Well, I’m combining the last two months of updates into a single post. I was so uber busy during April that I didn’t get an update posted at ALL so I will start with the month of April and follow through to our final product. The estimated move-in date is currently May 20th, 2006! 
So let’s recap April, shall we? 
April 3 – 8, 2006 – The sub-floors throughout the house are all a compressed particle board and the joints between them aren’t all 100% even. So the best thing you can do is rent a power sander to grind down the joints to be flush with each other so you don’t feel ridges under the carpet. You also NEED to grind the floors flush for any hardwood you may install or else it may not lock together properly and may contain really exaggerated bumps.
That being said, I rented an “orbital sander” as was suggested to me by a couple of rather good craftsmen. It basically looks like a giant floor buffer that you walk behind and it spins a giant sanding pad under it to sand the floor.
This was a nightmare. 
At first the company sent me the wrong part, then the sander kept shredding the sand paper and wouldn’t work… After 5 trips to the store (and me putting the machine 2 inches into my hallway wall) 
, we (by now Luke was sharing in my pain) finally just returned it and rented a “drum sander” instead. This one you also walked behind, but it rolled the sand paper vertically around a cylinder instead of horizontally in a circle… and more importantly, it WORKED!
When I was done sanding the entire house was a cloud of dust… I was wearing a face mask but I had dust caked into every curve in my face from it sticking to my sweat. It was rather gross.
Finally, we self installed some hardwood floors in the foyer and kitchen/dinette areas. This process took place over 3 days and with the help of a couple friends (Rick is a STUD). It wasn’t hard, but was a lot of work! Each 3 inch wide plank is stapled with 2 inch staples (6 inches apart) at an angle with a special floor nailer that really hurts your back after a bit. Regardless, it was like a giant jigsaw puzzle laying out all the boards and trying to not match up any joints within two rows of each other…. and then cutting out notches around door frames and angles for the edges… Kind of fun, but I’m glad it’s over.
Here is a pic of the process, then two pics of the final product:
April 21, 2006 – For two weeks the finish carpenter has been installing all of the rails and spindles we stained… as well as all of the baseboards, window trim, doors, cabinets, staircases, etc… He’s been a busy man.
April 28, 2006 – We then went behind the finish carpenter and filled all the nail holes in the trim, caulked all the seams of the trim, and sanded the wood putty when it dried on the nail holes… That was a long week! We again recruited some friends to help and the process took a good 5 days. Our fingers were VERY raw after that week. I used 11 bottles of caulk. 
The house now has nearly everything but paint, carpet, final electric, final plumbing, and final inspections.
May 1-2, 2006 – Sarah and I spent all day Monday and part of Tuesday picking out the final choices for a lot of the finishing touches… Countertops, Sinks, Faucets, Light fixtures, Appliances, Carpet, etc… along with some new bedroom furniture, two more kitchen table chairs (since we can now put the leaf in our table) and a couple of barstools for the island in the kitchen. Stuff is expensive. 
It feels good to get a lot of those final decisions out of the way. Now we wait on OTHERS to do work again.
May 3-5, 2006 – The time has come for PAINT! WOOT! It’s starting to look like a real house and not a construction site! Here are some shots… some with before and after pics too.
Kitchen before and after:
Master Bathroom before and after:
Master Bedroom:
Living Room looking into Dinette (and vice versa):
Looking out the Office door (with a good shot of the white trim):
The french door that FINALLY arrived for the office doorway:
Those windows on it are really glass but have some plastic protectant on them right now.
So …. that is it. For the future, here is the rough schedule:
May 8-12 = final plumbing and electric, concrete work (driveway, sidewalks, self-installed), cultured marble sinks in the bathrooms and countertops in the kitchen… and porch posts and railings installed.
May 15-19 = final inspections for plumbing, electrical, and structure. Carpet installed, appliances delivered/installed, closet shelving, towel bars, etc… installed… and house cleaned professionally.
May 20-21 = Move in and UNPACK! And somewhere in there I need to get the new furniture delivered… but I can’t until carpet is in place.
Post move in = Get the yard graded (smooth out the dirt) and have hydroseed planted to grow some grass… install a LOT of window treatments (blinds, shades, curtains, etc…)
In the third pic you’ll see the buckets of drywall coats that can go on top of the drywall to give it texture. We had to choose between “knockdown” and “roll-coat” textures. The closets and ceilings are always knock-down along with the two story walls (foyer). Reason? Celings look better with heavy texture, closets take a beating and the knock-down texture hides imperfections/scratches well, and to do roll-coat properly you want to do the entire vertical roll of the wall in one motion…. not possible on a two story wall. 
So instead of rolling a texture on, they spray it on in chunks and knock it flat with a trowel. Thus…. knockdown. The last image here is of our furnace being built.
Here’s the update:
So here it is:
