Its blue-tiful!

And then just last week, we got some color on the external walls. The sidings were put up, and the shake/shingles in the front. The only thing was, if you see the previous post on colors, we actually had two colors, one for the siding and one for the shingles/shake.  So, we called up the project manager, and he told us indeed that it was an error, and it would be corrected! And he indicated there wouldnt be any delays because of that.

The sidings and shake are visible in the front view. The area remaining which is covered up will be where the stone veneer will come

Side view

Siding on the side, and shake in the front. But they should ideally be different colors

Difference from the siding on the house and the vertical lines over the garage

And then there were rooms

Another month has passed. Our house continues its slow march to completion. In the last post, most of the exterior of the house was finished, and the roof had gone up.
Since then, we have had some more milestones. About two weeks back, since the framing of the house was complete and the next step was to put in the dry wall, we had a pre-drywall meeting with our project manager. He walked us through the house and showed us where the switches and sockets would be. Also showed us our air conditioning vents, and explained the whole Energy Star certification process. At this stage, we of course didn't see any issues there with the way the frame had come up.
During the meeting, they also informed us that they would be able to give us a firm date when we would get the house once the dry wall had been put in. That was exciting news!
So here is where I have to rant a little about the one sour thing in this process (so far!). Unlike an existing home where it might just take 30 days to close, building a home takes a while (but not as much as in, say India, where it might take a whole lot longer!). Unfortunately, this affects the one thing which everybody worries about when dealing with a first home, especially for people who don't just hand out cash to buy it. The Mortgage. When we started this process, the interest rates were at historic lows, enough to make buying a house seem very attractive (but wasn't mortgage backed securities that lead to the Great Recession? But its over, right?). But as luck would have it, with improving economic conditions in the US, the housing market picked up and the interest rates started moving up. Yikes! So, in a nutshell, Grr...Aargh... More money...
So, here's some of the photos taken inside after just the dry wall had gone in.

The family room with the view of the backyard.

Staircase...

Kitchen...

The view from the front door, double height at the entrance