A Juicy House Update! (and a few extra things to note)

But two side notes real fast.

1 – Today, exactly 10 years ago David and I started dating. Crazy, I know. Here’s a picture around my 16th or 17th birthday.

Last year wasn’t fun for us. But like the quote says, “If life was easy, where would all the adventure be?”

And here’s us today, right now, while I type this. In our jammies with all kinds of junk in the background.  

I love you babe! Here’s to many many many more decades together!

2 - I know, I left you hanging on that last post when I said, Up Next: The Gold Rug how to. Well, I might have jumped the gun on that a little bit. You see, I should have given it a trial run before I posted about it. Although I LOVED it when it was first done, this is how it looks now. Only a week or two later.

See the thing about Pinterest is something may look beautiful and you might pin it to your “To DIY” board…but the reality is, some things just aren’t practical.

Word of advice. Don’t spray paint your welcome mat to look like these cute babies because it won’t hold up.

via

I guess unless you’re planning to use it as wall art?

via

If you’ve sprayed a rug and it held up, do share your secret please!

*****

So, next up, the exciting part! And what is now old news to my friends on Facebook...

We are under contract on a house!!

The teensy bit of information I’m leaving out is that there isn’t a house…yet.

In fact, here’s what our house looks like so far. Isn’t it gorge?

Well, at least it will be. In approximately 4 months when it’s done being built!

Holy meatballs Batman. This girl is excited!!

So how’d we get here?

We’ve been House Hunting heavily for probably going on 8 months now. We’ve had a lot of great places slip through our fingers for one reason or another. We’ve been discouraged, we’ve been sad, we’ve been mad. There’s a lot of emotions involved in house hunting. They don’t usually show that on House Hunters. Those people are always happy.

One of the houses we fell in love with was this brand new picturesque craftsman located in the same area that we bought our first house.

A great area, just farther out than we wanted to be again. However, after so many months of looking, we decided we’d need to compromise on our wish list and we’d start with location. The drive isn’t my favorite thing, but we’re still pretty close to everything not to mention will be living in the same neighborhood as SEVERAL of our close friends. And technically it’s only 7 minutes past the neighborhood that we really wanted to live in. So small fries if you ask me!

Anywho, we absolutely loved the house, but it was a 3/2 and we were really hoping for a 4 bedroom with room to grow. And don’t forget, I have a lot of junk. However, we figured we could make it work and seriously thought about getting it. We spent an evening at the house with our realtor, both sets of parents, my brother, and uncle who was in town, checking out the house. It also happened to be during one of the monsoons we had. Everyone thought the house was pretty, but we all couldn’t help but be concerned with the back yard, which was absolutely FLOODED. I’m not talking marshy, I’m talking let’s invest in a boat cause we’re gonna need it. Thank the good Lord above that the night we went to see it happened to be at that time because we never would have known we were buying a lake house, but it wasn’t really on a lake.

We decided against that house but asked the realtor of that place if the builder would be doing any 4 bedrooms in the neighborhood…

And now we fast forward. We are here today, under contract to build our dream home with the same builder, in the same neighborhood! It’s going to have a lot of the same features of the house up top, but it’ll be larger with a different floor plan.

This house isn’t fully customized or designed by us, but we picked a plan we liked that he had that would work, and tweaked it to our liking. I put a good hurting on the existing kitchen and made some swap-a-roos but I LOVE the end result. I am probably most excited about this area of the house. Oh and the island!

I don’t cook, but I love to eat. Duh. So naturally the kitchen will be my favorite! I am giddy over having an island that I can blog at, eat from, decorate cakes on…you name it.

Somehow David talked me into adding a bonus room above the garage. Which will bring the house to a 4/2 plus a finished bonus room. i.e., we’ll never grow out of it. I truly hope it’s our forever home. Or at least long long long time home. Have I mentioned I loathe moving?

Oh and I’m finally getting dream come true of a rocking chair front porch. And a nice covered back porch for that matter.

If things go as planned, we should be closing a few days before Christmas this year. Merry Christmas to us, we’re buying a house!

Here’s a picture of the front elevation. I am smitten.

Staring at a blueprint of your future house has got to be pretty close to an ultrasound of your unborn child. You see the potential of what the house is gonna be, and you can’t wait for it to be birthed! To hold it, and pet it, and paint it. Okay, things are getting weird.

We really, really loved the color scheme on the previous house, and are planning to go with the same colors. Why make it hard on ourselves picking new ones if it’s already been done? David actually decided he wanted the same exterior colors. I didn’t object because they’re really nice and work well together. But that’s not to say I wouldn’t love something a little sassier! But I’m good at making compromises, which will be happening A LOT between the two of us during this process.

So now that you are up to speed on the latest and greatest, get ready for lots of progress pictures over the next 4 months. When we get close to the end I’ll probably hold off on updates so I can do a BIG REVEAL. And sorry, it’s not gonna happen in 30 minutes, HGTV style.

Have I mentioned I’m so excited?!!!

Sorry to my Pinterest followers. I was up til midnight last night blowing up my boards!

PS, not house related - If you’re the praying type, I could really use some prayers for safe travels for my upcoming flight to California. I’ll be there for work but am having a lot of nervous thoughts as I prepare for a long cross country flight. I like flying, there’s nothing else like it. But that’s not to say I don’t stay nervous the whole time!