Raise the Roof

So alot has happened on our house this week, even since we were there just yesterday morning. I did a drive by earlier this week and was happy to report that the roof was on the house. Here's a photo from Thursday evening...

On Saturday, my little brother MJ was in Des Moines so we had a chance to catch up with him over brunch and take him through our new digs. To our surprise when we showed up on Saturday around 11am the workers were all there and working away. The windows were there and starting to be placed in their spots, tresses were all in and the framing all secured. We were shocked at how far they had come but again, if they are working 6-7 days a week, maybe we shouldn't be so surprised!
Here are a few pics from Saturday.

This is the main floor living room.

This is the basement, we could not be more thrilled with the daylight windows and super tall ceilings!

MJ looking out our master bedroom windows. This is where our bed will go, framed by the windows!

The view from the master bedroom windows Mikey was looking at.

This is the framing upstairs from the master bedroom.

Caught Brian real quick before he headed back downstairs and that Mike's buddy, Brett.

Outside on Saturday AM

 Can you tell the difference? It's kind of like the Photo Hunt game we used to play in college, only with a picture of a house and not of...well, you know what the photos were of. ;-)

Outside on Sunday AM

 If you guessed that the windows were in, contractor front door is in, additional Tyvek wrapped, you would be correct. We are SOOOOOO relived to see it all enclosed. The weather can rain all it wants now since it gave us a few weeks of some good hot, dry days to get to this point. Looks like a real house, right?!

The other question I have been getting a lot of lately is "What color is the outside going to be?" I don't really have an answer for that question yet as we are still trying to decide. I know I do not want beige/brown tones because both neighbors on each side of us have beige homes. Our builder's home is a blue/gray that is very pretty but being on the same street as them, I'm not sure we want to completely copy them. Another option would be to go in the green family. At some point we will work with the exterior painters to get some ideas. Here's what the exterior will eventually look like. The floor plan on our house is flipped from theirs because of the way the lot is but you get the idea...Can't wait until ours looks like this! Any ideas for exterior colors?

Ta-ta for now! XOXO - j

Wrap your crap

Normally I have the hardest time coming up with a blog post title but today was easy…I can proudly say that our house is wrapped up in Tyvek, by DuPont, Pioneer’s parent company. So glad I can do my tiny portion to keep the ginormous company I work for afloat. Since the workers were there on Sunday, we didn’t want to bother them so we just did quick drive by photos. Sorry, you don’t get any photos of us in all of our Sunday glory this week! 

We then passed the spec house and they were having an open house so we decided to go in. Brian was in gym shorts and boat shoes and I looked a wreck as we walked in next to some people dressed in their Sunday best. Anyways, the cabinets they are putting in are delayed so they didn’t have a everything finished (the cabs they ordered for this one are a knotty rustic look) but the trim was on, doors were on and everything was painted. It gave us that much more of a visual of what our place will look like since it has pretty close to the same layout as ours. Bill, the builder, just happened to be there so we got to chat with him for a bit which was fun! He was taking us around and showing us some stuff and giving us ideas. He told us he would be calling us next week to start picking out some finishes and do a walk through. We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other soon, he said!  Bill took Brian to the basement and figured out where we will put all of our electronics components in our basement. Turns out under the stairs is not the best option like we thought. It’s really refreshing to work with someone that is so interested in our ideas and willing to make things work so it will be perfect for our needs. Not sure what comes next but I’m excited to find out. Can’t wait till we can put a roof on it. XOXO - j

Bedrooms, bars and drive by's

I couldn't resist a quick drive by after the gym yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to see the framing work progressing up to the 2nd story. We are going to have some bedrooms soon - Woot-Woot!

Another thing I can't resist looking through over and over and over again is our cabinet drawings that we got today! Cabinets have the longest lead time and since we are basically copying our builder's house on this one - we don't need to meet with the cabinet people. This is the first time we got to see the actual mock up drawing of Brian's beloved bar in the basement...now it won't be quite up to par with Shorty's in downtown Des Moines but I think it will do for our very own basement bar! ;-) Honestly, Brian is in LOOOOOOOOOOVE with the drawing of the bar. I am just happy I have a place to hang my stemware and add a little vino! And I'm happy that he is so happy with this because, according to him, this is the only thing he has say over in the whole entire house...muhahahaha! If only that were true......he has more opinions than I can handle. Back to the bar...it will be a dark wood, same color as the lower cabs in the kitchen. They call it Smoke finish...sexy!

