The stairs are in progress...

I'm really impressed with the guy working on our stairs. He's very meticulous and exact, which is always a good thing when you're wanting to build something that lasts {maybe the framing crew should take note - David spent tons of time fixing their shoddy quick work with our house framing.}. These stairs will get years of little feet running up & down them, and well big clunky feet too I guess. And I'm sure they'll hold up just fine. :)

David designed a pretty detailed stairway for us so I'm not sure how long it will take to build... but here's a shot of how it looked today. We will have panels running up the stairs too, I'm guessing that will be the last part for him to build. For now you can see the layers of skirt boards going up along the sides... the wood slats are temporary and will be replaced with oak boards at some point soon.

We already have our newel posts there and also the spindels. I'll try to take a picture of them next time and add to this post.

I'm just soooo glad to get these stairs in -- I'm afraid of heights and couldn't stand going up the temporary steps -- you could see straight down through them! Plus there weren't any rails upstairs so I was scared of falling off the edge. David thought it was funny to always stand on the edge... soooo not funny! Okay, weird random confession. lol :)

Take a peek at the powder room cabinet

David got the cabinet for the powder room out of storage a few weeks ago so we could check to see if it would fit or not. Then he forgot to put it back up before the painters came, so I snagged a few pics of it today. Good news, it *barely* does fit, but we think it'll be fine considering we won't be using the powder room a lot {if we expand sideways anymore though, we won't fit in there! lol} and I love the cabinet too much to get rid of it. Plus I think we got a really good deal on it, I believe we paid around $250 for the cabinet -- and it already had a nice black speckled granite looking top {excuse the dust, it is black under all that grossness! lol} on it plus a white sink! We've already got the faucet that we'll use (we ordered them off Ebay last year for super cheap compared to buying them in the stores!). Lowes and Home Depot have cabinets like this for a hundred dollars more, easily.

It won't be sitting out in the middle of floor, but you get the idea.

We've got color on the walls!

Well, I just came back from the house and I managed to snap these shots in between the workers being down there. These paint colors aren't exactly the color that the finished room will look like -- but are pretty close. And because the stairs have been dismantled, I wasn't able to get upstairs for any pics. I can't wait to see the kids rooms though, I hope they look like what I'm thinking (fingers crossed!). So far so good though. The master bedroom is a little too light, so we're having the painter to double check that to make sure it'll be atleast a tad bit darker... sky blue isn't my thing... unless I guess you're painting big puffy white clouds on the ceiling -- now that's cute! ;)

Here's 2 shots of the master bedroom... lot's of windows!

And standing in our room --

Below is the dining area... it's a pretty mustard/brown color Below is a close up of the dining area color...

And below is the master bathroom -- I couldn't fit the tub in the shot...

I took some more pictures of different things but I'll separate them to make it easier to follow.

Got me to thinking... which is quite dangerous somedays! lol

Emily, your comment made my day! I am so excited to hear from other people who are interested in building! Well, heck {in my best southern twang!}, really I'm excited to hear from anyone that enjoys this blog -- because I honestly thought about deleting the whole thing a time or two! Honestly!

While we're not professional home builders... I mean, I can barely hammer in a nail without smashing my finger, ha ha!; we'd love to answer any questions you have about what we've done so far or whatever. I promise you though, that while I'm kinda clueless, my husband is the smarter one of us on the home building front. And he enjoys it when I pick his brain with random questions -- right honey?? ;) So, absolutely!... email us any questions and I'll post the answers here for everyone to read (if anyone is interested!). And if you have a blog, share the link with me so I can check it out too! :) {did I mention my smiley addiction, I'm working curing that!} ;) <-- see, told ya!

The email address that I've set up is "ournewfarmhouse *at sign* yahoo *dot *com" -- all squished in together.

Interior paint colors picked out...

Between lastnight and today we picked out *all* of our interior paint colors. We ended up with 8 different colors; well 7 for the rooms and 1 for the ceilings to make the white trim pop more. It was hard -- especially considering that Porter Paint has like 3 zillion paint colors to choose from. It was a bit overwhelming. Then you've got to make sure the rooms flow nice... and then make sure that the room color matches the fabric, tile, rugs, cabinets, etc that we've already bought... ugh... glad it's over. But I'm excited to see how it'll all turn out.

