The outside done.

I realized today that we have not posted a shot of the outside of our house now that it is done and has the landscaping. Everything up front is drought resistant and most are native to our area. We like all the flowers and the kids like climbing on all the big rocks!

A testament to building green... we have lived here almost 4 months now and have not had a combined set of utility bills (gas and electric) over $110. That is what I like to call NICE!

Housewarming Party!

So we had a real fun housewarming party last Friday and we would like to thank everyone that came by. We fully intended to take more photos of everyone that came but the margaritas were flowing and the camera did not come out much. This is Teagan in the clothes off (for 1 year olds) portion of the party.
The HM crew taking full advantage of the nook.

John and the Baum girls getting a snack...they needed it since we were up late finishing the margaritas.

Thanks again to everyone for coming by!

Photo Shoot!

Happy 4th of July to everyone!

This week our house was used as a location for a photo shoot touting energy efficiency for customers of electric co-ops around the country. It came together very quickly. Our architect, Jeff Day, recommended our house to a location scout, who showed photos of our house to the client, who decided to use our place for the shoot. Potentially 4 different scenes may be used in ads. Below are a few pictures showing what they were doing and how they took over the house.

It was pretty neat to see how it all came together. All together there were about 15 people involved with the shoot at the house most of the day. They were all very nice and they really liked the house. We were glad to show it off!

USGBC House Tour

Long time no post...

Things have been busy around the Pocius house and we are enjoying our new home to the fullest.

Today is an exciting day because our home is part of the US Green Building Council tour of homes. About 50 people are scheduled to arrive this afternoon to walk through our soon to be LEED Silver home. I hope to post about how it went tomorrow...along with some pictures if time allows.

We would like to thank in advance Go Green Clean (www.gogreen-clean.com) for doing a wonderful job cleaning our house yesterday. It is looking the best it ever has and not a day too soon!

1st Floor Pictures

Heading downstairs to the first floor.... this really shows how beautiful our stairs, banister, and newel posts are.

The locker in the mudroom.... Love it!!!!! Thanks Sergei!!!!!

A shot of the study (this will eventually be a spare bedroom, if we ever get around to purchasing a murphy bed...)

A shot of the stair case - this is what you see when you walk in the front door.

And this is where I'm sitting right now... watching a tivo'd Southland and blogging! Hooray for wifi!

This is a shot of the front door, taken by the base of the stairs.

Here's a shot of the dining room. I tried to get the built-ins in the shot, so it is kind of far away. We've already had some great pizza in this room!

Now, the kitchen. Please pardon the dishwasher with little handprints all over it! I should've cleaned it before the pictures. But we love the kitchen, it is really set up nicely for prep work and cooking. We've made some really great meals so far - crab legs, spaghetti and meatballs, stuffed peppers... yum. The cooktop is induction - kind of crazy to hear the magnets "whirring" when it first starts up. But there's no flame and no big orange ring - it actually keeps the cooking area cooler. The only heat is from the pan.

We also love our big giant farmhouse sink. It is surprisingly easy to keep the cast-iron clean and the size is great. I also love, love, love our chalkboard. And our lights. Oh, really I love the whole thing.

Here's a good shot of the nook with the table. The kids love hanging out here.

We'll post pictures of the basement, yardwork, pimp shower and master bedroom tomorrow... I'm tired!! Thanks everyone for your patience. And thanks to Jason Stone and Sage Homebuilders for building our dream home. This house is truly amazing and we are so happy. It was all worth it!!!

We're Home! And (mostly) Settled!

It's been 16 glorious days and we are so happy to say... We're home!!!!!

We're exhausted, sore, and loving every minute of it. We moved in on 5/1 and we've had very few glitches since. There's nothing that we've said we wished we did different, and we really can't believe how quickly this house felt like home to us. There's only one thing left for "others" to do - and that's yardwork, which will hopefully happen tomorrow. Otherwise, we're just working on the basement and a few boxes here and there.

Enough already... you are here for pictures, right? :)

Outside - the garage (first night with both cars in is tonight! Hooray!) and the gorgeous front door with the wheat glass.

Detail on the front columns. Our painters suggested two-tone and we love the way it turned out. They color-matched our exterior window trim with the door and columns.

Here's John's bedroom - can you guess the theme? Thank you, Fatheads!

Teagan's room is a little more understated. We still have some decorating to do in here.

1st Floor will be on the next post...

Moving Along!

