon of Christmas, we wandered around on the ice of Lake Dillon and played at the Frisco Marina Park. After dinner, we took dessert over to the new house and we all opened one more present. The boys got some new bins for their closet from Grandma and Grandpa, complete with their initials on the front!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

We were treated to a warm day to do some caulking and other CO checklist items outside the day after Christmas, then the most beautiful fire sky sunset over Buffalo Mountain.

We’re also in the process of converting our construction loan to a mortgage, so lots of paper work flying around here!

What’s on the final list to receive our certificate of occupancy?

Install and plumb our exterior hose bibbs
Finish some energy documentation to give to the building department during our final inspection
Install the kitchen sink and countertop (only the sink is required for CO, but we obviously want a working kitchen before we move in)
Build steps by our mudroom door and extend the steps for a bigger landing by the main door

See, we really are getting close!

January is definitely our month, people! Thank you for your continued support as we inch closer to the finish line.

I won’t be grumpy forever,

Cory

Here are some more photos of life and this phase of construction.