Bamboo and baseboards and banisters...(oh, my!)

My sewing studio floor is finally in! DH and I were out at the house last Friday to OK the wood stains with the painter, and the floor installer had just put the first row of bamboo in the sewing studio, so all weekend I've been anxious to see it finished (this is the closet floor). I love it!
The tile installer has been working on the floor in our master bathroom. He is doing the Versailles pattern, which at first glance looks fairly random.

It looks like the carpenters have been cutting all the baseboards to size, but they haven't started installing them yet. They had hung a few more of the doors since we were there on Friday.

I'm assuming these orange marks indicate where the stair banister will be. It seemed obvious to me where it should go, but better too much communication than not enough, I guess.

Packing up of this house continues...

Inching along...

Boy, things sure seem to be going slowly now -- maybe it's because we have a deadline for getting out of our current house and into this one and things just SEEM to be going slowly.
The roof area over the front door is finished. This is the area that was still leaking and hopefully having the siding and roof done in this area will eliminate the leaks. The basement seemed to have some very wet areas also and we hope they won't be a problem.
The vent has been put up in the peak of the roof...
We had a call from the KD's tile guy who will be installing the stone/tile in our master bathroom and he wanted us to stop by the house and look at the travertine and other stones that he is thinking about using on the bathroom floor, shower and wall trim. This is the latte travertine that we think we want on the floor. The orange veins look great with the stain on the maple cabinets and hopefully will also look good with the granite on the counters. (I'm not sure how accurate the colors are in the photos we took of the granite, so it's a bit hard to tell what might look good with it.)
He also thought this macchiato stone would look nice with the color of the walls. I'm not convinced that I like this stone. I like it OK in the small pieces, but I don't like the chair rail at all and I'm not certain about the larger sample piece. He's going to go ahead and get started with the latte travertine on the floor and then we'll figure out what we want in the shower and for wall trim.
We really liked the center stone below. I don't know what kind it is. The stone on the left would look good as a coordinating stone once it is sealed. Unsealed, it is a bit too white.
I've started packing up things in this house so we'll be ready to move in 6 weeks - it doesn't seem possible that it is coming up that soon! The movers dropped off 25 small boxes and 45 larger boxes. I used up about 7 of them just emptying the dining room china closet (with a few towels from the linen closet mixed in as padding)! Anyone have any boxes lying around that they don't need?

We LOVE the floors!

The tile floors are done and most of the Brazilian Teak was down, except for DH's office and some closet space in the great room. The floors are gorgeous! They still need to be sanded and sealed and then they will really be awesome! This is the family room, taken from the kitchen...
Here is the flooring next to the family room fireplace - I love the way they look together! The builder is running dehumidifiers in the areas where the wood floors are - that's the white machine in this photo...
Here is the family room, taken from the great room. The great room floors are also Brazilian teak, although the direction that the wood is laid changes between the 2 rooms.
This photo shows where the entry tile meets the great room teak. They are doing a nice job with the seams where the different materials meet...
Here is another seam - this one is between the tile in the hall near the stairs and the family room near the fireplace. The tiles have a lot of grout residue on them so the true color isn't really showing in the photos...
I walked around outside and down to the ponds. A flock of geese flew over...
We have yellow iris growing near the larger pond. There were 4 or 5 clumps of them...
I haven't posted photos of every side of the house in a while, so here they are...
The front...

The patio side, taken from the end of the garage...
The patio side...
The back of the house...
The office and guest room end of the house...
It was a gorgeous day out at the house today and it was fun to think that we might be living out there about 8 weeks from now! It's starting to seem like a real possibility now that the floors are in and the kitchen will be going in next week. I'm dying to see the kitchen go in - I'll be really antsy the next couple of days until we can get out there and see what it looks like!

Who likes a bright kitchen?

So, in case you haven't figured it out yet from other kitchen photos, maybe this one will help you to realize just how much I like a bright kitchen... ;-D

The drywall people were there today, finishing the ceilings. This is the office ceiling - it looks so much better without the drywall and tape and mud showing! I'm a bit worried about the paint in this room and the music room. I thought that the last time we were out there the paint on those walls was the actual paint color, not just the primer. It turns out it was just the tinted primer. The real paint color seems very dark and I'm not sure I'm crazy about the color (the very top of the wall in this photo is the real paint color, the lower part of the wall is still the tinted primer).
The drywall (or fireproof board of some kind?) is getting put up around the fireplace.
The underlayment has been put in the rooms that will be tiled. This is the guest bathroom...
DD's room is painted with the tinted primer only so far. The window seat will have a stained board on top and I will eventually make a cushion for it.
It looked like the brick was finished on the back of the house, but I forgot to take my boots with me, so no photos of the outside today. I think the bricklayers are working on the windowsills now.

So, the builder's assistant has been searching for our LG refrigerator and is not having any luck. It seems that there is a new model out now and no one (at least locally) has the old model in stock. The biggest problem with getting the new model is that they changed the door handle style and the old model had handles that matched very well with all the JennAir appliances that we are putting in the kitchen. The inside of the refrigerator had minor changes also which I didn't care for as well. The 2 large bins are now 2 medium bins with a small can-size bin in-between and the large drawer under the bins where large trays can be stored opens differently and I don't like it, either. My guess is that we will try to find the old model online, but I wonder whether that makes repairs difficult if you buy it online.