Doors, Driveways, and Rough-in, on my!

We've been working away at the house, and I thought you all might like an update.

(Bonus points if you noticed the snow flying through the picture!)
Whew, we've been busy, and we've also had some great contractors working with us too.
We finally have a driveway!  No more slogging through the mud to get to the house, despite the wet weather we've had this week.   Using a large bull dozer and scraper, our driveway was installed last week.  The little kids had fun watching that big equipment.

After removing about 8 inches of top soil, and spreading it up by the house, road base was brought in  by the truckload.

After it was all smoothed out and graded, we have a functional new driveway.
Our exterior doors were delivered, and I LOVE our new front door.  We installed the doors ourselves, on a base of concrete board, and with the help of 3" screws and some shims.

Here's a close up of the glass detail.  It's called a prairie bevel.  I am so thrilled with how it came turned out.

Just imagine the door painted a lovely blue green color!  I will get the doors painted when the weather warms up a bit more.

Here's the exterior as it stands as of this last evening:

Meanwhile, we've had the HVAC contractor installing all the vents and return runs for our heating and cooling system.  We'll be installing what is called a water furnace.  It uses water from our future well, and then, it is returned to the earth to be reused.  It is extremely efficient, which is great when you have only electricity to use out in the country!

We've just about got the wiring finished upstairs, and we'll finish up the basement this week.

It looks a bit like a maze, huh?  I write what each location is supposed to control on the stud above the boxes, and each wire is labeled as to where it's either coming from or headed to.

This picture is looking through our master bathroom into the hall bathroom.  I'm hoping to make the bathrooms look a little more vintage with chrome fixtures, and the three sconces around the vanity.  I'm crossing my fingers that we can afford to install small white hexagon or octagon tile.

This is the next challenge, the electrical panel.  Each of those wires needs to be installed in a breaker.  Hopefully it will look a lot more organized soon!

Looking through the basement, you can see the main duct runs for the HVAC.  We have two main exits for the sewer lines out of the house from the basement which will eventually run into the future septic tank system.  Ah, the joys of country living.   :)

The small white box is where our communications systems will be fed into, the TV antenna, internet, and phone lines will all be centered there.

Next big project is installing the shingles on the roof.  The shingles will be delivered tomorrow. The color we've ordered is called Black Oak.  They are mostly black with hints of grey and brown.  I think it will look wonderful.  Our goal is to be ready for insulation, and have the roof finished by the end of March.  Wish us luck!