Month after moving in and what it is really all about!

We moved into our beautiful new home on Saturday April 2nd last month. Approximately one month ago and now we are just living in the home which we help build from the ground up. So far our reflections are nothing but positive. We absolutely LOVE our new home. There isn’t much of anything that we would do differently if we could do it all over again. Adair has thought through it pretty well and the design and architecture of our home is wonderful. Simply put if you are a fence rider and thinking about going with Adair or possibly battling the thoughts of Adair or one of its competitors I would say this: GO WITH ADAIR! I built with my best friend Luke Frechette and our other two neighbors across the street and we all agree. Though there are some things we may have done differently along the way there is one thing we all think and that is that Adair is a great way to go. They communicate wonderfully, build an exceptional home, and take care of any questions, concerns, or problems in an extremely timely manner all within the confines of a product that is supremely cost effective! GO WITH ADAIR! Following are our final pics I just took with no dressing up or cleaning up. Also, I will write one more final post after ALL the Adair financing goes through which should all be summed up by this time next week. Thanks and God Bless!

Remember this….make sure you have lighting in the living room…we noticed we didn’t so we had Adair add two spots for track lighting strategically and a place in the middle for a ceiling fan. DO IT!!!!

I built this fireplace mantel and installed the fireplace the only thing still to do is lay tile above and around the fireplace.

I built shelves all around the garage for storage…about $100 and I have tons of space for stuff! Extremely easy!

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Cabinets, Counter Tops, and we laid our hardwood!!!

Wow- what an eventful couple of days. On Friday we had the go ahead to start on our hardwood floors. We got started saturday and it took all of saturday and sunday to get 90% of the way done. The only reason we didn’t finish was because the amount of wood we initially purchased over 2 months ago was not enough…uuugghhh. So we had to run up to Portland and get 3 more boxes (74 sq ft) and run back and install it today! What a couple days. Another thing that has happened is the cabinets are up and the counter tops were installed today! Awesome! We are so close to moving in. We are excited. One thing we are wondering about is what we are going to do with our mortgage. Adair has their financial group that puts together a package for you but there are a couple things we have raised questions about and will have to do more research for. One is this appraisal fee…we were charged this in the initial building loan stage and still had to pay the appraiser and now they want us to pay it again. It is a $600 charge. Does it really cost $600 to line up an independent appraiser? Simply no way. Also, the origination charge that Adair wants is a bit above 2%. Typically this charge is only 1%. We think we are going to do some shopping before we go with Adair Financial. They claim they can beat anyone but we don’t want to spend an extra $5,000 if we don’t have to. Other than those thoughts Here are some pictures.

Finish Package has arrived and Tile and Slate is down!

Well, the finish package for both the Frechettes and the Townsends arrived last thursday and we already have the cabinets, window trim, some doors, and other finish components on the house. We had Adair reluctantly give us a credit for labor and hopefully materials for the vinyl we were going to put down in our two upstairs bathrooms and we laid down some beautiful tile and slate in the entryway. It has been a wild, crazy and hectic coupe of months but we have a date for our open house which is set for Saturday April 2nd. That means we are in in less that a month! YEAH! Anyhow…we are looking forward to seeing what the amount of this credit for the flooring should be and how the Adair people are going to treat us finishing out the process. Thus far, they have been fair, reliable, assertive, overly punctual and extremely helpful. We were going to try and do a gas water heater last minute and it was going to be a big hassle for everyone that we work with at Adair so we decided to pull back on that request but we may do it in the future but for now we are happy! Here are some pictures of whats going down! The only other thing to do is finish my floor by laying the hard wood friday and saturday! Yeah!

Jeremiah unloading the truck...these guys sure work hard

Gary doin work

Slate entryway with the 2" border! It's nice

The initial look of our white cabinetry! So clean

 

Texture Up, Interior Paint On, Exterior Accent Color check!

Well we got done with our interior painting (for the most part) this week. This weekend I spent one night until 5 AM priming and back rolling the interior. I spent that long getting it done because I knew the following day I would have 5-10 helpers to form the most fierce paint crew anyone has ever seen this side of the Coastal Range! We got the whole interior trimmed and rolled out rather quickly. Now there are some touch ups and other things that will take about 2-3 hours but for the most part we are ready for our finish package! Yeah! We do have to do some deep cleaning and get the garage all cleared out by Tuesday which won’t be that big of a problem. Pretty much we are ready…One thing I am looking forward to is installing our hardwood downstairs. I am also thinking about putting slate in the entry and tile in the upstairs bathrooms! It will take a couple days but in the long run it is well worth it! Altogether we are extremely pleased with the whole process thus far with Adair. Josh, Gary, Jeremiah and all the ladies at Adair financial have been great. Luke and I are really excited about opportunity to have an open house block party and have the house cleaned by Adair. What a way to get in to the new house. Clean and Fresh! Pictures now:

Master Bath

Guest Bedroom

So much to do in so little time!

SO it has been nearly three weeks since I last posted but here it is! In the last three weeks we have put in all our insulation and drywall, textured the walls, and we are about done with the interior painting. It should be about 1 more solid day of painting to get everything finished up. I am pretty excited that we are getting so close. On top of all this we are getting our finish package on Tuesday! We are excited. Katey picked out all the colors for the different rooms and they are wonderful (pictures to come soon!) A couple of things that we did before the drywall was put up was 1. run speaker wire throughout the house for an in-ceiling speaker system in all our downstairs rooms and 2. design and construct a fireplace mantle in the living room in a half a day before insulation and drywall. Pictures are below!

