This will be the final catch-up installment of house progress. However, the house isn't done, so I'm sure once I get you up to date, I will still talk about it a good bit.
We left off at confusion choosing a siding paint color. I'd love to tell you that got better at some point, but the truth is, I'm STILL not sure about the paint. And it's been painted for months now. I suppose there are some incredibly decisive people out there that make confident and firm decisions everyday and never look back. I am the polar opposite of those folks. The smallest decisions stress me out beyond words. This house has put me to the test in that arena. While Michael has amazingly let me take the reigns and have creative control, it truly has almost killed me making such crucial decisions! His typical feed back consists of "Yeah looks good", "whatever you think", "oh I don't know", "that's your department", "whatever is cheapest". It's great getting to have some say so (or all of it), but it is torture wondering if I'm making the right decisions. Finally, hesitantly and painfully, "we" decided to go with a very dark shade of forest green, and to trim it in a warm cream. Of course, the wood will soon be stained and sealed as well.
We wanted our house to be described primarily by two words: "unique" and "rustic"..... With "comfortable" being a close third... Hopefully most of the choices you see that we made throughout this post will reflect that....
Brick begins!
Cue the crying! You know me by now, and it isn't uncommon for me to shed a tear or two at the drop of a hat......
When I saw this brick....looking all pink and orange.....with that ugly green looking mortar....I literally started sobbing.
For those of you that do not know, I'll tell you what Josh and Michael told me, when I cried to them about my disappointment: the mortar dries lighter. They were right!
Now I'm so in love with our brick!
There is brick only on one side of our house. I know that is weird.. Let me come clean about something: Those plans I showed you aren't exactly all of our house.
That's just all we are building right now.
See this triangle-y sitting on top of a rectangle-y part of the house? Some day, hopefully not tooo far away, we will have another of those sitting on the opposite side of the house. It will be our garage and a few more lil gems....One day....
At that point, BOTH sides of our house will be brick and we won't look quite so lop-sided. :)
O
M
G
The front door... We looked high and low and at all kinds of doubles and singles and just everywhere and at everything.
First of all, doors are freakin high, yall!
This was made especially so and even more difficult since the opening we were trying to fit wasn't exactly standard size...It was a bit smaller. So most of our options were custom....
There were units over 5 thousand dollars that we were looking at!
Remember that time I told yall we were frugal? Yeah.
There are a few things we could spend that much money on, but a door aint one of them.
In all seriousness, we wanted something nice. We knew this was something we couldn't skimp on. We looked at a ton of special orders. I'd like to take a minute to give Mr. James at City Home Center in Laurel a shout out. He was AMAZING and patient and went above the call of duty for us.
Ultimately, we ordered a stain-able fiberglass door. No that wasn't us being cheap...
Hear me out.....
We wanted the look of wood, obviously. But, we were advised by a few knowledgeable people in the field that while wood is beautiful, it swells and shrinks and it's not a matter of "will it crack?" its "when will it crack?" We started thinking about our childhood homes...Both with wood doors...both cracked. Being reassured by Mr. Frank at Phillip's in Laurel that the fiberglass door will definitely stain as beautiful as wood and be a lot more durable, we made a decision.
We ordered a stainable fiberglass door...JUST a door. Then, we showed Josh the picture on the right. We told him we didn't want a window in the arch, we just wanted to stain the wood.
The left is our unstained unit.
Amazing isn't it?
Stone work begins!
This is Josh in a nutshell...See him meticulously arranging stones by size, shape and color to create a unique and cohesive design?
In the back, stone is only on the bay window.
In the front, it is all under the porch.
Our built in book shelf in the kids' hallway
If you stick your right arm out, you will touch Maxx's door. The next one to the left is Mili. They share a bathroom. Then the next left it Nori's. The one at the end is Neva's. They share a bathroom.
Soon there will be another fun little surprise in this hallway. (No not another kid)
You're in our living room. You are looking at our fireplace. Above it, our tv will be mounted in the stone. You see two doorways (one on each side) leading into the kitchen.
We closed off the kitchen, against the ever trending "open concept" that most everyone is going for.
If you look up, you see our coffered ceilings. That is one of my favorite things in the house! We ran it into the kitchen as well.
We showed Josh a picture of the mudroom bench on the left.
I can just see it painted with a pile of shoes under it and little back packs hanging. On this day, it started to feel like a home.
JOSH BEGINS MY CABINETRY! FINALLY MY FAVORITE ROOM TAKES SHAPE!
Ok, so I blew it in the kitchen. I admit it.