I just think back to a few years ago when we just had bare land (a cow pasture!), no house at all -- no sheds, no potty even. {Side funny note: our 5 year old daughter was sooo glad when the port-a-potty arrived once building started because that meant she didn't have to pee-pee in the trees anymore. Yep, we're moving on up! lol} We'd drive down every weekend to "the land" and as soon as we'd get off the exit, we'd roll down the windows to breathe the nice country air. I know the neighbors thought we were crazy because we'd just kinda hang out with the kids; running, playing, eating our lunch. We'd stand in the grass where we'd build the house one day (now!), and talk about how exciting it would all be... then drive back home to Nashville (45 long minutes) and hear gun shots & watch drug deals from our front windows. I was scared to let the kids play outside, you never knew what was going down around there. Sad. There were days that I thought about living in a tent would be feasible just to get to live on the land -- thankfully, David talked sense into me. I'm not a tent camping girl {although, I would love to learn to be one!} so tent living would definitely be out of the question. I did look at buying a camper though. ha ha :) Not to ramble on, but this is just such a big dream for us. We have so much to be thankful for.

I will post pictures of the house being painted and the stairs & stair panels going up soon. :)

What we're doing now...

I am so glad to be caught up in making this blog! Now I can actually update in real time instead of months afterwards. :)

This week hasn't been very productive on the home building front. This week the interior painter started priming. But then his wife got sick so he hasn't been able to do much yet {there is major crud going around here!}.

The stair guy was supposed to start today... but then David had to work in Kentucky -- meaning that he couldn't meet with him to go over exactly how he wants things (which we've learned is much better than going over it on the phone; or even worse, just thinking they know what you're thinking! lol). We're hoping that David can meet with him tomorrow morning (being late for work, oops). I was hoping that it would go faster ~ hopefully next week will be better because our deadline of April 30th will be here before you know it!

We did have a few good things happen this week though, although not exactly building related... but house related.

David was able to find the toilet (Kohler "Portrait" series) that matched my garden tub (that we got off Ebay for super cheap!) marked down at Lowes one night after work. The regular price was around $300 for the tank & base (seat part). He found it marked down for $121.00 total. And he also found the matching sink that we couldn't afford... it was $150.00 regular priced -- but he found it at Lowes for $37.00!! Woohoo! :) So now we have a matching tub; sink; and toilet. Here's a pic of the sink, it's really nice... minus the brass fixtures though.






He talked with the manager at our local Lowes too, and he said he'd give us a discount on our tile order if David would let him know exactly what we needed and the amounts needed. We've been working on figuring out our tile designs so we can get that all lined up to order soon. We also decided to do the shower floor with tile too versus a fiberglass bottom - I think it will look nice but hopefully we won't have leaks. We'll buy the rubber (?) matting for under the tile so hopefully it will work. A friend is going to do the tilework for us (he has a business doing tile installation), so hopefully once we're ready that will go quickly.

For my small little accomplishment ~~ I'd been eyeing this certain bolt of fabric at Walmart for awhile. The blue color is exactly what I want for our master bedroom. Well, it just so worked out that when I went to Walmart, they had ALL the fabric for 1/2 off because they're doing away with the entire fabric department! So I bought the whole bolt (like $5!) and will attempt (with my severly lacking sewing skills) to make some cute throw pillows for our bed with them. And I was also able to use it to match up the perfect blue from the zillions of Porter Paint color choices I had. ;)

I hope everyone is having a great week! :)

More trimwork getting done

We are now up to January 2009! ;)

This is a header that is between the living room & kitchen that David created in his head, then wrote down on paper, figured out the measurements and built it himself. It took him a long weekend to get it all just built.

I was a little bit skeptical at first because I thought it might be too "subdivision-nee" (a word we use often, lol) but it turned out so nice and I'm glad he built it. And soon it'll be painted white against a nice wall color (to be determined at this point) so it will really pop.

What do you think?

Do I spy a to do list? :)

I'm usually the list making queen -- David just mentally makes lists in his head and goes from there. I'm so jealous! lol

So when I saw this "to do" list written on one of the studs in the laundry room doorway, I just had to take a picture of it! :)

Random Nov 2008 pictures

The porch ceilings are now sky blue! I wasn't too sure about a blue porch ceiling {David had to talk me into it} but I love it now and think it looks very nice. What do you think?? :)

He also put the trim up on the porches and built the boxes around the columns too. The holes in the ceiling will soon be filled with hanging lights & fans.




Meanwhile, the kids played in the creek beside the house. The weather this year has been weird, so for them to be in the creek on a warm November day was crazy.

Trimwork getting completed!

November 2008 was full of David working on the trimwork inside the house. David found a good local company to buy the trim from (we went with poplar for most everything, with some MDF). They have given us good deals and have delivered it too (almost an hour drive one way!). It's nice to deal with places that you know truly want your business. :)

We decided to put up some fairly tall crown molding (thought it matched the style of house better) but we ran into trouble when we realized it was too big for his saw -- oops! So, he had to figure out how to cut it and make it still fit all together just right. Of course, he figured it out after several attempts -- and it looks great!

