House

The heart of our house is certainly our open-concept family room and kitchen.  They are a nice size, they are comfortable, and they are homey.  When we designed our house, we chose to have the family room (and adjacent study) carpeted.  I'm sure some people would disagree with our decision, but I am so happy we opted for carpet in just that space.  It was the right decision for our young family. 

Another unusual (odd?) decision we made was to not put in a fireplace.  I do love a fireplace (and a mantel!), but I don't love gas fireplaces, and neither does Jim, and that was the only feasible option.  If it couldn't be wood burning, we knew we would never turn it on, and it wasn't worth the cost.  So... I got a photo collage wall instead! I've always wanted a wall of beautiful black and white photos.

The rooms are still very empty.  They needs drapes, another small lamp, something in the corners of the family room to fill in the space, and, don't tell Jim, but I secretly wish we could do board and batten on the walls.  (I think that would be way down on the project list.)  I also plan to redo some of the pillows in black and white to bring in black from the kitchen, and I plan to make a large chalkboard over the dresser.  We also want bar stools for the island.  I have so many projects to do in this house I'll be lucky to finish before my kids graduate from high school!

How happy am I that I painted our kitchen table??!!  Soooo happy.  It looks fantastic in this space!

The house is coming along, one room at a time.  I know it will never be done, but it is sure nice to not live in chaos!

Wednesday was a big day for us, as it was the first time we got to step foot in our new house! We had an inspection followed by a walk-through with our project manager, and it was very fun to see how everything is going to come together.

The inspector was really impressed with the construction, and Jim and I felt really encouraged. Jim was pleased to be able to take pictures of everything before the walls were closed up. He wants to know what he is dealing with if he ever makes changes to the house, so it is a real bonus to have this kind of documentation. I was really happy myself because we had a few great surprises. We learned that there will be a crawl space under the stairs, accessible by a panel in the closet. It was never shown in the plans or model, and it was an awesome surprise because it is fabulous storage space. Also, the study will have a little more space than was shown in the model, the tub surround in the kids' bathroom is nicer than I expected, and the view from the guest room window and back deck (when we eventually put one in!) were wonderful.

Our closing date is contingent on some inspections, and it doesn't look like we'll be able to move out of this house quite as early as we had hoped. As of today, we are probably 35 - 40 days from completion, but then we will also have to close on the house and actually move.  We don't want to push ourselves too much and have a ton of stress.  So, as much as we had hoped to be out of this house by May 15th, it probably isn't going to happen.  

It's all good.  It has taken me a whole week to pack five boxes. 

Even though I posted a house update two days ago, I just had to put up more pictures because so much has changed since then.  Today they started putting up the brick on the exterior.  It was so fun to watch a dozen guys working together on such a big project. They were tossing the bricks one at a time up to each other in a most fascinating rhythm.

Our new neighbor, Daniel, took a picture of us with our "fifteen years of debt."  At least, that's how he put it.  I'd prefer to think of it as the place where I will raise my family.  :-)  Either way, it's coming along!

So, this has nothing to do with the house, but I just had to share:

I had a goal of losing all of my pregnancy weight by the time Cora was six months old, and today I reached that goal (not that you can tell in my baggy clothes)!  I still have a few more pounds to lose before my summer clothes will fit again, but I am happy with my accomplishment.  Yay, me.

Okay, that's enough.  Back to the house...

Daniel said that they work around the clock on the houses in the neighborhood.  He said that they occasionally work until 9:00 at night, and there is a crew out there sometimes at 5:45 in the morning when he leaves for work (he's in law enforcement... awesome for us!).  He said they'd probably have the brick done tomorrow.  I don't know if it will be totally done, but I'll bet it will be done by Monday.  I may have to post a "Week Two, Part Three" if they keep working at this pace!

Here is what the house looked like on Monday at 12:30 PM:

And here is what it looked yesterday at 3:30 PM (twenty-seven hours later):

Can you believe it? These contractors move like lightning! In fact, Brennan and I left there today at 3:30 PM, Jim arrived to see it about an hour later on his way home from work, and they had already put more gables up on the roof, making my pictures outdated. I can't possibly post a recent enough photo!

