Vacation!

In precisely 10 hours and 6 minutes I will be done with work and on vacation for 5 whole days. I am completely jazzed! Andy and I will be headed up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for some fun with my parents and sister Emilie (Arielle decided to stay home to work...boo to her). We are staying until Monday and then spending two more days at home just chilling and relaxing! So, so excited. Just wish today wasn't going to be the longest day ever.

Color Dilemma

A few weeks ago I talked Andy into purchasing this:

We found it at the J.C. Penny Outlet near our house and I LOVED it for our guest room. It was only $40 so I was so excited. Only thing I don't love is the color. It doesn't vibe with what I'm going for in the guest room. I'm going for greens and yellows, wild flowers, glass milk bottles, natural, homey, with just a touch of modern. We have an IKEA bed that was mine from my single gal days, so that's our modern.

Pretty cool looking duvet cover. 

 Wild flower arrangement for top of cabinet.

So my problem is that I'm not really sure what color to paint the cabinet. We've looked at yellow and green samples but everything looks good in theory and on a 2 inch card but how will it look in the new house in the guest room. Should we go with green for the cabinet and do yellow walls? Should we do white walls and do a yellow cabinet? What shade should we go with, light green, dark green, light yellow or more mustard? Any help/opinions would be seriously appreciated!

Furniture love...

Alternative title: I don't need to eat.

With a new house on the way I'm getting crazy excited about the decorating aspect. I've already started DIY projects and bought a couple smaller pieces for the new place. Plus I spend a little exorbitant time on Pinterest searching for ideas to make my own and furniture that I would love to have. One thing led to another last night and I found this:

 

This is the Avery Bed by Chatham Hill Furniture

I am in love with this bed. I love the worn rustic look, the three raised panels, everything about it really. Except for the price tag. (I will say that it is a custom made piece of furniture made out of solid wood that you can customize the color, so I understand the following price tag) It's $6,000. Yeah. I know. Bye, bye dream bed. I wonder if there is any way to DIY something similar. I highly doubt it. 

If you have any ideas or know where I might find something to suit our needs let me know.

Poll!

After my little impatient rant yesterday I thought that maybe for some fun (and also to occupy my time) we could have a little poll dedicated to when you think they will break ground. I broke it up into weeks for the next month(ish) 1. Because I have no idea when they will break ground and 2. Any longer than a month(ish) and we will be into September and the idea that the house won't be started until September puts me on edge. I gave until the end of this month to vote so do it. For even more fun if you want to guess the actual day that they will break ground leave me a comment. Maybe there will be a prize.

(I'm)patiently waiting

Except I'm not patient and really neither is Andy. We barely made it 8 months before we moved in together, we were engaged before we got the ring, and we talked multiple times about eloping before the wedding (but feared death by family). We are not patient people. We can wait, just not very long. So it seems a tad silly to me that we are building a house. I mean really, us building a house? I can barely wait for paint to dry on my DIY projects and we decided to wait 6+ months for a house. I think we are crazy.

This is only coming up now because there is nothing coming up house wise. We have made our structural decisions, picked a lot, and chosen the interior aspects. The only thing left to do is wait. We have to wait for the permits to come through before we can meet with our contractor and discuss our build. We have to wait for the build to start and once it does we have to wait months for it to be finished. Once it is finished we have to wait for inspections to pass and do the paper work. It's a big waiting game. It was all so exciting (and still is the majority of the time)  because we were constantly picking and discussing and going to the design studio and the model. Now that the selections are made the glitter and sparkle has settled and we I realized that the majority of this build will be spent waiting. Boo.

I do believe that waiting for the permits will be the most boring part of waiting because there is nothing to see. We go to the home site a couple times a week and the most exciting part so far is that they have paved our road and put our street sign up (I'm not saying that is boring at all, in fact I cheered when both of these things happened). Our plot is still just a little piece of dirt. Once the permits go through and they can start building I have a feeling it will be more exciting because we can stop by every day and see the progress (did I mention we get our own hard hats to wear when we visit the construction site?). So I'm impatiently waiting for the government to give our contractor the go ahead so we can get this party started and I can do something other than twiddle my thumbs.

