When I was young I grew up in a house in the middle of the hill, not the tallest, not the shortest, but the middle one...

They started building the frame this week! Its been so exciting to see all of the plans we have made come to fruition.

I am kind of weird about "vibes." I judge how things will turn out based on my first impression vibes. Like for example, I got definite bad vibes when Nick and I drove by the middle school the day before I interviewed for that position (I even told Nick that day that I was feeling bad vibes). And we all know how that turned out.

Walking in the house and seeing the layout, it gave me a warm, happy feeling that has stuck with me ever since. I love it more than I even thought I would...there are so many windows in the back of the house. The living room practically has a wall of windows. I am such a "natural light" kind of girl, and I think it is going to fit my "light and airy" vision for the house just perfectly!

Living room windows

We love the breakfast nook way more than I even imagined!

View of breakfast nook from the backyard.

This is a view of the kitchen (see the counter?) looking in on it from the living room.

Master bedroom wall of windows.

The really cool thing is seeing them build the little variations that I feel like I "designed." For example, I requested that the fireplace be moved to the side, rather than in the center of the wall (because of course, the TV has to be front and center! haha). To give a visual, this is a picture of a house with our floor plan.

I basically swapped the fireplace and the TV. The original placement of the fireplace would've made for an awkward furniture arrangement. But moving it over to the side makes a little cozy tv-watching space toward the back of the room.

Here is our living room, with an arrow pointing to the fireplace. I am relieved that it doesn't look weird!

I also had them enclose the dining room, with a large opening for french doors. Rather than this:

I just wasn't a fan of the column in the middle of the room. And the whole living/dining/kitchen area is so open that I don't think closing off that area will be a problem. Plus then I get some pretty french doors :)

We also got to redesign our exterior...no other home is quite like ours, the builders even gave it a new name (instead of a Nelson, we have a Nelson 450...special, right?!) But I will save that story for when they begin putting the bricks on the house. :)

Our house, in the middle of our street...

Our foundation was poured today! Now the fun part is about to begin...building the frame!

We wrote a bible verse on the foundation. Hope we don't get in trouble... :)

Pipes!

Today we have pipes! It was very cool to see this because now we can tell where some of the rooms are going to be.

Of course, I labeled them.

Here is the picture without the labels, since they make it a little hard to see the full picture.

The little things:

Well, this is the slow part of the construction. They are getting ready to put in the plumbing pipes and stuff, so not much is really happening. But I thought I would give an update, for chronology's sake.

Friday: Ladies and gentlemen, we have dirt!

Sadly, the two trees that are circled days were numbered. When we drove by during lunch today, we saw them chopping them down. Sad day, but we pretty much knew it would happen since they were right in front of the garage.

But the important thing is that we still have this beautiful little grove of trees. I am pretty much in love with these and will cry if they cut them down.

To give you some perspective, these trees will be right in front of the house:

What is that? Did you notice something new? Yes, our dirt now has grooves in it. That's pretty much as exciting as it gets around here right now.

The beginnings of a house...

Today after work, I asked Nick if he wanted to drive by the lot (like we do almost every day). I almost added, "Even though nothing has changed." Earlier today Nick was saying how it will be nice when we can drive by and something has actually happened.

Well, we totally weren't expecting it, but a big something did happen! They began building our foundation!! We were completely shocked! And excited!

Its the beginning of a house! It is so nice to be able to actually SEE where its going to be, rather than just guessing. The best part was realizing we are going to be able to keep the little grove of trees at the front of the house. We thought they would have to come down, but the house is actually set back further than we thought.

Here's a better view of the trees. To the left is where the garage will be. So that little grove of trees at the right will be surrounding the house, like a little cottage tucked away in the woods. Or at least, that is how I imagine it. :)

Here I am standing in the middle of our house. The view you see is the front of our house, with our across-the-street neighbors home being built right now.

And here's Nick standing on the "patio," overlooking our back yard which is going to have a lot of trees as well! We are so excited about the trees. I guess we should be. We are definitely paying for that wooded lot!!

Its so nice to finally see something is actually happening. Felt like this day would never come :)

You can't always get what you want...

A week after our selections meeting, I think I can finally talk about it. I am going to warn you right now, this post is going to sound melodramatic and whiny. So as a disclaimer, I am VERY thankful we are able to build a nice house. I know this a luxury in itself and so I shouldn't complain. Please understand that this is just a sounding board for me to vent, but I am still extremely thankful.

Okay.

There are three types of people in this world: the type who can visualize exactly what they want, the type that can't, and the type that doesn't care. I am the first type. Nick is the third type.