Brennan loves to take pictures of the house with his Fisher-Price camera. I'm sure the workmen probably get a real kick out of it.

As of right now, the plan is that the shingles will go on tomorrow, plumbing will be done on Thursday, HVAC will be done on Friday, and electrical will be done on Saturday. Then, wiring will be done on Monday, and we have a pre-drywall inspection scheduled for next Wednesday morning (3/31) at 9:30 AM. We will do our own walkthrough later that day.

We are currently running ahead of schedule, and there is actually a possibility that the house will be done at the beginning of May instead of the end of the month! Guess I ought to think about packing...

Oh yeah, that reminds me. The contract for this rental house fell through, and we have another showing on Friday afternoon. I'm not worrying about it this time. It is what it is, and I'm moving out in about 6 - 8 weeks. (Can you hear me squealing?)

If you're dying to know what's going on with the house, here's the skinny.  I will post updates once a week, usually on Wednesdays. We were told to expect about a seventy-day build, so there will probably be about ten updates (and then a thousand more pictures as we move in and decorate ). 

Here is what our house looks like after a week.  It's pretty funny because I go out there in the mid-afternoon each day with Brennan, and although work clearly gets done, Brennan has yet to see a real construction worker on our lot.  One of these days we'll actually catch someone doing something! 

Last Wednesday the trenches were dug and filled, and for about a week the lot looked like this, but with tons of mud and water, thanks to the constant rain:

It has finally dried out, and hopefully the foundation and footers will be totally done in this next week so framing can get started. 

In other news, our current house is rented out beginning June 15th, which is awesome on many levels.  Obviously it's great because our new house is supposed to be done in May, so we won't be homeless. It's also terrific because we don't have to prepare for showings anymore, and I can start packing things up without worrying about people walking through the house.  All-around good news.  

We are a tenth of the way in, and things are finally moving! We're very excited!

As soon as we signed the purchase agreement on our house, I headed straight to my favorite fabric stores to pick up swatches for the window treatments I would be making for virtually every room in the house.  It was so fun!  Now I have made some decisions and even have a few months in which I could start making those drapes and curtains, but I don't dare spend the money on fabric.  I make real window treatments and not Nesterized "mistreatments," and I don't have exact measurements on the completed windows yet, so don't want to regret anything. Plus, we need to save our money for crazy closing costs.

So.  I am thinking about other projects I can do that will make our home beautiful and can be done ahead of time for less cash.  One project I have been wanting to do forever is painting the kitchen table.  Here is what it looks like right now:

Our new kitchen is going to have black appliances and an island with an overhang. These are the counter stools I really want to get from my favorite place, Ballard Designs:

I have never loved the orangey color of our kitchen table, but I do love the style.   I have thought about painting it black, which I know would look good with the black appliances and the bar stools.  It would also look good with our furniture in the family room, which is mostly red and tan.  (I was thinking about throwing in some black patterned accents, like throw pillows on the checked couch.)

I feel confident that the black would look good, but I think Jim will be a hard sell.  I don't get the impression that he ever prefers paint over stain (am I wrong, honey?).  Also, I can't decide whether to leave the tabletop and seats stained like this:

or to go all-black like this:

So, this is where you come in.  Tell me your thoughts.  Should I paint the table?  Should I leave the top stained as is, or should I go all black?  Should I go solid or distress it to let some wood color show through?  Keep in mind that I am impatient and inexperienced at refinishing
furniture, and I have a five-month-old, so this cannot take a super long time or require tons of elbow grease.  Here's another shot of the table so you can think:

Okay... go!

We're having another snow day today.  It stinks. Big. Time.  I wake up in the morning with such dread on days like this, wondering how I will entertain my children yet again without leaving the house.  (As I write this, Brennan is ironically singing, "Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me!")  I think this is our fifth (?) snow day in just a few weeks!  It's enough to make me ca-ray-zee.