Until next time folks.

Thrifty Fun

Let us take a break from the building to discuss what happens after the building is done. We will have a house, a whole 2,100 square feet that will be ours. We can paint, we can buy furniture, we can settle down, we can decorate! I finally get to nest!!! YAY!!! For the last 4 years we have moved every year, we have lived in apartments and places that I can't do anything with and I haven't really bothered because who cares? It isn't mine. We haven't spent money on furniture, we haven't invested a lot into decorating because there either wasn't enough space or enough money or both. Our stuff is just a giant mismatch of what we had pre-marriage (most of which is decent furniture but it doesn't match) and gifts from our wedding (which is really nice but mostly kitchen stuff).Well now we will have the space but we have to be careful with the money part. I can't break the bank to do the projects I want to do. Therefore I have spent a lot of time on Pinterest searching for ideas and ways to decorate on a dime. Combine this with a crazy crafting urge and we get these:

The top picture is a monogram in a frame. All I did was buy a chipboard letter "T", an open frame, a piece of scrapbook paper, and some backing. I painted the "T" and glued the scrapbook paper on the backing. I still need to attach the "T" to the backing but I'm debating on which method to use to attach it. Best part, it was less than $20. Woot!

The bottom picture is some embroidery hoops and fabric. I just stretched the fabric over the hoops and closed. Super easy, like less than 5 minutes and super cheap (less than $15). Once I'm done cutting the fabric I'm going to group it on the wall. The best part is that I can use any fabric and easily change this to work in any room.

I found variables of both these projects on Pinterest and just made them my own. There are many more projects I want to try out and I can't wait.

Building: The Interiors

Yay interiors! The interior selections is the most exciting part of building. It's really the one way to make our house our own. About a week and a half after we signed our contracts and made our structural selections, we had our meeting with our designer to make all of our interior selections. Yes you read right ALL. Our appointment was scheduled for 3 and a half hours to give you an indication. Andy and I headed to the design center around 11 AM sat down with our designer, H to discuss all our selections.

The first portion of our meeting we reviewed the selections we had made so far. We had made some general selections in our initial meetings, like to have tile in the master bath and kitchen but not any actual color selections. After reviewing those items we headed over to the exterior portion of the selections to choose our siding and shutter color. I have to say this was probably the most difficult decisions because it can't be changed easily, light fixtures and hardware easy peasy, siding=not so much.What made it a tad easier was the fact that quite a few houses in our future community is some shade of tan. While tan is lovely and I liked some of the selections in that shade range, Andy and I decided to be different and choose from the shades of grey and one shade of green/gray since not nearly as many houses are this color. We ended up with a platinum grey which looks almost white* and midnight blue shutters (which will also be the color of our front door). After that we went over to front and interior doors, from there we choose door fixtures, after that cupboards,  then counters, then flooring, then tile, then trim and paint.

The process was relatively simple, the designer just walked you through all the choices you had to make showing you the different options you had with each area. It made it really easy because M/I has different levels for everything, in our house level 1 was standard so if you wanted something greater than that you had to pay more. We got a deal with some things like level 2 cupboards and stainless steel appliances, which were an upgrade promotion they were running when we signed. The fact that each upgrade ups the total price of the house really made us think about what was important to us and what we didn't really care as much about. I found that having limited selections set up in levels really made the process easy and we were done pretty quickly (Only 2 and a half hours instead of 3). I would explain our final selections but I don't have pictures to do them justice so I'll just post the one I have.

Obviously it's hard to envision it when you have no clue what the house looks like but I promise you that I think we did a fabulous job and it will look fantastic once it is done. I promise at some point I will get some more detailed pictures up here and explain exactly what each thing is in boring minutiae detail (like when I run out of stories to tell you about building). Maybe I'll even let Andy post about that, because honestly I think he is more excited about the selections than I am.

Hope I didn't bore you too much folks. Until next time...

