Stage 2...

I would say we are about 33% of the way there. [There = Habitable]. The house has all of the fixture installed it is time to get through the next two stages [walls/paint and flooring.] Bathroom also needs to be completed but I see that as a parallel with the other items. We will be spending today and some of tomorrow cleaning up the house and prepping for patching/re-texturing. Should be a good week and a huge transformation should occur as the hole ridden walls will look like a brand new KB Home. =)

Update on lighting, everything is in. I saved some money yesterday by doing a little more work. I don't know if others would have done the same thing but I believe if you are going to do something you should just do it right the first time so you do not have to worry about it later. I learned this from the car days.

Here was the situation, I have been buying Insulation Compatible Recessed Lighting Housings, so when it came to do the stairs I figured that was the only way to go. I went to Lowe's and they did not have any 4" ones geared for insulation. So I headed over to THD [The Home Depot for you home improvement challenged] and saw that they had some 4" ones on clearance, but they were CFL prong only! I was like, 20.24 a light, shit son that is a huge saving from the original price tag of 30.xx. I picked up 4 and brought them back and installed them with J. Pretty easy job as I had access to the top of the stair case. Then it was time to drop by Lowe's before Isabel's Birthday Lunch [6.99 all you can eat Round Table, yep we do it big], J and I looked at the bulbs and realized in order to install CFL prong bulbs, they all look like this:

No homo and I love being green, but I am not having that shit showing through my god damn lights I spent 80 bucks on [another 40 for trim but I won't add that in just yet]. So I walk around Lowe's and talk to the electrical guy [shout out to Brian, he reminds me of the guy from Grandma's Boy, I swear they are twins] and realized there is no substitute. So J and I rethink this and and notice that if we want a covering for this bulb it will be $32 a piece [which is more than the light itself!] At this point I know that this was not reasonable [even though costs usually don't play a big part, but this was a jacking and plus I wanted our house to look uniform]. I decided, fck it, we just buy 4 new lights [@ $15 each] that are made for NON-INSULATED areas and I will just cut back the insulation and worry about it later. So I saved ~5 per light, ~2 on each bulb and ~15 on the cover/trim. Multiply that by 4, I almost saved a C-Note. Albeit it is a lot more work as I had to uninstall the lights and reinstall new ones, cut the insulation and build 2x4 boxes around the lights to ENSURE my house does not catch on fire, it was worth it because the look of a nice CFL screw in bulb is fcking priceless:

 

Here are some pics of the completed lights so far:

Before

Still Before

After w/ Lights [no paint or texture yet]

Before

After

Before

After

Don't want to waste all of my good pictures in 1 post, I am heading out to http://www.terico.biz/ right now to get my tile picking on. Will update with options. Have a great weekend.