Monday, September 28, 2009
Home Construction (Day 43 - September 14)
Home Construction (Day 42 - September 11)
The only progress today was our furnace - we wrote this blog couple days ago and couple minutes ago we accidentally deleted it :'(
It was friday, no progress other than furnace
Home Construction (Day 41 - September 10)
Guys, no pictures today because nothing major happened. They delivered the siding for our Uchi, and it's in a big bunch of piles outside right now, waiting to be attached to the walls. Other than that -- nothing! : (
Hey, I know: go look at the baby photos a couple of posts down! :^D That's better...
Friday, September 25, 2009
Rocky Mountains, Colorado
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Home Construction (Day 40 - September 9)
Monday, September 21, 2009
Best 30 bucks spent
Home Construction (Day 39 - September 8)
Labor Day
This labor day we didn't go out of town since we had decided to invite Babushka (Grandma) to MN to visit us. Actually, we were originally planning to take her to Niagara Falls or New York, but everything fell apart because of the tickets from MN to Niagara Falls being really expensive. But we decided she would be really happy if we invited her to come here, too, since she'd never visited us in Minneapolis before.
The preparations started as soon as she accepted our invitation - almost every day after work we cleaned our apartment and did laundry. We decided to clean one room at a time each night, and do a couple of loads of laundry. We didn't have the luxury of an extra weekend to clean, so it ended up being a really busy week
Friday after work, we picked up Babushka from the airport then we took her to our Uchi - it was a total surprise to her, since we didn't tell her where we were heading - we kept telling her that we were going to somewhere scenic to take pictures of the sunset.
She was so happy and liked our Uchi! : )
The next day, I had a photography class in the morning, so the Russians (my hubby and his Babushka) dropped me off, and then went for a walk around the Minneapolis sculpture garden downtown. After my class was over, we all went to check out the farmer's market, and then all around the twin cities to take photos:
The following day I came up with this idea to take the Russian and his Babushka to the botanical gardens in St. Paul -- there is also a zoo there, which I had forgotten about, but it all ended up being a great part of the visit! The botanical gardens have tons of tropical plants, including ones from Asia, that I know really well but which the Russians have never seen before, and they have nice garden rooms like this one here:
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Home Construction (Day 38 - September 4)
Today we won't post any pictures of our uchi : ( since we didn't take one : (
BUT we know what was the progress of the home - I stopped by during lunch with Jermaine - to show him our place for the first time. I forgot to bring my camera since I didn't anticipate going there
When we got there, they were filling our roof area with insulation. There was a van with people inside filling a pipe with bunch of small foams, and another person was holding the pipe in the garage ceiling.
There weren't changes from the picture since the only activity was only insulating ceiling where we couldn't see.
Btw we still visited our home though after work : )
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Home Construction (Day 37 - September 3)
Hey everyone -- so, today you get to see what Uchi looks like with actual walls, instead of just the wood frame! Ready? Well, we promised last time, and here's the proof:
That's what's going on in the garage these days... as you can see, it's not quite finished yet. But, it's the only section of the house that wasn't finished on that day. The rest was all drywalled-up and looking good, just a bit messy.
And the foyer? See if you recognize it:
You remember the saying "with great power comes great responsibility?" Evidently, there should be another saying: "with great walls comes a great mess!"
That, friends, is what our living room looks like, and:
I'm kind of scared to even show you guys the upstairs...
Finally, we wanted to show you guys the thickness of the walls. Jeremy, our field manager claims it's 5 inches wide. But a much much better & more precise measurement is that: it's exactly 8 my-size-thumbnails wide. We're going to ask him to start ordering parts using that measurement from now on.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Home Construction (Day 36 - September 2)
We hate to keep you guys guessing, so today we're ready to reveal the gender of our Uchi:
IT'S A BOY!!!
It has a faucet for a hose sticking out of the bottom, so... you know. Boy. Definitely.
Now, today is drywall day -- they bring in big panels of stuff that looks pretty much like cardboard, and stick it up on the walls. Finally, the house looks like it HAS walls, rather than being made of sticks of wood.
But the official tour will have to wait until next time! We didn't actually go and look at the house on this day.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Home Construction (Day 35 - September 1)
Today was a big day for us - we had our second meeting with our Field Manager (Jeremy) and we will find out the completion day of Uchi.
That day is November 3rd! Happy b-day Uchi.
The funniest thing is that NOTHING happened except that Jeremy marked all the wall outlets which weren't "hot" all the time (i.e. all the outlets which had a switch controlling them) so that he could show us where they were.
That's all! Just some markings. Wow.
And then we got into a big disagreement with our sales guy (Murphy -- with an ironic name like that, we should have known...), about the color of our siding. He didn't tell us that three houses in our cul-de-sac were all the same color. But in the beginning, he forced us to switch from our preferred color (green) because there was already another green house 2 doors away from us. Inconsistent, right? Hmm.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Home Construction (Day 34 - August 31)
Now we know what they did on Friday (Aug 28) - they sealed the interior of our walls with plastic:
They even completed foam insulation of all the cracks between all the walls of the entire Uchi
The insulation for our foyer:
Insulation for our ceiling:
View from the 2nd bedroom:
And even the basement:
Kind of fun -- we can bounce off the walls like crazy people, for a while, anyway. We also noticed it was much much warmer in the house, now that the insulation was present.
The basement was all shiny and aluminum-foiled, did you see? And that's basically how it's going to look, from now on, since we don't plan on finishing it yet. Quite a surprise/shock since we didn't know that this was how an unfinished basement looks like. I thought they would at least add walls or the ceiling. Oh well!