Siding, Roof, Garage Pad, Garage Door, Permanent Electric, Caulking…Check

It has been exactly 2 weeks since I last posted and some really good things have happened since then. There was a bunch of water in the house then the roof and siding were put on and the drying out phase began. I got 4 air movers and 2 dehumidifiers and just began a major drying out phase. In two weeks time I believe we are under the 18% moisture content it takes to start the next phase which is insulation. In the last two weeks after the siding and roofing was put up the plumber and electrician finished their work. Inspectors came and checked off the work. Paul Nowak is Adair’s foundation and garage slab guy. He is amazing. He has like 8 sons and they all work for him. I have watched him and talked to him and his’ sons and I have the utmost respect for him. He is a man that does great work and is respectable and reputable. If you build an Adair house ask your guy to get Paul Nowak for this work! Also our framer Paul did an amazing job as well. On Tuesday, everyone that works for Adair, their families, and their animals were all here to check out the coastal work sites that Adair has (not really…only like 5 or 6 people from Adair). They asked if they could use our house for an open house to show off the awesomeness of it! I said yes cause they mentioned giving it a deep clean before the open house and I was more than willing! I think they are gonna do a big open house Block Party like the 90s movie and have all 4 Adair houses on our cul-de-sac open. That is probably a good idea for them. If you are building or contemplating it ask about this open house block party and come see and talk to us about our experience. On Tuesday Gary will come and give another moisture check and hopefully we can start the insulation, sheet rock, texturing process…it would be nice if this started by the end of the week! I will be on the phone asking asking asking….like the Good Book says,”you have not because you ask not…” On tuesday I asked for a garage door by friday 3-4 times…I wasn’t supposed to get it until tomorrow but who showed up friday? The garage door guy! Yeah! Ask and ye shall receive!

Picutes:

House is Wrapped Up….Wish we had roofing in this storm

Yesterday our siding crew put on Tyvek and put a couple of windows in on the westerly side of the house. The storm that I talked about in the last post has been worse than I expected…it is a crazy, sustained, and victorious storm thumping the Oregon Coast and especially my unroofed house! On Friday the roofers came from Beaverton and were going to put the roofing on but the wind gusts and torrential downpour led them back up the 101 and over Highway 18 back to Beaverton. Thus there is rain pouring into my house and there is a consistent 1-2″ of standing water on our second story sub-floor…is this bad? I am not sure. I have some pictures of this below.

Finishing touches on framing…ready for roofing!

Lately on the coast it has been raining so much that I am starting to believe in the “you are an idiot if you try to build on the coast in the winter months” theory. It rained .65 inches or more the last 4 days and today it is supposed to rain .87 inches, tomorrow an astounding 3.53 inches, Sunday .83 inches according to the Accuweather app on my phone and then begin to clear up until it is fully clear by Tuesay/Wednesday. Whew. The winds are hitting 60 mph gusts and they got so bad that the two roofing crews that were here for Luke’s and my house had to leave and fight another day. Inside the house, the plumbing has begun and will be done today, the windows are sitting in the garage ready to be installed, and like I said the roofing is up and waiting to be put on…did I mention it is wet. Here is a picture of the house most recently.

The front porch covering is on and the windows are being delivered:

The roofing is delivered and all the framing is finished:

Here is a shot of my house and Luke’s right next door…this is what it is like to live on a cul-de-sac! Luke is building a 2160, the first of its kind…the triple gable looks sweet I think! (On another note I will be posting another page on this blog with pictures and small notes about Luke’s build as well)

I had Josh cancel my sink and credit me the cost of that so I could purchase my own. I wanted a single basin sink, instead of a double, that was deep and roomy…I was going to get a black Silgranite one until Katey decided she wanted black granite counter tops so I this one. I do dishes by hand a lot of the time so I wanted one I liked! Katey was okay with that choice! It was cheap via ebay and it looks good. I took this picture with my flash on and it GLOWS! The dimensions are 30″ x 17″ with a 10″ depth….it is HUGE! It is going to look great with black granite:

Second Floor and Roof are on!

Here are some photos of Paul’s Crew up on our new plywood roof. Jeremiah tells us that the shingles should be on by the 14th and the siding, windows, and doors on next week we can start drying out the inside and caulking and possibly painting the exterior if it is clear out. We have been so blessed to have a string of nice days here on the coast. Instead of repetitive storms hitting us we have only had one or two days followed by cold but more importantly clear days. There was a set of four or five days that we had last week! Right at the perfect time no less. Jeremiah has been scheduling our place pretty aggressively and is trying to get us in by the end of March which would be completely possible barring so extreme whether that would set us back. The next things up are roof, windows, doors, siding, gutters, electrical, plumbing, fire-suppression system, dry out, insulation, drywall and texture (we are going with rounded corners instead of the sharp corners you would see normally from Adair. We got this for free. Just ask!) And then Painting, cabinets, flooring, finish work, and when we can the outside paint, and lastly the cement work around the house and the back fill! This will all get done in due time!  Here are some pictures of the roof and second floor!

Walls are going up!

On Tuesday the framing crew began the crazy task of putting walls up on our house on the Oregon Coast in the middle of long, intense, blistering rain storms that came back to back. We are extremely excited and very happy that through this process we are learning real patience. In America, we get everything when we want it how we want it and are understanding with people that get upset when things don’t fit that mold. For Katey and I we are getting the gift of learning patience in this process while at the same time realizing that things are happening FAST! A year ago we would have never thought that walls were going up for a house WE were buying! But Adair has come along and been a conduit to fulfill the desires of our hearts! Wow! The funny thing is we will be in our house before the summer! It blows me away how blessed we are when this is happening! Anyways here is a picture from today!