What We’ve Been Up To

Once we started living full-time at the ranch, regular life got tired of taking a back seat to the new house and started to demand more attention a little sooner than we thought it should, and it has taken us a little longer to get all those loose ends taken care of. There are plenty …

It’s All About the Process: Assembling All 15 Ikea Kitchen Pantry Drawers at Once

274th day after start. Our home looking neat and organized goes in cycles. One day it's all clean and bright and cheery; the next it's a disaster. Moving the kitchen from the rental threw our new kitchen into chaos for the last few days (and counting). We didn't install the pantry drawers at the same time …

It’s Kind of a Flurry

258th day of build. Stuff is just happening so fast right now. And so slowly. It is ending up that L.M. and I are doing a lot of the last-minute stuff, and I'm not sure how that happened. We had some guys put in baseboards, but we've had to take some out again (even after …

It Was a Productive Weekend

248th day of build. Yesterday and today (Friday and Saturday) saw some good progress. Carpeting was installed (it took one guy two days). We finished installing most of the drawers and doors in the kitchen (I'll post a more detailed explanation of this experience in Part 2 of kitchen installation later). We started assembling the …

Everyone Shows Up All at Once

236th day of build. We had four subcontractors swarming our house: Electrical Guys, Stone Guys, Plumbing Guys, and Garage Door Guys. It felt like Christmas! L.M. had to take a day off, though, to make sure everything was copacetic and to make sure the plumbers knew why we needed them to use the Ikea sink …

Stone Guy Starts! and Other Miscellaneous Happenings

232nd day of build. (about 33 weeks) Stuff is happening almost every day now, it seems. Except for the really important stuff like plumbing and electricity, but I'm hopefull they'll eventually get to the house. Here's a rundown of what's happened so far this week (today's Thursday). The floor was finally finished Monday; yay! The …

Our Experience with Installing an Ikea Sektion Kitchen (Part 1: Just the Cabinets)

Waaaaaaay back when we were interviewing builders to see how much our house would cost to build and even before we bought the land, we made sure to ask each one of them what their thoughts were on allowing us to install our own Ikea kitchen. A negative answer was a deal-breaker; that's how important …

Drumroll, Please…The Ikea Kitchen Cabinets Are In!

227th day of build. That's right, all the boxes are installed in time for the countertop guy to make a template on Monday. I'm just going to show you a couple photos of the day's work in this post, and I'll follow up with a more detailed account of how it all went down soon. …

Main Level Painting Done, Floor Started, HVAC Progress, Ikea Kitchen Cabinets Started

224th day of build. (32 weeks) Including the number of weeks in these posts makes this build feel like a pregnancy. And it looks like it will last just as long. The biggest difference is that the last six weeks whiz by in a build; not so much with a pregnancy. This past week has …

Wardrobes Already? When There’s Free Shipping From Ikea–Yes!

In our house design, we planned for 19 Ikea Pax wardrobes of varying sizes. We will have most of them framed in to look a little more custom, and some just hanging out against walls in the mudroom. That's a lot of wardrobes, so you can image how much we were dreading having to purchase …