Walking photo tour, house near completion

The house is in the final stages of completion, so I thought I would take the time to give you a photo walking tour of the house.  We'll start outside:

Here is the house from the street (notice we have grass already!!).  The yellow rectangles in the yard are seed blankets to placed to keep the grass from washing away.  There are gutter drains at the top of each yellow blanket.

Here is the front door, the door has a 60/40 split.  Shelly and I thought this was a unique feature that added a nice extra touch.  Let's step inside and have a look around:

After you walk inside, you come to the living room.  The fireplace is gas, you can see 2 dark circles in the ceiling these are the recessed speakers for the surround sound system. 

From the living room, the kitchen is too the right.  The decorative posts frame the kitchen nicely.  From this position there is a deck to the left.  We'll have a look at that next...

The decking is a composite material that should last longer and be less maintenance than real wood.  The deck is screened in with a ceiling fan that rotates at an angle (or precesses for all the mri folks).  You can see a little bit of the lake in the right side of the image.  We'll step back inside for a look at the kitchen and dining room

Standing in the kitchen, you can see the door that leads to the deck.  Then obviously you can see the empty space where a table will be one day.

Looking to your left you can see the living room.  The refridgerator cabinet eagerly awaits our fridge.  Next to the fridge we have our microwave built into the cabinets.  In the foreground you can see the handle for the dishwasher.

To the right you can see where the stove will go one day.

Near the kitchen is the guest bath, here's a peak inside:

We'll go up stairs next,  here is the stairwell:

The hall:

Pictures of the master bath:

That's most of the house, I'm tired of writing for now... Maybe I'll add a little more later.

The end is near!

Lots of finishing touches going on now.  Today (9/9/10) the hardwoods are getting their first coat of stain.  As you can see from the pictures below, the columns on the front of the house have been installed and the concrete for the driveway and sidewalk is poured.  The yard is also being graded to get ready to be seeded!
We will be painting the walls and staining the woodwork (columns, mantle, etc) over the next week or so.  It will be hard to stay out of the house after it is finished, but we can't move in until after the Forsyth County fall parade of homes (first 2 weeks of October).  We are tentatively planning on closing near Halloween. 

Kitchen!!

Mark Shelton of Shelton Kitchens and Baths has done an outstanding job with our kitchen (see below).  The granite looks amazing and the cabinets are perfect.  We also made a last minute change with the wall tile in the kitchen. Shelly had a sudden burst of inspiration to use subway tile with a decorative piece above the stove.  Enjoy the pictures!!

And finally, our builder and trim carpenter have talked us out of keeping the fireplace mantle from our old house and creating a new mantle for the new house.  This new mantle reflects some of the architectural details from the posts in other parts of the house.  This mantle also has about 3 different types of wood, so when it is stained it should really look good!!