I'm keeping myself entertained with thoughts of our new house.  I have fabric swatches and paint chips lying around everywhere, teasing and tormenting me, as it will be a long time before the house is built and we have enough money to do all of the things I want to do.   Nonetheless, I will plan and dream because it's half the fun.

We have a model home of our floor plan in Hendersonville, less than an hour from here.  I've been out to visit once, and Jim has been out twice.  On his second trip, Jim took a bunch of measurements and lots of pictures.  If you don't have a great imagination, it will be hard to picture how great the house will be beyond the crazy decorating in this model.  But you can try.

This is the formal living room (open to the dining room).  It is the first room on your left when you come in the front door.

This is the view from the front door with the living room and dining room on your left and the family room and kitchen straight through in the back:

Here's the view from the middle of the house looking forward:

To the right of the stairs is the entrance from the garage and a coat closet, and the closet to the left of the stairs is nice and deep.

Here's a view of the family room from the kitchen:

And below is obviously the kitchen.  We will have black appliances and different countertops, and the floor will be wood.  The cabinets will be about the same, and none of the paint in the house is what we will have (they're painting everything white and we'll paint colors ourselves).

All four bedrooms are upstairs (exactly what we wanted) as well as a play area for the kids and the laundry room!  (I'm so excited to have the laundry upstairs near all the bedrooms!)  There is also a huge storage closet off our bedroom (separate from the walk-in clothes closet).

The master bedroom is absolutely huge.  You can't even tell in this picture how gigantic it is:

It's fun to have time to think about how I will organize, decorate, and nest before the house is even built.  Knowing my sick personality, Jim took pictures for me of all of the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen so I could pre-plan where I would put everything before we ever move in.  (True love, I tell you.  I didn't even ask him to do this.) 

And I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to have this:

It's a walk-in pantry, and half of it is hidden in this picture!  I never dreamed of putting a walk-in pantry on my wish list because they are ridiculously uncommon.  But it is, along with the upstairs laundry, one of the things about which I am most excited!  Well, those things and this...

This is a study located just off the family room.  It's tiny, but it will be a dedicated space for my craft supplies.  It has a door on it, and there won't be a server or other computer equipment in it.   'Nuff said.

Now, if it would just quit snowing so that people could go to work and finish approving our loan, prepping our lot, and ordering our materials, we'd be much closer to making this house a reality!!

For the last two years we have been renting a beautiful house in Nashville.  We moved here in February 2008, unsure of what exactly our future held.  We put our house in Dallas on the market and loaded a small truck with only our clothes, dishes, and other essentials, prepared to stay in a semi-furnished condo until our house sold. Before we left, I prayed very specifically that our house would sell to the first person who saw it.  I begged God to make an already-difficult move easier by giving us a more permanent home as quickly as possible.  And God moved in a big way.  After three days on the (already-failing) market, we sold to the first person who saw our house.  I was overcome with gratitude.  I still cry when I talk about it.

Our House in Dallas

When our house sold so quickly, we had to move fast to find someplace to live.  We knew the size house we wanted, the area we hoped for (based on limited exposure to Nashville), and the price we were willing to pay.  We wanted to rent so we could save for a down payment on a new house (we weren't yet debt-free prior to the move), and it seemed like our wish list was impossible to fill.  And then God moved again.  A house in our price range with a desirable location opened on RealTracs.  The catch?  No photos.  We all know what that means.  It's usually a dump, right?  Well, we drove by and found this:

It's anything but a dump.  In fact, it's beautiful.  It's a crazy story, but, in the end, suffice it to say that we believe God held out on this house just for us, because rooting us in this area was a part of His plan. 

And now we are being humbled once again.  God provided funds for a down payment even in a difficult economy (I still don't know how we saved anything these last two years), and we started seriously searching for homes at the beginning of the new year.  You would think that after providing for us again and again, I would expect big things from our Heavenly Father, but I never like to expect a gift.  Regardless, God is a giver, and He loves to lavish us with things we don't deserve.