He also completed the door trim; window trim and the baseboard trim. We decided to go simple but nice on the window trim. It turned out really good.

We did some small corner blocks on the baseboard trim that gave it a nicer look; I had wanted to do really high baseboards (older style) but that with the taller crown molding didn't look so hot, even on the 9 ft ceilings. It was too closed in feeling for us.

The door trim is fabulous! We used blocks on the bottoms, they look really good.

And David built old style headers above each door that make them stand out. It looks great! Everyone has been really impressed with the work David does, he sure is pretty handy-dandy! Thanks honey for working so hard! ;)

Here are some random trim pictures as of November 2008:

Interior doors going in!

October 2008 was a busy time for the house. David worked as much as he could before winter came and was able to get quite a bit done.

Here are the interior doors getting put in. He had to work on a few on them because they didn't hang right; and the french doors in the man cave were a pain to get in because they were so heavy. But they all looked so nice after he was done! Woohoo! One more big thing down... how many more to go? Ughh, who's even counting anymore?!?? ha ha :)

I love this ceiling!

One of my favorite parts of the outside of the house is the awesome covered porches. We cannot wait to put some rocking chairs and a porch swing out there and get some much needed R&R.

David spent a lot of time making these porch ceilings look absolutely amazing... so here's a peek so far (as of Oct 2008). Don't look down though -- the porch floor isn't done, it's just temporarily thrown up there to give us something to walk on! :)

Drywall time!

The drywall was done in October 2008. We hired a crew to come in and do this to save on time. They were done within a day -- no kidding! I didn't even get down there to take pictures of it going up... by the time I got down there, they were gone already!

So here are some after shots:

the living room/kitchen area is below

the kitchen (where the cabinets will be) is below

the master dream shower is below :)

from the stair landing looking into the bright man cave, lol

the master bedroom is below all drywalled up!

And... last but not least --> because this is my favorite spot in the house, I can't leave it out! :)

The silver lining...

David did a lot of research to make our house as energy efficient as possible (okay, the recessed lighting obsession doesn't count!), so we were excited when he found this thermal foil radiant barrier to help insulate it better. We decided to use this and the nonfaced regular insulation. We used it as a vapor barrier on all the exterior walls; and also in the ceiling, so it acted as both a vapor barrier & a radient barrier too.

He ordered it online and did the installation himself. It was fairly easy to install; I helped cut the pieces to size, the kids stacked them up, and David stapled them all in. It comes in big rolls and is almost like thin foam bubble wrap with a silver liner.

I didn't take a lot of pictures of this step but here's what it looked like after installation (in the ceiling).

Wiring gets started

This was Sept 2008. David did our electrical wiring for the most part by himself. We had tons of wiring to do because of our can light addiction -- we both thought that maybe he'd never get done. ;)

Here are a few random pictures of this very busy month! Once David gets home I'll update exactly what these pictures are of! To me, it's just a bunch of wires -- to him it all makes sense! ha ha :)

Oops! That wasn't right... and where we're at now

I had to edit the post about the windows -- as David reminded me this weekend, we didn't order the windows ahead of time... because we had to have exact measurements (duh!). So scratch that. Sorry, after waiting this long to blog about building the house, it's all running together in my little non-construction girl mind! ha ha :)

And I'm trying to catch up today so there will be alot of posts (sorry!). This week is going to be a big week at the house, so I want to get all caught up to real-time posting soon. That's my goal anyway. Woohoo!

*We decided to hire a guy to finish the stairs so this will allow David to focus on getting our electric ready for the next inspection... so we can hopefully get the HVAC unit in very soon. David has actually worked with this guy and knows that he does a great job. It's so important to get good subs, very very important.

*The interior painter is coming in tomorrow to start priming everything. I was trying to talk David into painting it ourself until I realized we'd have to caulk & paint every piece of trim {crown molding, door, floor, etc} and meet our deadline too (out of the rental house by April 30th), then suddenly it sounded like a good deal to hire someone. ha ha! The painter also painted the exterior so we know he does great work, very detailed. So I've picked out several paint colors but need to get them all 100% decided on -- this is so hard! We usually do brown/gold colors and we're trying to get away from that some... we'll see how that works out. I can pick up to 8 colors based on his price quote, less is even better though b/c we'd save some money.

*The guy who is installing our wood floor is ready when we are, we already have the wood in storage -- it's just a matter of getting it up to the house. We need to pick out our stain color. I like the dark walnut stain. I think it's pretty & classy too; but I want an imperfect old-looking floor... not ~subdivision glossy beautiful~ if that makes sense.

