Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye to our old house was, and still is, really sad for me.  It took me until now to be able to write this because every time I thought about it, I just teared up.  In the spirit of complete honesty (remember, I'm writing this blog as a way for us to remember this time, even the stuff that's not so fun), writing this is still bringing me to tears.

The last day we had our house, we toured the rooms with the kids, reminiscing and telling stories about each room.  We took lots of photos and even let the kids take some so they could show us what they thought was important about the old house.  Here you go--the old house through the kids eyes!

TV stand

Fireplace.  We did read lots and lots of books here in the winter!

A doorknob? Who know why this is important?!

Carpet.  This particular room is the office.

Stripes in the main level bathroom.

Of course, Marea thought her own reflection in the dirty mirror was worth remembering!

Stairs

The sandbox.  This does hold many fond memories for all of us.

Another doorknob.

And a lock on a window?!? Now the kids were just being silly!

The front door

Marea told me to pose in the old house, thus the silly hand-on-hip position

A wall.

And lastly, more stairs.

Alright, so the kids photos are a little, well, kiddish but it's so sweet to see their point of view.  Here's  the adult side of things.

The pantry door where we've recorded the kids heights each year on their birthday.

The kids standing by the door.  We've got a mark for every year we've lived here.  Since we couldn't take the door with us, we got a new board and marked their heights on that. I have a project up my sleeve for the board once we move into the new house.

The dining/family room area.  We spent so much time here.

Front door and entry.

Reverse view of family room/dining/kitchen.

The deck. Man, I loved the deck.  I am seriously missing having one now.

Our bedroom.

Evan is his old room.

Marea's old room

My favorite tree.  An Ash--when we first planted it, the tree was about half this size.

Our small but lovely garden.

Basement rec room.

The kids showing how they feel about moving.

Waving goodbye from the front stoop

My beloved deck.  Miss sitting out here so much.

Picking the last goodies we'll ever get from this garden--plenty of cucumbers!

M by Evan's sunflowers

The swingset. Sad to leave this, although it wasn't used tons.

The view of the park from the side of the house--great view!

Evan's bball hoop. He is desperately missing this.

About 3 weeks after we said goodbye to all these beloved  places and spaces, the kids and I drove past the old house.  As we neared the house, Marea told me her heart was sinking.  And then she told me this. "Mom, I feel like a log.  Like something is chopping me down from inside.  And I'm slowly falling until there's nothing left but the outlining."  Um, wow--pretty profound for someone who's six!  That pretty much sums up how I feel about the old house, too. 

While I know my heart will always hold some sadness over leaving this house and all it has meant for our family,  I'm hopeful that as the new house progresses, our excitement will build and the sadness  will fade to simply happy memories.

Details, Schmetails

Holy details, people! We are feeling slightly bombarded with a lot of small details that we need to make decisions about.  Things like which house numbers to put on the front of the house.  Seems like it should be easy-peasey, but it's not! I kind of like these, but I haven't seen them in real life, just on the internet.  It's kind of hard to choose house numbers based on the internet, but then again, they're just house numbers, so maybe it's no big deal?

These are good, too, and are supposed to fit with more of the craftsman style feel our home will have. 

 

But again, they're just house numbers, so maybe it really doesn't matter much.

And then there are the cabinetry details, which are really fun to pick out, but I'd never thought about some of these specifics before.  Things like do we want trim wrapping the end cabinets? Which drawers do we want the trim wrap on? What drawer/cabinet pulls do we like? A 3 or 4 drawer stack?

 

 

We like how the end of the island has trim around the edges.  Oh, and I like the drawer pulls, too.  But so many little decisions that will change the overall feel of the house!

At the same time we're trying to figure out those things, we realized that when we picked out this fireplace stone,

 We hadn't picked out a tile for the hearth area, to transition from the carpet to the fireplace.  We were envisioning something like this

Not exactly these colors, but a general style/layout similar to this

 then when we asked Marilyn she said it should be black.  Black? Maybe to go with the fireplace? So I looked up photos of that, and realized that we did NOT want black. It would look weird next to all the whites/creams above.  I emailed Marilyn and she realized she'd made a mistake, but if I hadn't thought through that small detail, it would have made a huge impact in a really ugly way!


And we still have to figure out the plumbing fixtures (next Monday), lights (very soon--need to schedule that appointment), millwork (we've got samples to look through) as well as a thousand other things.  Right at this moment, Eric is researching where we should put the tv in the family room--above the fireplace or not.  See? Tons of details.  So many that right now, I feel like we're drowning in the details, but I know all this hard work will be worth it in the end.

Selections Review

After school today, we had a short but sweet meeting to review our selections.  Remember the selections from this post and this post?  I love selections.  I think in another life, or maybe another career, I could have been an interior designer. For reals, people, I could have.  Maybe when I retire from teaching--maybe.  Anyway, we went back to this place,

and we started off with a few questions I had written down (see my sticky note below?  I couldn't live without sticky notes!) as well as a few items we needed to review. After about 2 minutes the table looked like this.

