The finish line is in sight!

It has been an incredibly busy week! ...

All of the upper cabinets have been installed.  Plumbers have been busy hooking everything up, the landscapers have been working on the yard, up until Thursday when we got over 2 inches of rain in a few hours.
Our networking guys have been hooking up our network and the solar inverters so they can be monitored through the web.
The countertop in the downstairs bathroom is installed.  
The carpenters have finished the columns at the front door (to the point they are ready for the siding guys).
​Lots of tile work continues in the master bathroom (almost done!).
Some concrete "trimming" around the south-east corner of the lower level.

The first image is of our game room as it looked at the end of the week.  Next is the game room at the end of last week for comparison.  What a difference a week makes! If you are interested, I have tons of details in a second blog.  Beware, if you didn't already know, I am an avid gamer and proud geek, and there is a lot of geeky goodness in there.

The third and fourth images show the countertop in the downstairs bathroom.  I love the detail in that counter.  The close up picture shows it quite nicely.
Next are the columns flanking the front door.  These are ready now for the siders to complete along with the wall around the front door.

Next are a series of photos of our kitchen cabinets, from the entryway moving clockwise around the room.  The doors have been installed (the bits of green tape make it easier to open the drawers/cabinets until the handles are installed).
A big surprise to us, was that a number of the specialized drawers already have the inner workings in place.  Such as the "peg" drawer, spice rack drawer, and utensils.

Our rain garden is AWESOME!!
Even though the rain garden is basically a whole dug in the clay-like dirt, and then mostly filled with a sandier soil, it is doing a great job, without so much as a blade of grass in it!

​Previously, when it rained, the water just pooled wherever it could and basically sat on top of the very clay-like soil.  It would take many days of good weather for it to soak in and the entire yard was basically mud.

Now though, almost all the water from the front yard finds its way into the "rain garden".  There, it has a very deep garden full of very sandy soil to seep into.
Within an hour the water level at the top of the rain garden had already gone down by about a foot.
In eight hours, it was down another foot.
The following morning, there was almost no water pooling on top of the soil, although you can see quite a bit of soil have been moved around by the running water.
And the morning after that, while the soil was extremely damp, all the standing water was gone.  By day three, the surface was just damp in the middle, and much of it had dried out.

Once we have the plants in place the soil will hold its position, and the plants will also aid in absorbing water.

This week should be another busy one as many projects get wrapped up.  
I can't wait to make the next blog entry!