Okay, off to catch up. And thanks to everyone who leaves comments - I love them! ;)

Got the manly workshop slab poured

While I've been looking forward all this time to the house being built ~ DH has been equally excited (or more!) about the shop {AKA: man cave numer two} getting started. The first part of that is getting the slab poured. I don't know a lot about concrete slabs so I really can't elaborate much (whew, what a relief to you & me both!).

But let me take a minute to rant about the guy we hired to get the slab done. This was a HUGE waste of expense. DH & my FIL ended up doing more work than him to make it right (okay, DH has a perfectionist streak too!) because it was jacked up (and not in the good construction kinda "jacked up" way either, lol). This guy obviously had no clue what he was doing! He didn't even have his own tools & equipment! And on top of that ~ he had the nerve to dump trash in our woods! Yep, just backed his truck up to the woodline and dumped trash... like food wrappers, random papers, various other real junk! I told DH that we should dump the stuff back in his yard and then proceed to tell him how wrong he is while bashing his head in -- but luckily DH thought that was a bad idea (thanks honey, you probably saved me a trip to the slammer, ha ha). I am not evil, I promise, I just don't like getting ripped off by some fake concrete guy, then get to play trash girl too! ;) Oh well, on to the story ~

Here are a few pics that I took... as of now (Feb 09) we still don't have a shop up but DH sure has been scouring the papers & internet looking for the "perfect" one -- read that as it'll be coming soon! ha ha ;) I'm hearing that he'll be visiting Morton this coming up weekend to talk about a deal!

This is looking straight on at where the shop front doors will be (looking back into my fav part of the land!).

This is standing in the pretend, invisible workshop looking towards the house... which I'm sure you've figured out all by yourself... ha ha

And remember the wood shed that hubby got a deal on? Well, here it is below... looking kinda shabby & sad, huh? Well, one day it'll be nice. ;) For now it's filled with mice - so that'll keep me away, I'm deathly afraid of mice! - but one day we're going to fix it all up with hardiboard siding.

We got kitchen cabinets!

If you read thru all the ways we saved money, then you read about the kitchen cabinet deal we got with Lowes. The hubby sat down and figured out the layout, then we sat down with the cabinet specialist at the store to order them. The problem is that we really didn't have the storage figured out (oops!), so when the delivery truck with all our cabinets came we had a BIG problem.

This is how our living room looked at the rental house after the delivery guys left... note, that's our entire living room! The couch is now squished against the TV and there's not even a teeny tiny walkway to the master bedroom -- so we had to crawl over the couch to get in our bedroom. Fun, fun! :)

I thought I could handle giving up our living room for a while until I remembered that we wouldn't be able to install them for almost a year (!) -- so we ended up moving them around, stashing some in the garage; some in the storage building; one in the dining room (which I repurposed for now as extra furniture, ha ha); and the 9 foot pantry is in the living room still because it's too tall to go anywhere else! Atleast it's a conversation piece! :)

They're beautiful and I do love them though even if storing them is a pain in the rump at this point. Here's what they look like, of course we had to sneak a peek. The lighter ones are the regular cabinets (cream w/ glaze) and the darker ones (cherry) will make my kitchen island.

This cabinet below is my favorite! Yes, kinda dorky of me to be excited about a cabinet. But these neat pull-out shelves mean no more pots & pans crashing down on me when I need to grab one quickly to cook with. No more strategically stacked pots either -- I can spread them all out nice & neat {if I can keep from burning the bottoms off the ones I have left... a whole notha story!}. Woohoo! ;)

Butter anyone?

I think honestly was one of the hardest choices to make -- exterior paint colors! Although I didn't take pictures of all the colors, we went through atleast 6 colors (easily 6, probably more!). We wanted a khaki color... but somehow the colors never looked the same on the house as they did on the paint swatch -- we ended up with a lot of butter colors - and grey - and darker brown. Whew, I was stressing. Then we ended up finding the *perfect* color of what I'd had in my mind. We had already decided that it would either be this last paint color or we were just doing white. Luckily it worked out. Now David says that he wished we would have gone with the white. Why didn't he say that like 10 paint colors ago? ha ha :)

Here is 2 of our butter choices... they look just alike though, don't they? Some houses look good yellow but this wasn't one of those "good yellow" colors. It was a blah fake butter yellow. I could feel my arteries clogging up just looking at it! ha ha :)

We ended up going with a beige/light khaki color that almost matches the original hardiboard siding color. Yep, after all that stressful paint shopping with countless random, frustrating trips to Lowes/Home Depot/Porter Paint and money spent buying all the colors we thought we liked, we ended up matching the what it looked like in the first place! :) Go figure!