Mowing the lawn

A lot of progress has been made in the last couple weeks. Kitchen cabinets are done. I passed my final plumbing inspection. I have almost completed the electrical, there are two bath fans, and one light left. The ceiling tiles are all in place except for where the bath fans will go, and the supply vent in the hall. I have started installing base boards, and we have the first interior door installed. I even mowed part of the "lawn".

So, first the lawn. I felt things were getting a little too wild right around the house. Looking out the front window, it looked like I was in the middle of a hay field. While that does have an interesting feel, I thought it was time to take a little bit of time, and straighten the yard.

Great privacy feature.

 Trimmed down some.

The front yard, is passable again.

I was not going to mow the sides though with those slopes! Besides, I like this part of the look. It softens the hard lines of the wood and blocks quite a bit.

Next on to the lighting section. We got the fronts on all the columns, and I worked on getting all the lights installed. We put up can lights in the kitchen. I put up lights in the utility room, and the hall now is well lit as well. Here is some of the lighting, for you viewing pleasure.

 Columns also got sides put on, and down the road, I will add pieces on the corners.

 

The sports chair stands in for the couch. With all the lights on, the family room is well lit, but with 4 pairs of lights on separate switches, I have a lot of control over the light level, and what areas are lit.

While most of the house, has adequate, but not overwhelming light levels, the utility room now has enough light to frighten the shadows!

The utility room, has a lot of equipment, so it will be nice to have all that light available, when ever I need to work on something. It would have been very useful to have this amount of light in there, when we were installing the equipment originally.

Now, for the kitchen. We worked on getting the first part of the cabinets installed. Matt came out and helped dad and I get them in place and fit around the plumbing, and fastened to the wall. Then I had Jason come out, and finish my plumbing work. I needed a couple things finished in the utility room, but the rest was in the kitchen. The sink and dishwasher needed to be connected to the supply and the drain. The range needed to be connected to the gas line.

Finally, we hung the first interior door. Hanging these doors is going to present some work, since the framer chose to frame many of the door openings too short, and some of them, quite a bit too wide. For hanging the pantry door, we had to cut off the bottom of the frame and the door. Then we had to use a 2x4 as a shim on the one side to take care of the extra space the framer left.

 That utility cabinet will go back against the wall with the window, when we finish the window seat. The door to the pantry should be able to swing nice and wide then.