I requested a wall to frame my fridge in. So, Josh obliged and did it my way, although he originally had other plans....
Then he built the beautiful ceiling around my requested wall.
THEN, I decided I didn't have enough cabinetry... SO my requested wall had to be torn out (That's the exposed wood you see), and along with it, the beautifully detailed coffereds that had been built around it.
I felt so guilty.
I cried that night.
We went with drawers at the bottom.
We stuck a pull out pantry drawer everywhere we could squeeze one in.
My Microwave will be hidden in the upper corner and I have two spinny lazy susan thingies down in the bottom one.
I showed Josh the pic to the left....Told him I wanted some sheet pan pull outs on the bottom as well...
Our L shaped island.
To the left is our dishwasher. Then, three drawers. Then, straight ahead our sink, with cabinetry underneath. Then to the right 3 small drawers.
OMG....
My Copper apron sink...
I'm gonna get some dishes washed up in that thang baby!
(Or atleast I will stack them in there ;)
Fireplace in the kitchen. Josh made it to mimic the design in the coffered ceiling.
It looks through to the fireplace in the living room.
I LOVE IT.
My kitchen! With PLENTY of cabinetry!
Shopping isnt fun for kids. One day, Nevie literally fell asleep under some carpet samples.
I sometimes wonder if they will remember all this... Running out there everyday to see Mr. Josh and taking him and Adam and Mr. Mike Popsicles when it's hot. Playing in the dirt and setting "traps" with stuff they shouldn't be touching... Will they remember going once a week to some home improvement store for their mom and dad to look at stuff while they moaned with boredom? Will they remember sharing a room? Sharing a single bathroom? Sharing a closet and a dresser?
Will they even remember living in this sweet little trailer?
Ok, enough sappy..
Jeffrey Stewart, the nicest man on the planet, is our electrician. He told us we needed to get to light shoppin...So we hit a local fixture shop here in Laurel...
We flipped a tag or two....Or Ten. At some point it just became fascinating to see how surprised we could be.
Then, after we became immune to the astronomical numbers and it wasn't amusing anymore...
We sold out and went to Lowes.
Now THAT'S more like it!
We still haven't purchased but we have a good idea of what we want.
Barn wood in the entry...This has got a few ugly looks from family and friends already...And trust me, it is VERY rustic. But I am so absolutely obsessed with it.
You're looking from the foyer into the formal dining room
You're looking from the front door, through the foyer, into the living room
Barnwood on the staircase ceiling
Ah the floors....
Initially, we wanted hardwood. But, when we realized how much we could shave off of our budget by going with stained concrete, that's the way we went.
This was a lil sample we stained. Most go with a "cola" color.
It was a lil red for us. We went with "Espresso". We did it ourselves at night when Michael got off work. The staining part was a piece of cake. But I thought poor Michael would go mad trying to prep that concrete and get it ready for the stain. Yikes.
Here, Josh is building vanities for the girls' bathrooms
Does your contractor do this?
Each girl's closet looks a lil something like this.
Master Bath.
Josh and his guys built me a little tub room privacy wall thing...It's kind of closed off but not really.
It's not really arched, that's just one of those iphone pano-pics.
My claw foot will be in this lil room.
MY SPACE.
MINE.
Michael showed Josh a pic of a vanity we liked. Once again, he built it better than the original.
This was what we showed him ^^^
This is what he built!
We picked out this stone to go in our master bath....
We wanted something like this
This is ours on bottom with a lil bit of barnwood.
.
Picture doesn't do it justice! It's beautiful!
The shower was kind of Michael's baby. So while I definitely weighed in, I kept it masculine and had him in mind every time I pointed something out.
We went to a couple places to look at tile styles and get prices...and we dealt with some super nice folks. We ended up getting the best deal from City Home Center in Laurel. We dealt with Ms. Deana. She has 3 daughters who are close in age like my girls. They are now grown but she had a blast from the past watching my girls fly around her store giggling. Michael, she and I really hit it off. She helped us, advised us and really took her time with us. Amazing experience with that sweet lady.
Flat river rocks on the floor and on the bench..
The tile is dark....But oh my goodness it's gorgeous.
Round river rocks to create a decorative stripe
Matt Foster or on the weekends "DJ KAOTIC". Super nice guy. Very talented!
He still has to do the floor and grout. But you can tell a lot about it already.
You're pretty much up to date!
I hope you like it! We are totally making it up as we go and hoping for the best. We've got some great people guiding us through this process and we are abundantly aware of how blessed we are to have them!
Tomorrow I will take pictures of each room and let you see some of the small details I left out.....
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