Well it is beginning to look like a home. We finished the painting except for the garage and basement. All of the hardware is now installed. The window sills are installed. The blinds were installed by the blind man (sorry, old construction joke). The ceramic tile backsplash was installed and grouted. The plastic laminate backsplash was installed.
I did want to pass on a caution about the brand of paint we used. Our local Home Depot is very convenient to our location, and their premium brand of paint is Behr. We had primed all of the new drywall with Kilz zero VOC primer with great success. We had tinted the primer to match the base color of the paint that was to be applied. In spite of the fact that we have a great deal of experience painting, we had to install at least three coats of paint over the primer to get coverage. Though the paint was a zero VOC paint, and we did not have an adverse reaction to the fumes. I would not use it again. 
The most dramatic change was removing the paper and plastic from the floor. We had installed this to protect the floor from drywall mud and paint. Before installing it I had rented a carpet extractor and was successful in removing a significant share of the dust that had accumulated to that point. We had carefully taped the edges to the wall and the wood trim was installed over it. We tended it as well as we could considering the traffic it handled, patching tears as we went along.
We found the floors in fairly good condition. A little more cleaning this weekend, and we will be ready to apply the last coat of sealer. As I have mentioned before I have been a bit nonplussed by the concrete sealer. The VOC's in the product will make any future refinishing efforts difficult. The VOC levels do comply with the LEED requirements but they are still mighty potent. The material we originally installed had a high gloss which telegraphs every imperfection in the floor. The replacement is the same brand, but in a matte finish.
Other options we considered were: 1. do nothing, 2. install wax. The first option is cosmetically undesirable. The beating the finish took during construction has taken its toll. The second option would require continuing maintenance, which is something we had hoped to avoid. The lesser of the three evils was to reinstall the original material which should provide years of service without any required maintenance.
The best news of the week is that we got our temporary occupancy permit. We only get a temporary permit because we cannot complete the work on the outside of the house until it gets warmer. The temporary permit allows us to live in the house until the work is complete and we can call for the final inspection.
Only a couple of minor issues to be corrected. Apparently in the 30 some years since I last built a house there have been some changes in the building code. We now need to post the R-values of each of the building envelope elements on a label to be located inside the electrical panel. The inspector indicated he did not think this would be a problem for this house. The second issue is a requirement to fire rate the attic access door which I can do with an extra layer of 1/2" plywood or drywall. I should have both of these done in the next week or so.
This coming week is being spent catching up on deferred work for my real job. Over the weekend we will prep and seal the concrete floors, possibly paint the garage and the replacement door for one that was damaged in shipping. Otherwise we have no urgent priorities. The movers are scheduled for the 28th and we expect to be all moved in and functioning by the end of the month.
