A bump in the road, er...well, mountain.

So... the house is finished, and has been for the past 3 weeks. That was the good news. Now for the not so good news... we are still not cleared to move in, and have no idea of when it may be POSSIBLE. Here are some of the finished pictures to share with you all:My beautiful kitchen with gorgeous cranberry maple cabinetry, black appliances, and a black sink that looks like stone. The floor is all dusty from the construction process, but we'll clean it up...someday.

The view of the kitchen/dining/living rooms complete with carpet.

Our HUMONGOUS master bathroom. I think it's technically called a powder room, because the toilet and shower are in another room off of this one.

This is the kids' bathroom. It won't seem very big when they're older and fighting over time, but it's the perfect size now.

Some of you have been asking us when we are going to move in, and the short answer is "not sure", so I thought I'd take a moment to share the longer, more detailed answer.

There were rules made in the last 2 months that effect the speed and efficiency of the appraisal process. All homes have to appraised before the bank will loan you the money to purchase the home. The new rules specifically state that a mortgage broker can no longer contract their own appraiser, the appraiser is now chosen from a master pool of appraisers that can be located as far away as 4 hours from us here in Bend. In lieu of specific, boring details, I will say that the appraiser who was contracted failed to show up for 2 weeks in a row. After much complaining on the part of our mortgage broker, the appraiser went out last Monday to view the house so he could do the job. Finally, on Thursday our mortgage broker received the WRONG papers from the appraiser. Supposedly that was fixed and we would be getting the appraisal on Monday. Wrong! Then Today arrived with not so good news. The appraisal finally made it's way into our mortgage brokers hands, and was listed approximately $20,000 below our building cost. As of now, the bank that is supposed to give us a permanent loan to pay off our construction loan will not finance us for a house that is "worth" less than it cost us to build and we currently owe. We cannot move into our house until the permanent loan is complete and has paid off the construction loan. We are awaiting an appeal and hopefully a new appraisal before we find out if the construction loan company is going to foreclose on our house before we even get a chance to move in. We are hoping and praying that this is not the case, but there is nothing more that can be done on our part. The only bump, er... mountain in the way is the appraisal. Our mortgage broker seems to think that we have good grounds for an appeal and a new appraisal given the fact that the appraiser only used foreclosed/bank owned, and short sale properties to determine the value of our brand new home. He did not, however, compare our home to ANY non-foreclosed home sales which make up 60% of all the homes sold this month here in Bend. So now we wait.... and wait.... and probably wait some more, until we find out what to do with this problem. Either we will be denied the appeal process and the construction loan company will foreclose, or the appeal will go through and we are looking at probably another 3 weeks or more until we can sign the final papers and move in. We shall see! We could use your prayers.

Weston updates

We haven't blogged new pictures of West lately, so here's just a few of his sweet little face.

Hannah was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz last Halloween, and this day she thought it would be cute to put her Toto purse on Weston's head. She was right. It was pretty cute! I wish you could hear Hannah's laugh every time West would put his head back and knock the purse off. He would giggle and smile when his sissy laughed. What a great memory.

This is our children's pastor Cathy holding Weston. He turned 6 months on the 2nd of June. He looks so big in this picture.

In the middle of a laugh with daddy. This is one of my favorites.

I walked into the bedroom one day to see that Hannah had shared her Sophie bunny with Weston. She told me she thought that he would like to sleep with an animal too like she and Riley do. It was one of those moments where I just had to smile for a second before I explained the importance of NEVER putting anything in the bed with Weston unless she asks mom and dad first so we can make sure it's safe for him. Lesson learned and memory made; it was a good day.

Random pictures of Hannah & Riley

I call this one ANNOYED!

I love this picture! Hannah looks so pleased with the job that she did on Riley's hair, while Riley does not look QUITE as pleased. I think they both wish that Hannah had a baby sister to play with. "Look mom, Riley looks pretty". Hilarious!!!

Hannah & Riley Easter 2009. Posting a little late I know, but we have been pretty busy with all the new house stuff. And speaking of the new house...

This about sums it up for Hannah & Riley for the last 4 months; watching movies while mom and dad work on the new house.

