Jeff assures me this seed isn’t sprout and die crap. As you can see, they’re almost done. Closing is scheduled for Thursday at 2. Wish us luck.

The house is almost done and Quinn is doing her final inspection.

Quinn likes the fancy induction stove. She hopes to sit on it while we cook food inches away from her hand (see the samsung website)

Quinn contemplates future games of hide and seek.

Quinn imagines that bowling shoes would be an ideal accessory for her nifty living room floor

Finally, Quinn tries to imagine how the TV will look in the built in entertainment center.

Last Wednesday we visited the house with Jeff and Joey after dark to see the house lit up.

And, although the middle light was out, we got to see the bridge lit up too.

We also had a chance to see a lot of the finishing work inside. The bathroom is almost done, and Quinn took some time to consider the contents of the bathtub.

And who can resist an IKEA trough with aluminum-edged frosted glass doors.

More IKEA. These lamps diffuse the fluorescent light really nicely and will match the giant Korean crane screen we got as a wedding present from Beth’s dad.

Do you really care about our ceiling fans? Well, if you do, here’s the fan we have in each room, complete with a wall mounted variable speed controller.

Before you get bored, take a second to look at the early stages of our kitchen. Mostly IKEA. The stainless steel cabinets had been discontinued, and we had to get our friend Lief to drive to Maryland to get the last cabinet faces within 500 miles.

They’ve started the porch. It’s also going to have a metal roof and the ceiling will be tongue and groove pine. And as a special touch, it’ll have it’s very own Cat6 jack.

And check out our industrial strength back-porch light

The roof is nearly complete, just in time for a third snow. All the siding is up with an exception of the strip where the porch is going to attach.

Here’s a closer look at the roof

The first floor walls are finished. The original plan was to whitewash them, but everyone thought they looked so good against the white walls, that we’re just going to leave them natural. Take a look at the back wall of the kitchen.

In the background, leaning against the wall, you can see the glass-paned double door that is going on the pantry. The builders also got quite a bit of the flooring done on the second floor. The short-board maple looks amazing. Here’s a picture of the floor in the master bedroom.

Here’s the hallway by the stairs.

And finally, here is the bathroom floor with locally (maybe Buckingham County?) quarried slate.

We spoke with Jeff about what kind of doors we wanted. Our choices were between traditional panel solid pine and flat-faced birch veneer. We decided to go with the pine. We also got a chance to see the recently picked-up maple flooring that will be used throughout the house.

Jeff buys the left-over short pieces which gives the floors a really neat pattern. You can see an example of it in Latitude38′s Rockland house. We also got to see the locally-sourced slate that they are going to put in the bathrooms.

Finally, Jeff asked what style of kitchen cabinets we wanted. This weekend we’re visiting IKEA to choose. The counter will be butcher block and the island will be concrete. We plan on choosing different style cabinets for under the island and under the kitchen counter to compliment their respective surfaces. We really liked what Latitude38 did with the Rockland kitchen, but we’re not entirely sure if the same would work as well in this house.

Last time I stopped by they were blowing in the insulation. In one day, the drywallers came in and put in all the drywall. I forgot to ask if they used a particularly interesting kind or thickness. Here is the master bedroom sporting one wall of tongue-and-groove pine and three walls of drywall.

The first floor only has one wall of this magical material. The other three walls are going to be tongue-and-groove, white-washed pine. That’s a lot of hyphens for two adjectives. Here are the guys installing it.

Finally, the bathroom has moisture-resistant blue board drywall. And note even more pine for wainscoting. Pretty nifty so far.

I missed the insulators spraying the foam under the roof, and before I got chance to see it, those speedy drywallers had the ceiling up. So, I didn’t get a shot of the finished product. But, as a consolation prize, I got this picture of the foam trying to escape under the eaves.

Weather Seal Insulation Co. installed the exterior wall insulation on Monday. They sprayed wet cellulose, which has an r-value of 4 per inch. You know, r-value, or the measure of a material’s resistance to heat flow in units of Fahrenheit degrees x hours x square feet per Btu. The higher the r-value the better. This is on top of the 1 inch structural insulation sheathing which has an r-value of 5 (at least according to Dow’s website). And from what I hear, the builders went crazy taping the seams!

Here’s a video showing the cellulose installation process, from putting the giant cube of flame-retardant hamster bedding in the shredder to spraying the resulting moistened paper mache between the studs.