It's covered in all our house selections goodness.  Today our task was to choose our fireplace stone, look at the granite options again, review paint selections and a couple other details.  We started off with fireplace stone and quickly narrowed it down to this beauty:

We knew we wanted stacked stone and there were only three options. Marilyn, the interior designer, pulled out our carpet and paint swatches so we could see which stone would work with those choices.  And the winner is above! We like it because the colors are similar to the rest of the house--light, bright, and white, with some neutral tans thrown in for good measure. Here's another shot of the fireplace stone with the granite choice.

The granite colors tie in really well to those in the stacked stone.  The fireplace and granite will actually be fairly close together in the house, so it was important for them to tie together visually.  They're both very creamy, warm and light, which is exactly the feel we are hoping to achieve.  Speaking of granite, we weren't super in love with our granite choice, so another thing we wanted to accomplish today was to look at it again. 

And we were happily surprised to see how much we do like it!  The true color is actually really hard to capture on camera, but it's a creamy (not yellowy) base with lots of darker accents (this should go well with our darker wood floors) and some white, too, which will be perfect with our white cabinets and trim.  We're happy we went to look again to confirm our decision on this.

We finished up with a few more details and then we were done.  The kids did come with us, but they were kept busy with the Ipads.

What on earth would we do without Ipads to keep the kids busy at times like these?  Kidding, of course!

Marea was also entertained by this wall of beauty,

and so was I.  The girl oohed and ahhed over all the tiles, declaring how colorful or smooth or slippery they were.  Hey, maybe she'll become an interior designer and then I can live vicariously through her!  Nah, she's definitely headed down more of a diva path.

Anyway, we've got cabinet selections later this week, plus the framing continues.  Lots going on for our new home.  Hooray!

Going Up

Things are moving and shaking out at the new house!  It's going up so quickly.  So, so, so very excited!  Today the house is looking like this:

Front view of the house

See how it's resembling a house?  A real house? The house we've been dreaming of? So stinkin' exciting, as Marea would say!  It looks so small from the above photo, but it's not--it's the perfect size.  Here's a little tour for you:) 

The window you see in the front of the house, where Eric and Marea are standing in the above photo, will be the office.  The view will be right out to the golf course, like so:

Office window overlooking the golf course

Of course, you'll have to look past our Pilot parked in the street to see the golf course beyond that, but normally the view won't be obstructed by our vehicle.  Eric is drooling over this view already. I adore the large picture window.

Behind the office will be the family room, kitchen and dining areas.  Here's a shot of those areas:

It's looking bigger from this angle!

The room on the left of the above photo will be the family room.  Marea is standing in the future kitchen area, and beyond that will be the dining area.  It's bumped out about 5 feet.  Can't you just picture those large windows already?  They're gorgeous!  Here's what the view will be:

This one is the looking out the family room window.  It's hard to tell with the shadow, but we'll be able to see a huge part of our backyard, the pine trees, and the corn field beyond.  Here's a different view of the family room.

Marea is standing close to that large picture window I just mentioned.  On the far wall, there are two transom windows, and a fireplace will be built in between those.  The stairs will be to the left of this room, but they haven't even begun putting those in yet, which explains that large empty space in the middle of the house.  Here's a better view of the incomplete stairs:

That big hole will soon be the stairway.  You can also sort of see the transom windows that are in the family room, although one of them is kind of covered with Tyvek.  The other long narrow window on the right is in the foyer area, to let in some natural light.  Oh, this is a view of the side of the house, the side that faces north or the right side of the  house if you're facing the front.

The view from the back of our house:

Just to help orient you (or confuse you even more, depending on how well or poorly I've explained everything!), the window on the right side main level is the family room--same large window with the view I talked about a few photos earlier.  Eric and Marea are standing in the dining area.  Love, love, love that huge window again!  Here's an interior view of the dining area:

The large window is where Eric and Marea were and the doorway on the right will lead out to our deck.  This area is one of my most favorite in the house--the bump out, the huge window and door with all the light.  Can't wait for this!

And an updated basement view:

This is looking into the rec room area of the basement.  The patio door that leads into the backyard is in this room.  This room is on the left, under Eric and Marea in this photo:

It doesn't look so small now, huh?  Marea and Eric help put it in perspective.  And somehow, Miss Marea seemed to work her way into almost every photo! Evan was at soccer so he wasn't there for this photo shoot, but he did get a chance to see the house after his practice was over.

Eric and Marea in the office window

 That pretty much sums up where we are as of today.  Since it's just Monday, we're hoping most of the framing will be done by the end of this week so we can see the whole house.  I cannot wait to see the owner's bedroom and bath! Do you have a favorite yet?