My five month vacation is over!

We did it friends. Almost 2 years after signing our P&S agreement in 2013, as of April 23rd, we are finally living in the house that crazy built. Here I am, sitting as I do every day on my kitchen counter after sweating my ass off at the gym, just like in my inspiration photo that started it all (see previous post). You can't even tell the difference between the two photos right? 

Life is good. The insanity of the actual house build is behind us (of course there are still lingering punch list items) and we have moved onto the next phase of our lives. I am working on some design projects around the house (many posts to come about that in the near future) and still taking lots of photos on a daily basis. 

Although there were times over these past two years that my husband and I almost backed out of this project, and wanted to strangle a few individuals, I enjoyed the process over all. It is amazing to see all your hard work and ideas that you spent countless hours deciding on come to life. We are truly blessed to have been able to take this journey, and are now lucky enough to be living in one awesome abode. 

My advice to those thinking about starting a new house build (well the main takeaway from this ordeal) is to have as many people on your "side" as you possibly can. I went into this project (and ended it) pretty much being responsible for all of the design and day-to-day decisions. Hubs was a total rockstar when it came to all of the financial and scheduling issues - damn does it help to have a lawyer sleeping in your bed at night. 

But what I regret is that we did not spend the extra money to have someone as a buyers representative. I do not have a background in construction or real estate development, obviously, nor do I have much experience in design, so I really didn't know what was the right decision when it came to many things. Sure I knew what I liked, but would what I liked work? Would this paint color work in a room with this amount of light? What kind of countertop is right for our lifestyle? Is it worth it to spend extra money on top of the line appliances? Where should we save money and where should we splurge? Should that light be on a dimmer or no? What height do I want this light fixture? Do I want a one or a two piece toilet? 

These all seem like silly questions, but they were all things I was struggling to decide, on my own, and WTF did I know? I think I made the right decision about these things, but who knows. It would have been amazing to have someone with experience helping me make these decisions, as well as someone to be our representative when it came to scheduling and quality control. What I mean is that it would have nice to have an extra set of eyes, someone working for me, come through the house to double check that things were done correctly. Not saying that they weren't done correctly in the end, but it was all so rushed the last two weeks before we closed, and it was me checking to make sure it was all done to my liking. Let's just say that thankfully the house is under warranty for one year, and that I have my contractors on speed dial. 

Now that house stuff has settled down, and summer is upon us, I plan to be back in blogging action, and have lots of fun stuff to share with you all...hopefully there are still some people out there following me!! Bueller? Bueller???

and now for some real gems...

This New House

I haven't been posting here on the blog as much as I would like. Sure I have free time while Val naps, or the couple hours a week I have my sitter, but those are now all filled up with my (I should say "our") latest project - we are building a house.

We are building the house where we will live for the next 30 years of our lives. The house in which our kids will grow up, and have sleepovers and celebrate birthdays. The house in which we will throw parties and have family over on holidays. The house where our girls will invite friends over to watch movies in the basement...possibly boys...that they might like...who might like them...who

M standing next to our foundation!

might try to smooch my babies (or vice versa if they are my girls - ha)...so we obviously don't want an enclosed television area in the basement right? Because we don't want our kids to feel comfortable making out with other kids in the basement, RIGHT?

These are the types of things we are thinking about as we build this house. It is amazing what comes into your head when you are trying to figure out floor plans and paint colors and kitchen countertops. I didn't think for a second about not putting a door on a theater room in the basement, but my husband brought up the making out thing and said he is going to make it as hard as possible for our girls to even think about bringing someone down there to make out with. HA! The things that go through a dad's head.

We decided to make a bigger closet in the guest room in case one day we have one or more parents that might need to live with us. We have already discussed the likelihood of the girls changing bedrooms when they get older (as one bedroom of theirs is bigger than the other and someone might want to move to the guest room). Among many other possible future happenings!

We are only in the framing portion of the build and this whole process is already taken over my life. Let me just say that, I am loving every second of this madness, but it is madness and we are still only 5% of the way done. I have spent most of my free time visiting tile stores, looking at granite and marble slabs, meeting with kitchen cabinet people, meeting with our contractor, so everything else has kind of fallen by the wayside.

If I am at home and have free time I can be found at my computer on Pinterest. What would I do without Pinterest? What did people do before Pinterest? Yes, I know - looked through magazines and cut things out. I will full admit that I am addicted. I check to see if there are any white kitchen cabinet photos that I haven't seen basically 2-3 times an hour. I have about 350+ pinned, but there are surely more out there, so I need to constantly check, right? Call me crazy (because that is what I have become).

I am at the point that the design of the house is all I think about - like it keeps me up at night. I know that if I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night there is no way I am falling back asleep for at least 45 minutes because my mental house folders are turned on and I start thinking about everything from door knobs to toilet placement.

I have also become anally organized with this project. I have fancy file folders for different rooms, print outs of my ideas with color coded notes written on them, as well as a plethora of color coordinated paper and binder clips that I carry around with me. I am not organized in any other aspect of my life in half this much!

This is the house in which we will live out our Wonder Years as a family - where most of our memories will be made, so I want it to be as perfect as can be. So yes, call me insane for losing sleep over the placement of the kitchen stove, but wherever it goes, I will have to live with it for the majority of my adult life! These are big decisions people.

And big decisions I am so excited to make. We are so lucky to be able to be building our dream house at our age, this I know. Little did I know how much time it would take out of our lives, and how other things would suffer in the process, like the blog and my sleep.

I wasn't sure I would even share this whole process with you all, but I have made the choice to talk about the house build on the blog, as it is such a big part of my life right now. I will continue to tell the silly and hilarious stories of our every day lives with the girls, of course, but get ready to help me make some design decisions (because right now it is just me doing it as Hubs couldn't care less what our kitchen looked like!)

Ok - spent way too much time away from Pinterest - must go check for more kitchen cabinet ideas!!! I wish I could get paid to pin things!