Countdown Catch-up

So, I know, Im terrible at a countdown but I have an excuse (remember, newborn.) Here we go:

#15 Shutters and Chandaliers 

Our house finally has shutters. Not having them is like an average woman without make-up on, but now....

Our door will be painted black though, at least until I paint it red anyway : )
Also, our stoop column has not been installed yet. I found it today in the garage, broken and in the box. I guess it doesn't have an actual structural support inside because there is nothing there now. It must all be fully relying on the cantilever.

Our kitchen is coming right along....we LOVE it, especially our lanterns that we added. Heres the story on that: Because we custom requested the gourmet island withOUT the morning room, the lighting became an issue. The gourmet island comes with a can light (recessed) but the island was going to have to be "field adjusted" for best fit. At the time the can light was to be installed (pre-drywall) the island was not in to line up the light, so it would have been a guessing game and likely ended up out of place.
The Solution: Provide our PM a chandalier because this could be installed later on (after island installed)....but then we got carried away and bought two. The other to go in place of the big ugly light (main kitchen light.)
If you like the lanterns, these came from the big orange on sale for $74 each!

The granite is a lighter santa cecilia (which normally carries a gold tone) but we actually love it. If we custom built our own kitchen, it would be black and white and this is pretty close to it.

 The plastic is still on the granite so it appears shinier/lighter in the pics.

And this is the 70/30 sink (or is it 60/40? don't remember what they call it)....

Can you tell we love our lanterns?!


#14 Bronze Hardware
We had to have the bronze door hardware. My wifes parents have a custom built home and the bronze contrasting the white doors and trim looks great....

#13 Master Closets
We each have a lot of clothes, especially my wife. Mine is more dress shirts and since I'm kinda OCD, I like them spaced way out, so it takes up a lot of space. Every house we've had so far, I've torn out the shelves to raise them and add a second row below. I plan to do the same so our PM was once again awesome enough to make sure and catch the closet hardware guy and have him not install the shelves in the master closets. He left the material so I can do what I wish with it. On second thought, maybe I should have just requested them to be hung at the hight I wanted and then add the second layer myself...dang it. Now I have to install roughly 45' of shelving on my own and thats just the top row! Heres the material hanging out in our master (along with a random piece of sub floor that I cant figure out where it came from for the life of me...

#12 Water Heater
Now looking below, you may be wondering where our water heater ran off to....

We don't have one!! Tankless water heater!!! This is the most exciting, non-cosmetic part of the house. We came at the right time to because just a couple months before we signed our contract, the tankless was an upgrade and now it is a standard in our community.

#11 Bathtub False Advertising

This is another one of those, subject to change things that might be important to someone but they don't bother to tell you. I should have noticed it before now but I didn'nt. Sometimes its hard to catch something is off until you see it finished. Look at pick below. The tub is against the back wall (on right) whereas I thought it would be more centered with a tile ledge going all the way around tub. Oh well, probably not a big deal but we've used one before that had a lip all the way around and it's great for holding wine glasses (we don't even drink but if Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice had alcohol, we would be full-blown wine-o's...ha.)