I get an idea in my head of what I want, and I stop at nothing to find it. (Who knows if it even actually exists?) This is what made it so hard for me to find a prom dress/wedding dress, etc... But this affliction really rears its ugly head when it comes to home decor.

Now, this is NOT a bad thing. It may be annoying to those around me, and it may totally stress me out, but the end product usually turns out better because I have a clear vision.

I have a VERY clear vision of how I want my house to look. I have spent nearly all of my free time looking at home design blogs. I have a folder on my computer dedicated to every room of the house, and have been saving "inspiration" pictures for months. I had about 20 different shades of white paint cards taped to my wall. I even figured out a set of words that would describe the design "vibe" for the house: light and airy, contemporary beach cottage...just in case you were wondering. Something like this:

I had a sneaking suspicion that the selections meeting would not be what I always dreamed of. I had been looking forward to this "selections meeting" for so long, and obviously had built it up in my mind. I thought I would go in and be faced with infinite choices, one of which would be the perfect tile/wood/ceramic I had in mind. Okay, I wasn't quite that naive, but I did think I would be able to SELECT the best choice from a handful of options.

Of course, this set me up for disappointment.

I will admit, I came in with too high expectations: my taste is decidedly more modern than any of the options they can provide because modern = expensive. But I also think our builders fell down on the job in this area. We are buying a mid-level house in a nice neighborhood. This is definitely not a cheap house. For the amount of money we are spending, I expected a little more in terms of customization. Not one option for flooring and three options for countertops.

That leads us to disappointment #1: when I realized I didn't get to choose the color/thickness/texture of the wood flooring. I had ONE option.

Let me explain: I grew up in an old 1940s house with real hardwood floors. So I can tell by the sound, look and feel if the floor is fake wood. We wanted hardwood floors in every room but the bedrooms and bathrooms. I asked them to price the hardwood, they never did. They kept telling me it is too expensive and pushed laminate wood flooring on me. They said no one ever does hardwood now because it is too expensive. Okay, but I would still like to know the price.

So I reluctantly agreed to do laminate, thinking that during selections, I could pick the most "real" looking laminate of the bunch. I had in mind nice dark wood floors like this:

Instead I had one option and this is it:

Second disappointment: probably my most clear vision for the house was the kitchen cabinets/countertops. I wanted something like this:

Notice the dark brown wood floors. White cabinets. Dark brown countertops. Shiny tile backsplash.

So already you can scratch the floors. Scratch the backsplash (it has to be ceramic tile). Now scratch the countertops too, because there are three, count 'em, THREE options to choose from. None of them are dark brown.

I chose a dark option called Ubatuba.

From certain angles it looked brown, I reasoned. But lingering in the back of my mind was the fact that in other angles it looks green. And I do not want green countertops.

This is what I agonized about the entire night after the selections meeting. Actually, I cried about it. Yes, what a stupid thing to cry over. But I did. For some reason, this was just a really hard pill for me to swallow. Countertops are not something you can "fix." I can't paint it another color if I don't like it. And they are not easy or cheap to replace. This is one of those choices I will have to live with for 20 years or more.

So I ended up changing the granite a couple of days later to this:

Is this anywhere close to my "vision" for the kitchen? No. But it is safe. It doesn't look green. I know it wont be a choice I hate. And I found a picture online of a kitchen done in this type of granite, and I do like it. It fits my whole, "light and airy" vibe.

So those were the two big ticket items that pretty much killed this whole process for me. Here are the other options that didn't cause quite so much drama:

Brick and stone

Top: Dark brown cabinets in the bathrooms (with white marble countertops)

Middle: Tile used in the bathrooms, kitchen backsplash and around the fireplace.

Bottom: Kitchen cabinets

Bathroom fixtures

Lighting was another area that I had a bit of issue with. A few years ago, when our friends bought a house from these builders, they gave you a "lighting allowance" and let you go to the store and pick out your own fixtures. Well, they have now "streamlined" the process and created lighting packages, so you basically get no choice. During the meeting they throw a folder at you with pictures of all of the lights in your package, which you see for about 30 seconds. If you want to upgrade to a better package, that will be an extra $600.

We wanted to change the kitchen light (no florescent light for me, please!) and the bathroom lights (which were a row of exposed bulb lights). I was glad they "allowed" us to change those (we went to store and paid out-of-pocket for the lights we wanted, but the builders will not reimburse us for the lights in the package that we are not using). I wish they would've let us pick everything.

So to sum it all up, the selections meeting was a bit of a disappointment. But looking on the bright side: everything is finalized now and I feel at peace about all of the choices. And now that it is done, we are that much closer to breaking ground. So alls well that ends well.