Don't mind the drawing to the left, that won't be there. Those are actually our cabs for above our pantry nook - which is upstairs off the kitchen.

Guess we need to be on the look out for some bar stools! We are coming right along...can't wait to have ya'll over for a cocktail at Brian's basement bar! XOXO -j

We have WALLS!

Just 8 days after our last visit to the lot, we now have walls and the bottom 2 floors are framed up completely. They haven't framed our 2nd story where the bedrooms will be but we were shocked to pull up to this on Monday night:

View from the street behind our house

We were so excited as we walked through the entire first floor...well, Brian headed straight for the basement first. Finally we are able to visualize where things are going to be and we couldn't be more stoked about it! Here's Brian on the landing that heads downstairs to the basement.

The stairs to the 2nd story will be above these stairs and that will be a big picture window behind where Brian is standing.

And here's me by the fireplace in the main living room. Gorgeous, right?! The plywood look is really in right now! ;-)

There will be two windows on both sides of the fireplace. You can see they need to cut those out yet but they are framed in.

We also stopped by our friends/neighbors Josh and Brooke's new house on Monday night. They bought a really gorgeous place and are loving it and the neighborhood. Made me quite jealous they are all moved in and didn't have to deal with the 2 move scenario that we have. Oh well...it will all be worth it, I suppose. We are so excited to have them a stones throw away from us and are already planning who's house we will watch the Iowa away games at. I'm guessing they will get majority of those games this fall! 

Here are just a few other photos I took of the framed up house.

That pesky afternoon sun is going to be brutal!

The garage and front door!

It's been hot, hot, hot so I'm sure these contractors are working their hineys off and not really digging the heat but we sure do appreciate their extra effort. Let's get this baby closed up so they can work without being weather dependent! Can't wait to see their progress in another couple of days! Stay tuned...XOXO - j

Random Chair redo

Just a quick post about my random chair re-do. I didn't even know this little guy existed until we moved and it randomly appeared. Apparently it had been shoved in a corner of our basement and was used to stack stuff on rather than it's real purpose...to be sat on. Poor little guy...I took him under my wing to get him spiffed up and get me some experience with painting chairs (much trickier than a dresser) but really because I had a little bit of left over paint so I thought it would be a quick job. And quick it was - I started this over the weekend and by Tuesday I had the 3rd coat of paint dry and the seat cushion recovered and attached. Viola!

Before...sad, lonely and bored

After...happy and cute!

Not knowing where this guy will go in our new place, I chose a fabric that would coordinate with our current bedding in the master bedroom. The fabric was $5 so I can easily replace to match anything depending on where it ends up. For now, it's hiding out in our master.

I have a few more art projects I would like to get finished before we move so I'm sure there will be more random posts like this one! XOXO - j

New Hobby

I know...2 blog posts in one day has to be a record but I just finished this tonight and I'm so dang excited about it I just have to share! Plus I have a busy week traveling to Tipton, IN on Monday and Hedrick, IA on Thursday for work and then leaving on Friday for a weekend on the river in Guttenburg, IA. I know - real exotic locations! Anyway, if it didn't happen tonight, I didn't know when I would ever get this up.

So, now that I have started with that, I should also tell you more about how my little hobby came to fruition. Let's go back to summer 2004...I was a fresh Drake grad, barely making enough money to buy my groceries and afford my $350 rent so there certainly wasn't much room in my minuscule budget for furniture. My mother was so kind to go to an estate sale and pick me up some bedroom furniture. Ever since I received this furniture I knew it really could use a spiff up but never really had the space, time or vision to really make it happen. I talked on and off about painting this dresser for years while I lived in Altoona...to the point Brian stopped believing it would EVER happen. (Proved him wrong - HA!)