Our next big gift?  Well, I don't have a picture yet, but it will probably sit right here:

And this will be in our huge back yard (minus some of the brush):

(This one is taken at the end of the street.)

And I will get to drool over this view every day:

If God continues to work the way He has worked all week, this sign will no longer be there on Saturday afternoon:

Gratitude doesn't begin to cover it. 

Back in January I wrote this post about my attempt to turn our loft into a useable space and all of the challenges that have gone along with that. 

I think for now we have done all that we can do, making this space into a craft room / play space / server room / guest room.  I am thrilled to have it mostly done.  There are still several projects I want to tackle, but don't I always say that?  To stay focused on the positive, I'm happy that when we try to accommodate our parents on an air mattress on the floor next month (the guest room is now a nursery), they won't have to search for a space to lay down.  

Here is my craft table which hides the huge server cabinet underneath.  I'm really pleased with it, especially when it is clear and I can actually work there!

This is an overall view of the room, with a train table that doubles as a coffee table! 

Please forgive the over-saturated light that comes from taking pictures in the middle of a sunny afternoon.  I know most self-respecting bloggers would wait until the light was better, but I was too eager to put this post out there and prove that I have accomplished something of late.

In the photo above you can see some piles on my craft table that I still need to put away.  They are the final things I need to put away before I can check this room off my "nesting list."

While I am working in the loft, here is what Brennan does:

And here is how we have to temporarily store his toys:

I know I have to invest in some better storage for this space, but I'm hesitant to pay for it since we won't live here forever.  It really needs to be done since we could end up being here a few more years, but the part of me that's in denial wants to pretend that it's a short-term problem!

I'm not completely satisfied with this loft, but at least it is functional, organized, and semi-attractive.  Until we have a house with more rooms that are dedicated to various purposes, it will have to do.  And at least I'm not mortified to take people upstairs anymore!

Have you ever found something in a store and been so excited that you started up a conversation with the checkout clerk, just so you could tell someone how happy you were? I do it all the time, but yesterday I wasn't sure I could wait to check out. I almost texted my husband who wouldn't have cared less about my finds. (I didn't do it, because I knew he probably wouldn't respond, and I didn't want to have my enthusiasm squelched.)

Yesterday I took Brennan to TJ Maxx Home Goods store to look for a new lamp for our living room. I didn't find what I wanted, so I was just wandering the aisles, when I saw this:

I was really excited, but I almost shrieked with delight when I turned it over and saw the price tag: $7!!! Yes, seven dollars! Now, I understand that not everyone would be as excited as me over a metal antique-replica car, but I have been looking for antique-looking automobiles to put in Brennan's new planes, trains, and automobiles bedroom for almost a year! Sure, they can be found, but not for $7! These babies typically sell for about $25 - $30 each, and I wanted several. I just couldn't bring myself to put $100 - $150 in the budget for such frivolous accessories.

I found this other car for another $7, and an old-looking tractor for $5 all on the same shelf.

As if I wasn't excited enough, I turned the corner and saw these fantastic airplanes! I had to keep from making ridiculous noises, and Brennan asked me if I was okay! They were a little more expensive than the cars, but they were still a steal and they were the exact colors, shape, and size that I wanted!

Later, on a trip to Michael's, I got this adorable little box to put on his shelf, and at Stein Mart I got this apple for a dollar in the Christmas clearance section. Michael's has more of the boxes in different sizes with different things featured on top like a tricycle or wagon, and I may go back for more if I can think of a good use for them (or even if I can't!). I save Michael's coupons for my business, so I've always got a good 40% off coming my way.

These little items may just inspire me to start tackling that big boy room so that it is more than a room full of furniture. Maybe Brennan can convince Daddy to hang the airplanes over his bed this weekend! (Uh-oh, I see a honey-do list coming...)

UPDATE: Julia at Hooked on Houses is hosting a Hooked on Fridays event. You know that I'm hooked on these antique-replica cars and planes. Go see what others are hooked on this week!