*We now are reconsidering this color because we have finally seen a house with this siding and it looks dirty white and it's kind of blinding. Instead we are leaning towards a Cape Cod Grey which is darker. The midnight blue shutters will remain. Thoughts/opinions anyone?

Building: Choosing the lot

Once our floor plan and structure options were selected we had to pick a lot. This seems like it would be easy. Ha. Yeah. Okay. We were not decisive in this matter. The problem is that the lot was such an important part to us. We wanted to have a nice yard for the dogs, we didn't want to have too wonky of a yard, we wanted to be in a good position on the street, and most importantly Andy wanted the majority of the house to face east (Why? Ask him). So we took a look at our little lot plot map and we talked and thought.

We thought how about an edge plot with no neighbors behind us. Sounds great right? Well Andy went and took a look and we realized that the lot is on a decline and not going to be of much use to us without a deck. On to another lot. The second lot we picked was irregular, which required a little extra fee but the back yard was going to be bigger. Again we went to take a look and found that an extra 3 feet of yard isn't worth the fee. Back to the plot map. We ended up selecting the second lot from the corner that is "normal" sized. We would have went with the corner lot but we have dogs and they bark at passersby and we aren't allowed to have a privacy fence. So we went with the second one in, which I actually like quite a lot (ha ha ha, get it?).

Next time, our interiors. 

Building: Choosing the home plan and floor plan.

I have already talked about how we fell into building but I wanted to discuss it a little more in detail. When we started we out we had several options to chose from as far as home plans went and all were within the price range we were comfortable with, so how did we choose? Well the great thing about our builder is that there are a lot of model homes to look at and they also build a few houses to sell later which we could also view. First we had to make sure that the houses we were interested in were available in the community we were interested in because different communities offer different homes to choose from. The community aspect was a very easy selection; it was simply a matter of elimination. We didn't want Columbus City Schools (that knocked out 2), we only wanted to spend X amount of dollars on our home (that took it down to 7 to choose from), we didn't want to live south of I 70 (which took out 3), and I needed to be able to commute to work easily regardless of the branch I was working in, this last qualifier left 2 communities to pick from, one was in the 270 loop and one was not. We chose the community that was out of the loop. See, easy peasy.

When we selected the community our selling agent (from here on out called P) let us know which plans were available in that community, then took us to see the homes. That day we saw the Rosemary, the Camellia, and the Sage. On paper we liked the Sage or the Lavender the best, but I am here to tell you that if you ever consider building see the house in action before making the commitment. We both loved the Rosemary straight off, the Camellia was way too narrow feeling for us and the Sage's plan felt too choppy in action. Based on our reaction to the Camellia and the Sage, P said that we wouldn't like the Lavender and didn't take us to see it. Basically it came down to a feeling and we felt the Rosemary would work best for us.

Once the home was chosen and the contracts signed you have 14 days to make any wanted structural changes to the plan. With every home plan there are structural options, from simple things like a pantry to big things like a bonus room. It's pretty strange, but we had basically no qualms about adding a 4th bedroom and bonus room, an island, and an extra window over the kitchen sink. The only two things we were really stuck on was a deluxe master bath and a basement. We ended up opting in on both of those options mostly for the resale value it would add and that was that. The really scary thing is that we totally agreed on everything (I know, right? Has that ever happened in the history of home building).

Next time: Choosing a lot, corner or no corner that is the question.

Not homeless

Hi all! Hope your 4th of July weekend was as epic as mine was! Got to catch up with some friends, see my awesome family and had an overall great weekend! Andy and I used the long weekend to think about our whole housing situation and ended up coming to the conclusion that we are going to have to stay in our current house. We e-mailed several apartments about short-term leases and the shortest lease we found was 6 months, we are even more hindered by our fur babies. Pets + short-term lease= No bueno. Doing the math and using December as our estimated completion date, a 6 month lease plus all the deposits and pet rent was pretty close in price as going month to month at our current house and being able to get out when we need. First major hurdle in the building process is taken care of! Now if only that was the only obstacle, but I have a feeling that it is not.