Pillars, front porch, and cabinetry

Ryan's dad came over from Newport, Oregon to help him build our front porch railing. He was a big help and Ryan enjoyed being able to share one of our house projects with his dad. Overall it was a great experience and it turned out BEAUTIFUL, just as I imagined it would look. Here are a few pictures of the journey:
Framing around the columns

Using the nail gun to secure the framing

Column framing completed

Porch railing finished (picture complete with Hannah posing like a "fairy")

A very proud father and son. Good job Honey. I LOVE it!


At the same time that Ryan and Roy were working hard on our front porch, the finish carpenter was working on installing our cabinetry, baseboard molding, and doors. I did not get to take a picture of the baseboard molding or the doors, but I did get a picture of our kitchen cabinets as they were being installed. They are such a beautiful, rich color.

The estimated move-in time we have been given is the end of May. We still have quite a bit of stuff that we have agreed to do before we can get permanent occupancy. We have to putty all the nail holes in the baseboards, paint the baseboards, doors, door casings, and interior window moldings, and continue to clean up the mess from construction. We're in the home stretch now (no pun intended).

Front porch, pillars, & yard, er...well...rocks

View off the front porch

close-up of the front door and porch

This is the front of the house, complete with the deck, pillars, and the dirt filled up to near the bottom of the deck. It looks a lot more normal now, instead of massively tall. We have an estimated move in date of the end of May. It's coming so fast now. We are excited.

One day this weekend while Ryan was working on the house, 5 deer wandered into the neighbors house behind our backyard and he got this shot of them.

Interior paint and kitchen floor

My handsome husband using the airless paint sprayer to apply the tinted primer to the walls.

Because we had other commitments at the church during last weekend when we painted, we ended up finishing the interior paint at 2:30 in the morning. We were really exhausted and couldn't see very well with just the one shop light available, so we didn't know until the next morning if we had missed any spots. We are so glad that it is finished. It turned out just like I wanted.

The view through the front windows with the newly painted walls.

Next came the kitchen/dining room and pantry flooring. Our friend Scott came to help Ryan with this. It was an all day project starting at about 9:00am and ending around 8:00pm. Our friend Travis also came to help around 6:00pm so that sped the process up a bit with 3 people working hard to finish. The picture above is Ryan and Scott rolling out the pad before they could begin installing the wood floor.

Then they began laying the floor planks.

They had to stagger the flooring just right so that it didn't show a repeating pattern.

This is the floor when it was completed. It was already dusty from the paint dust that had settled all day from when we finished painting at 2:30 that morning. Notice that it's snowing pretty hard in the background of the dining sliding door. A few days before this it was almost 75. We have recently had very schizophrenic weather here in Bend. It snowed again today, then it dropped freezing rain. It looked like there were salt pellets all over the ground and the houses. It was very odd.

My husband was such a sweet heart and mopped the floor yesterday so that I didn't have to. We have to keep the area really clean because they are going to be installing the cabinets, doors, and trim in the next few days.


I'll update the front of the house sometime today or tomorrow. They have installed our pillars, finished our front deck, and filled more dirt up to the bottom of the deck. It is looking really nice. We just took updated pictures yesterday, so I'll post pictures of that soon.

Exterior paint

Here is the exterior paint color. It is a very natural stone gray color. It matches the natural look of the area. The trim is going to be painted white, and we are going to add shutters and a few other wood details in a very dark gray-ish color to add some accent pieces to the house.

There will be more updates to come.

Update #4 on house

Insulation in the living room and dining room

Master bedroom insulation

Riley & Weston's bedroom

This is the Scripture that I put in our pantry

Insulation in Hannah's room

Master bedroom drywall

Drywall in hallway

Living room drywall

Kitchen/dining room drywall

All the drywall is hung. It needs to be inspected on Monday, before they can tape and mud. We expect to paint the exterior next weekend. Stay tuned for more pictures and updates.

House update #3

Here's the latest photo update of our house progress. It's been pretty hard to keep up. To save money, we are doing the cleanup. We grossly underestimated the amount of cleanup. Ryan has hauled 2,500 pounds of debris so far. That's not even counting the 700+ pounds of scrap that he decided to salvage to use for various projects.

Here are some photos...

Back of house.

Siding being put on back of house.

Dining room and kitchen view from living room.

Living room view from dining room.

View outside living room windows.

Back of house, siding completed.

Front of House with siding and roof all done. We also have a door and windows now.


The electrical should be finished by tomorrow. There will be an inspection of the electrical, heating, and plumbing on Wednesday. Then, next week, it's on to drywall.
We'll keep you posted!