House On The Hilltop - Part Fourteen

Continued from House On The Hilltop - Part Thirteen

I'm excited that this is probably the last post on our farmhouse progress! We passed our final inspection and are moving in!  Can you believe it? In some ways it seems like it took us forever to build our home; in other ways it seems like it was incredibly fast. We still have closets that need shelves, a laundry room that needs shelves and a custom pantry cabinet, and my barn room upstairs that needs shelves in the built-ins, BUT those are all things we can now work on in our leisure while we enjoy living in our house! 

I'd like to tell you about our stairs.  There's a whole, whole, whole lot of stuff I've learned in building a house.  Way too much to even list, but I sure realized that I didn't know anything about stairs! 

 

For example, I learned the names of all the parts!  I also learned that every single thing about the stairs must be to the building code in your State as it is a huge safety factor - and in the final house inspection they will check everything about your stairs... and ignore other things that seemed way more important! 

 

 

With having an Engineer for a husband you can just imagine how much thought and work went into our stairs.  I was pretty much wondering why we thought we needed an upstairs! 

 

 

But, the biggest dilema of all for me was wondering what color to stain/paint the stringer, stain/paint the treads, stain/paint the risers, stain/paint the newell and the rail, and stain/paint the balusters!  This was the problem:  we have a lot of different woods in our house:  pine ceiling, birch butcher block counter tops, pine interior doors, oak beam and pillar (which the rail would actually attach to). Not to mention the driftwood laminate floor at the top of the stairs and the walnut laminate floor at the bottom! So how do you finish stairs when you have all those factors already in place? 

 

 

Its all about compromise and here it is:   white painted stringer to match the beadboard walls, walnut stained treads to match the flooring on the downstairs, white painted balusters to match the walls and the stringer, oak stained newell and rail to match the pillar, and white painted risers to give contrast.

 

When I first started staining the treads I got a little sick to my stomach - it seemed so dark and such a contrast to the oak that I thought it looked terrible.  Nothing to do but just proceed though. 

 

 

Then all of a sudden a really weird thing happened - I fell in love with them.  The overall look was so gorgeous that I decided all those crazy wood tones actually all went together beautifully.

 

 

Even tying the final riser into the driftwood laminate ended up looking just fine. 

 

 

The view from below.

 

The next big chore in recent weeks has been the interior doors.  Eldon was set on solid wood doors and I was set on the five panel old farmhouse look.   We ordered them, they were delivered and they were beautiful.  Somehow I guess I just didn't really let myself think about the amount of work that prepping, sanding, staining, varnishing, sanding, varnishing, sanding, varnishing, (and into infinity it seemed like) it would be.  It was ridiculous.  I think I could safely say it was the most tedious job I've done in the house!  

 

 But, the good news is that I finally finished, Eldon hung them all and they look great.  I'm so glad we went with the solid wood and I really love the look of the five panel.

 

 The hardware was installed on our vanities, as well as the vanity tops, sinks and faucets.  I had the latches and knobs put on both vanities and I really love the look. 

 

All floor board trim and final painting complete!

 

And finally? 

 

Here's a little glimpse of the bit of unpacking I've done in my kitchen.  I've got a lot more to do and I'm sure I'll be changing things up, because thats how I am unfortunately!  (Did you read my kitchen post?  You can catch it here if not.)

 

Because of living on a hill, we have to use a pump to get water up to our house.  We've had a water line and electrical line from the pump right to our travel trailer and now we are extending both lines to the house.  So today we got the water snubbed in and worked out a few kinks and Eldon will start on the pump electrical this week.  But the good thing is that it allows me time to move in slowly and really enjoy the process! 

 

I was pleasantly suprised at how much room there is in just one of the cabinets under my island!  I could fit this entire 16 place setting of my vintage Fiestaware in one cabinet. 

 

I want to give a big thank you to everyone that has read my blog and kept up with our farmhouse progress.  The emails and comments of encouragement mean a whole lot to us!  Oftentimes it is what has kept us trudging through! 

 

If you haven't entered my giveaway from last week's post, there's still 2 more days.  You can enter here by leaving a comment on the post.  And come back again next week as I want to tell you all about my Pfister kitchen faucet and I have a surprise give-away planned! 

 

Have a wonderful week!