Media Closet

Some of you (no names, Nadase) may have noticed the media closet pictures in the post below, so I thought I would explain it a bit more. Basically the closet will house the cable box, DVD player, audio receiver, Apple TV, etc...I had Guardian run all the wires (Cat5, HDMI, Coax, Component) from the TV to this closet in order to keep the look of the living room neat and clean while keeping all the electronics out of sight. Also I had the audio ran from the living room and kitchen ceiling speakers to this closet. The problem this presents is your remotes are limited to line-of-sight  operation and usually a short range. To get around this situation you will have to get a remote control extender of sorts!

I chose the Next Generation Remote Control Extender I found on Amazon due to the loads of positive reviews, and the price. At the bottom of this post I'll include a video review of this baby in action!

Also for this setup to work smoothly I'm going to use the Logitech Harmony Advanced Universal Remote to control all of my devices. Since the remote extender comes with a special emitter battery that you place in your remote, using one universal "learning" remote is the way to go. There is a newer version of the remote I want available, but it costs quite a bit more. 

So this is the basic overview of the media closets purpose and how it's going to function. I hope I wasn't to vague on how everything works together, feel free to ask any questions. As you can tell, I'm a bit of a gadget freak.  0_o

Video review of Remote Extender.

The affects of Sandy

Things are moving along nicely with our Palermo, but the electrical portion not so much. Since super storm Sandy devastated so much of the area, getting power at our new home isn't going so well. Our neighborhood sustained no damage nor did the surrounding areas, so all of the electric crews are out helping other parts of the state (as they should be). This, of course, may delay us closing on time since power is needed to get a C.O. and pass inspection. We are fortunate in our current situation in regards to not being in a hurry since we are staying with family while building. Just getting very anxious and ready to move on to the next part of our lives of course! Our new cabinets should be in on the 21st to replace the ugly brown ones that we got by mistake; awesome. Drywall should be complete by Wednesday with painting starting Thursday. Today we got our driveway, sidewalk, and porch steps, though I didn't make it by the lot today for a picture.


Sunday's Pics:

 Miss Addie in her new room

Jake in his new room!

Master Bath Vanity

Looking up from Basement

 Media Closet in mudroom

Media Closet in mudroom

 View from Miss Addie's room

Guardian Panel in basement

Forms ready for driveway concrete to be poured

Drywall

Just a quick update about our drywall! The crew is almost about done with the entire house, just a few places left to tape/mud and sand. We are heading down to our home tomorrow to show some family members and take lots of pictures. We got our hands on a nice Canon DSLR camera and we get the house all to our selves tomorrow! I usually only have the opportunity to visit the house during my workday. It will be nice to spend some time and explore the home without weaving in and out of workers. Stay tuned for tomorrows post!

Frustrated

Things with our house aren't going so great at the moment. The metal roof on our porch is dented, dinged, thin, and wavy. I will post a more detailed picture so you can see exactly what I mean. We like the metal roof, but weren't sure if we wanted to keep it. I think we still want it, but it's very thin metal and it looks cheap. It surely wasn't a cheap upgrade, so that stinks. We either want it fixed or just shingled. Then today we decided to open one of the boxes containing our kitchen cabinets and they are the wrong color. It turns out the wrong cabinets were ordered, and our SR was able to get this fixed. We will definitely be getting the right cabinets. On top of this a few pieces of the sub floor have water damage and have to be replaced. We hope that more don't swell and turn up later, but this is hard to say at the moment. So as you can tell, we aren't really happy right now. All of these things are going to cause a delay in closing on our new home. When dealing with our SR on the wrong cabinet issue, he tells us he accidentally deleted one of our flooring options. He assures us that we will get the right flooring options installed, but we are very nervous about this as well. I think all of this is happening due to the person who enters the change orders for our region being out on medical leave. We were told this person was out and basically none of the change orders we put in were getting entered in the system properly. This was discovered long ago at our flooring consultation, though it seems to still be an issue. Grrr, it's frustrating just to type this. Anyhow, I hope Ryan homes gets their act together and rights their wrongs. Sorry for the long post, had a lot to vent about!

This is a better shot of the metal. It's very chintzy looking. If you click on the pic and view the larger version you can see a bit better.

Vinyl Update

The siding company finished up today and the color combination looks great. Do you guys like the metal roof over the porch? You can be honest; we are debating on just having it shingled to match the rest of the house.

Vinyl Siding

Stopped by the house today for a quick visit and saw this:

Sorry for the terrible quality, the sun was just about non existent when I made my visit. I was using my cell phone on night mode and most of the pictures are too blurry to post. A few came out OK, this one being the best. The metal porch roof has to be finished and the column installed as well as the rest of the shutters. So I'm sure they will be finished Monday with all the Vinyl. I'll take better quality shots Monday and update the blog soon after.

Coach House Accents

Hey everyone I wanted to share something with all of you that you may or may not know about. There is a company out there called Coach House Accents and they make a kit for most garage doors to dress them up. The kits make them look like the much more expensive doors with windows and hinges for a reasonable price. I plan on installing these on our new house once we get settled in. Make sure to visit the gallery so you can see all the different combinations and before/after shots!