5 weeks and counting

Less than 5 weeks til we close! AWESOME! also...TERRIFYING! Lots of decisions still to be made. What faucets for the kitchen? What sink? What granite slab? What light fixture for the hallway? What paint colors for the inside? Nellie and I have both been stressing a bit about all this stuff. I've seriously been having panicked dreams about bathroom fixtures which is disturbing on lots of levels. I don't mean to be complain-y or ungrateful. We're very fortunate that these are the problems we have, if you can call them problems.

We took some time off work on Friday to go to a show room in Raleigh to try and finalize our plumbing fixtures. Unfortunately, we met with the worst sales person ever. She simply didn't seem to understand that we have a fixed budget and basically tried to make us feel ashamed that we weren't picking out the most expensive fixtures possible. The faucets that we had already decided on for the bathroom vanities she said were "very common" and weren't original enough to feature in the showroom. I'm fairly certain Nellie and I have decent taste, but she clearly enjoyed poo-pooing the fixtures we'd chosen as "builder grade", while at the same time displaying the (ahem) unique vanity fixture you see above. She also flat out refused to give us the model numbers of fixtures we were interested in, saying that it was a long complicated process to pull the numbers, and since she didn't know our plumber personally, we would need to put her in touch first. I understand working on commission and not wanting to put in work for something that you may or may not ultimately make bank on, but it's called customer service, lady, and frankly Home Depot has treated us a lot better! We will now take our meager dollars elsewhere. If we weren't so busy with everything, I would probably write a letter or two but whatever. MOVING ON!

At the house itself things are chugging along. Here you can see the HVAC return that will be situated under the linen closet. This seemed be the best location after a fair amount of debate on where it should go. Also, most of the wiring is back up. Hopefully the robber doesn't subscribe to the blog!

The giant stump has finally been ground down in the back yard. In its place, there is now a huge pile of mulch that we can hopefully use towards some landscaping.

The painting crew has obviously been busy with their scrapers. The horrible yellow is slowly starting to fade away. We can't wait to see the new paint job in a few weeks.

Scraping up close and personal.