So things are flying along at the house. This picture above is to prove that not all the work has been done by our dedicated subs. Amanda and I were at the house Sunday putting together some closets. This is in Teagan's room. Special thanks to the Belgeri's for watching the kids and the Baum's for recharging us with refreshments.
Today the plumbers put in their final fixtures, the kitchen faucet and garbage disposal. They also had their final inspection and passed.
Sergei, the finish carpenter, was in the garage putting together our bench and lockers for the mudroom. This is the base of the lockers. Above will have an area for hooks and some storage.

The big ka-pow today was the glass tile back splash. It looks amazing. It does a great job pulling the countertops and moss cabinets together. It should only need grout tomorrow and the kitchen will be nearly complete.

Painting was nearly finished inside when we were there at lunch. It looked like the inside should be done except some touch ups. Rain is predicted most of the week so I am not sure when the exterior will be painted. The electricians were putting the finishing touches on their work too. They need to hook up the appliances in the kitchen and get their inspection tomorrow or Wednesday. Our site superintendent Jim is working his tail off getting everything in place for the tradesmen and doing things around the house like hang towel bars and re-assemble vanity doors. It is a lot of work but it seems like it is all coming together quite nicely!

Other updates from Friday

The driveway was finished today.
So was the walkway and sidewalk. The rounded walkway was a nice surprise for us. We were not sure how that was going to turn out and we are really happy with it.

The guest shower in the basement is nearly complete. When we have guests it will be nice for them to have their own quarters in the basement. They will just have to get around without stepping on the large number of toys that are going to be down there!

The study, living and dining rooms were painted. The red you see is the study and we absolutely love it. The living room color is hard to see but it is a light grey/tan. The colors all work so well together. We could not be happier with them. The interior is supposed to be all painted by Monday. They had to wait for the carpet to be done before starting on the stair area.

Amanda and I are planning on going to the house Sunday to start putting together some closets and determine where mirrors and stuff are going to go. Our good friends the Belgeri family are helping us out by watching the kiddos for a while so we can be as productive as possible!

Carpet and Counter Tops!

Big day at the house on Friday. Amanda and I went two separate times to check out the progress. Amanda was there when they were installing the Cambria Quartz counter tops. They look better than we could imagine.
This is the island where our cook top is going to be. This color does not show very well in the picture but is a grey/green color. The green goes great with the moss color cabinets and will tie in perfectly with the tile back splash going in today.

Around the outside of the kitchen is a speckled gray color counter. It pulls the grey from the island counter. Again it looks better in person. They guys installing asked Amanda how much we liked the sink you can see on the left. That is because it is huge and weighs about 120 pounds! We do not plan to remodel this anytime soon.

Then upstairs and in the basement the carpet was installed. We purchased a "green" carpet from Shaw. Here is a link outlining their commitment to environmental sustainability, http://www.shawfloors.com/Cms/Home.aspx?DN=304350a3-77f6-4118-96db-775897b579cc. Our carpet was made using recycled materials. It looks great. This is from our bedroom.

This is in John's room. We picked this carpet so long ago we were not sure how it was going to look in place. We really like it.

Plumbing Fixtures Installed

The plumbing fixtures were delivered Monday and they did not waste any time getting things put in place. This is a shot of the powder room on the first floor. We used all low flow plumbing fixtures. The Kohler toilet uses only 1.28 gallons per flush, http://www.us.kohler.com/pr/pressrelease.jsp?aid=1176777713648&prdaterange=&prsubject=&prcategory=. The faucets by Delta (http://www.deltafaucet.com/smarttechnology/watersense.html?filter=all) are also water sense rated.
This is the water heater for the house. It is made by Rinnai (http://www.rinnai.us/tankless-water-heaters/r94lsi/ ) and instantly heats up hot water when needed. This is more efficient since a heating element does not need to keep a bunch of water hot all the time.

The master shower has it's final touches put in. This is Amanda's side with an adjustable hand held sprayer with two body jets.

This is my side, one fixed shower head (mounted high to accommodate my stature) and three body sprays. You can see the water running down the tile...I could not help myself and needed to try it out.

I will have a lot more pictures tomorrow. The counter tops and carpet are installed. The concrete walkways will be done and maybe a little more finish work inside. The first floor should have most of the painting done too!

The Driveway!

I probably should not be so excited about a non-porous surface but I am. We have looked at dirt for so long it is refreshing to see the driveway poured today. We flirted with doing a grass driveway early in the project to be more green but that was one of the first budget cuts.
This is a shot from the back of the garage showing the 6' extension we need to pull in and out of the garage.

The view from the front yard looking back. Each side of the driveway has a gravel drainage area for rain runoff.

This was taken from the breakfast nook. I can see us keeping an eye on the kids playing from this spot quite a bit in the future.