Dresser with it's retro knobs - Before pic

Fast forward to summer 2011 when Brian and I moved to our current place...the movers found a bit of white mold on some of our furniture that was in our basement (from our sump pump that stopped working last fall) so rather than put that stuff in our finished basement, the dresser went into the garage until it was void of the mold. Upon further inspection, the white mold was barely visible on this piece so I googled how to get rid of it and after a little concoction of bleach and water, the piece was G2G (good to go). I went out to Sherwin Williams and picked up some primer, paint and new brushes and I was set to get started. I did get a few tips from the internet and a friend from work and went along my merry way. Brian helped with the sanding block until he got bored and then I took over. Next went the primer...and the slowly went the first coat, wait 4 hours for it to dry, then the second coat, wait 4 hours for it to dry and then the 3rd and final coat. Obviously this didn't all happen in one day or even one week, I did this over the course of probably 3 weeks. I've been searching out the perfect handles and since the sweet retro handles were an odd size, I had to find some that would cover the old holes and drill some new holes. Finally I found the perfect ones at Menard's but the Clive location only had one in stock but they told me the Altoona store had 36. Figures...after I leave that town, they have what I need! After our long bike ride in Altoona on Saturday, we stopped at the Menard's there and picked up the rest of the handles I needed. Brian helped me tonight to drill the new holes and put the new hardware on. This was probably the most grueling part of the project, believe it or not! We were in the garage and it had to be still at least 90 degrees at 7pm. Brian was sweating bullets and cursing me but we got it done and moved the finished dresser to the downstairs bedroom! So, here's the after shot!

Dresser AFTER the makeover!

You can't tell in the photo but the hardware is oiled bronze and of course I love that with the creamy off white paint. I used Decor White by Sherwin Williams and I wasn't so sure of the color when I first started but I'm super happy with the way it turned out. This lovely piece has a matching, shorter version that is next on my hit list. We might need to set up a workbench in our garage at the new house...looks like this girl has a new hobby! Have any of you ever painted furniture? Got any ideas or tips to share? I'd love to hear from ya! Goodnight ya'll! XOXO - j

Chillin' in the basement

Our weekly trip to the lot happened today, Sunday, and we got to spend some quality time in our freshly poured concrete basement. Here's a pic of Brian hanging out in what will be his favorite place in the house...his bar!

This is about where the bar will be...behind Brian is the downstairs bathroom which is all plumbed up.

 I got to spend some time in the "canning" (cold storage) room...

And we even got to a few new frogs for pets!

As you can see the contractors are making progress. The tresses have been delivered and are ready to start the framing...should have framed up walls in no time!

Here are just a few other photos from our Sunday stroll.

View from the back of the house

Side view

Brian in the 3rd garage stall.

 That's all for now...hope you all had a good weekend! XOXO - j

"The plumbers were there."

Yesterday we spent the morning touring the to-be-finished-in-August spec house that is a few streets away from our place. It has a very similar layout to ours so it was so nice to actually be within the walls and get to get a feel for the space. None of the finishes (floors, cabinets, trim) were in yet but it was still very helpful for my parents and Brian's mom to get to see the general layout. They provided us with some really great ideas that we still need to mull over from each of their own building, buying and living experiences. Brian's dad was at the Good Guy's car show so he didn't make it through the spec house or to our lot with us on Saturday morning. I found out on Friday night that the plumbers had been there this week from my dad through a casual conversation that went a little something like this:

"It will be interesting to see the progress from last week when we see the lot tomorrow." - Julie
"The plumbers were there." - Dad (Wayne)
"How do you know???!!!" - Julie
"Tom talked to the plumbers." - Dad (Wayne)
"WHAAAAT??!" - Julie

Because it was so hot on Thursday, when Tom was supposed to be at the car show, he decided to take a break from the heat and drive by our lot. Being a plumber by trade himself it was ironic that the plumbers were there working when he stopped by. He had a good chat and was happy to report that they were doing everything they were supposed to...and now they know someone's watching! Thankfully we got a good report that the plumbers were doing an excellent job - even up to Tom Day standards! Here's what they accomplished this week.


The plumbing lines are ran. The door ahead leads to the excavated "cold" storage room under the front stoop. This is our "canning" room according to my mother. If only I knew how to "can" anything! Maybe we'll store some wine and cigars down there! 








Brian walking the tight rope that is our foundation.

 Overall we are very happy with their progress and had a great visit with both sets of our parents this weekend. We even snapped a few pictures on our "driveway" and our "deck"!


This is where the deck will be.




Here we are on the to-be driveway.

 And for those out of towners or those that haven't been in this area, here's a few photos of our street so you can see what our neighborhood looks like.



Looking to the south from our front door and Mike and Kelli's house.




Looking to the north from our front door, our caldesac.



View straight out the front door, with Timmer's house straight ahead through the undeveloped lots across the street.



So, that's all for now! Have a good 4th of July! XOXO - j