House and Spring Updates!

Hi friends! 

Recently Rosetta asked me if it was summer yet.  When I responded not quite yet, she told me she was glad, because she didn't want summer to end.  That's exactly how I feel!  I'm so, so excited we will get to enjoy summer in our new house and hopefully be somewhat settled by the time school starts back up.  I love everything about summer, and even though it's not officially summer, we sure have been enjoying many of the things that come with it!  

Our new home is almost finished... we are hoping to be moving in in two weeks, BUT I have not gotten out the moving boxes yet... meaning, I know there are plenty of things that can still push that date out.  ;-)  We are still spending weeks in the city, where we enjoy swimming at the pool every chance we get, and weekends with my parents, where we mostly make about a hundred trips to our house to see if anything has changed - ha!   

 

There's  been a lot of porch sitting with all this warm weather...

Baby calves, ducks, and chicks...

 

 Time at the flower garden preparing for a hopefully busy flower season (and as you can tell from the grass, lots of mowing for the boys)...

(My first bouquet of the season... nothing says cheerful like a bouquet of sunflowers!)

 And lot of ranger rides around the farm... or just down to our house (haha). 

 

 Since I last posted, there has been a lot of activity at our house.  In the above photo, the brick was (finally) finished and Justus was working on bringing power and water all the way to the house.

 Once the brick was finished, concrete was poured on the two porches, columns were built, and the hardie siding went up. 

  After months of staring into a deep, empty front porch, it was pretty exciting to actually be able to walk out the front door! 

 Just yesterday the hardie siding and columns were painted and this week the HVAC system was installed.  Natural gas was also brought to the house, which we're using for everything we can (heat in the winter, stove, fireplace, and grill). 

 Other than painting the open rafter tails and doors, all that's left for the exterior is the porch railing and brackets we're having installed on some of the gables!  I was so excited to see the siding painted!  All these little touches just continue to bring the house together and as I told Justus yesterday, it's such a huge relief.  There have been an unbelievable amount of decisions to make, and I have worried so much about making decisions we'll be unhappy with.  The exterior paint color is Shoji White by Sherwin Williams, and I LOVE it.  We really wanted a white front porch, but it couldn't be a stark white, and this color turned out to be the perfect amount of creamy, especially when paired with the brick.  

As I'm sure you can imagine, there have been packages arriving and arriving and arriving... lights, faucets, more lights (will they ever end?!).  

My favorite room in the house is the kitchen!  We had carrara marble installed for the perimeter cabinets.  Choosing a countertop material was so hard... I really wanted marble but was afraid to commit.  In the end, it was Justus who pushed me to get it (get what you love!) and once I saw it in the kitchen, it just brought everything together.  I'll let you know how I feel after living with it, but we did choose a honed slab and had our fabricator apply a sealer with a 15 yr. warranty for stains.  However, I'm preparing myself for the inevitable etching... (and any tips are welcomed). 

 In some ways, you could say I planned the entire kitchen around this backsplash tile.  Our contractor's wife told me about it and I loved it the minute I saw it and knew it was perfect.  It's a soft white tile and I chose a very light gray grout for a soft contrast.  

 Also, here's the built in cabinet I asked our cabinet maker to build!  Oh my goodness, a picture can't even capture the beauty of this piece!  He was really able to create this piece based on all the descriptions I gave him and make it even better than I ever dreamed.  Can't you just hear me... "At my previous house, I had this gorgeous old built in cabinet in my dining room... I want it to look old... Can you add some drawers on the bottom?... It needs to have latches..."   Haha!  And getting the proportions right too... this piece is 9' tall!

My sweet father-in-law (who made our gorgeous countertops in our previous house) made us our island countertop out of old reclaimed oak and he and Justus just installed it!  This wood adds so much warmth to our kitchen, which otherwise has a lot of cool colors.  He spent hours working on this countertop for us and it is so beautiful and has so much character.   It means the world to me to have something so special and beautiful in our new house. I'll show you a close up soon! 

In other areas of the house, we have toilets, bathroom countertops, faucets, lights and the trim was recently finished too (we have real stairs now!).  There's not much left to finish in the interior... just painting the walls and a little more trim work.   Oh, and a TON of clean up! 

 Hope you are having a wonderful June!  Do you have any fun summer plans???