Long summer nights...even longer blog posts.

I can only thank my lucky stars that we are only months away from being in the new house! Thankfully my neighbors quickly got rid of the extremely small cage of roosters and chickens they had stashed in their back yard... but this was only after a few 5:30 am roosterings to wake us up. I can now say I hate living downtown. It is just not for me.

I know I am complaining but with this heat and putting in some good hours at work I am officially exhausted. To my family and friends who are reading this: No, there is not a baby on the way. I am just tired... but I cant say that it hasn't crossed my mind that if I was preggers I would totally get out of moving haha :) Nope just a lack of baths and not being able to drop the A/C to just above freezing my sleep has been all out of whack!

Things are getting done on the homefront though! They finished our drywall! The house is so silent now! No outside noise, no road noise, nothing! Its wonderful. I think that I will start to bring a blow up mattress and just sleep in here.... sure there isn't any a/c but at least I wont have to worry about fire trucks and roosters :) 

Also helping to eliminate any noise would be our new fence! 

This is what our backyard used to look like.... (yes we took Remmington James out to the house, but I am hoping that he wont remember... but he did take his first poop there) 

This is as the back part was going up, at that point we were still missing the last section of the fence.

Just to give you an idea of big this fence really is I am 5'3 (awkward photo only because I felt like I was in a police line up when I looked up) This fence is huge! Its all being custom built since we wanted it to be 8 feet tall. Its a beautiful cyprus, board on board construction! OOOHHHHH!!!! Privacy! I cant wait!!!! We also cant see the houses or our own house from the post office anymore because of this glorious fence. I am so happy! Yes, making it taller cost us a few more pennies (ha) but its going to be worth it! 

Thanks Gabriel! 

They also sprayed all the texture on the walls! The whole house was blue inside from the protective plastic over the windows and doors... yes, I know the quality of my photo is bad but its on average 96 degrees at 6:00pm here in Florida and this house was SWELTERING! 

We started on round 2 of paint samples, sadly we will not be going with a blue color or any color that might resemble blue. Our neighbor who lives in a little shack house has blue paint, I will not match my neighbors. We also eliminated the top color since that is too close to one of our other neighbors. Grey is going to be our jam! I know, I love that color but you can offset grey with almost any color! Green plants will look nice with it and maybe some blue for the water feature near the front door! See! Its not going to be totally monotoned! 

We also received our first and second orders from Overstock.com! I am usually not a fan of buying things online when I havent been able to even see them.... but they have a great return policy! 

My first order was a couple of these guys! They are for the master bathroom! They are so sparkly and so... me! Ha on a serious note I did read the reviews before hand and knew I needed to put each and every strand of crystals on this fixture but I guess I just wasn't prepared for how long it would really take. For now I just did one. Only 7 more to go! woohoo! :/ I know I will probably regret buying these the day I finally have to clean them but for now I am in love! 

Our second purchase was this light! I was going to go with something with a little more funk to it for the foyer area but The Hubs really loved how this went along nicely with the front door! The assembly on this was a cake walk compared to the last set of lights! The coloring is beautiful and we are both really happy with the way this came! 

While we are on the subject of spending money... We bought our couches! Yay! We headed up to Ashley furniture and Ikea (about an hour away, get with the times furniture stores its just too far to drive!) 

We walked in and headed straight to our couch we showed everyone previously sat down and relaxed.... then we decided to just take another look around. Confession: I secretly hate furniture sales people! If they would just say hello and then back off it wouldn't be such a big deal! This woman that we worked with this time walked up behind us as we were walking somewhere else and said "Uh I'm trying to greet you!" Never in all my years of customer service have I ever given or gotten a greeting like that. At that point I decided to let The Hubs handle the talking. ((shaking my head)) after we got her out of our hair (if you walk really fast they will think you aren't there to spend money and will leave you alone) we found another set of couches we really liked! 

Yay! look at the nail head accents! Thankfully it passed all tests including the Tony test! (The Tony test is when my Brother-in-law comes over to the house can he lay down comfortably? Yes, my 6'11 brother can lay down in comfort! side note I'm not sure hes that tall but hes pretty damn tall) So The Hubs found the angry sales lady and told her we wanted the couches. She started the paperwork for us and then ran back over to show us the "features" by this time we had spent a good 20 min looking over everything on the couch, frame, cushions, zippers, you name it we looked it over so we knew the "features" maybe she did this because she was feeling bad that she had written us off so soon, who knows but we all just nodded while I tuned her out and looked on at other displays. We payed, took our paperwork, and left. We may or may not have picked up the pace of our walking on the way out haha just incase she wanted to show us more "features"! 

We then headed to Ikea, where we picked up our sink and base for one of the guest bathrooms. The clean lines and big drawers were a huge plus for this set since we dont have a linen closet in that bathroom. 

Here are the boys going into man mode to haul our stash to the register! The box that my husband is carrying is about 5 feet long we originally had this laying sideways on the cart but we started to get some funny looks from other customers who were about to have their ankles pulled out from under them as we passed. haha! They look silly only because 1. We didn't spend hours in Ikea and 2. We chugged Red Bulls before we even went inside! All in all it was a great day of shopping! I always have a blast with these two though and I am lucky enough to get to work with both of them everyday! 

Okay I'm sure I have made your eyes hurt by now from all the reading you have done so I will leave today posting :) More pictures to come later! 

One day to another

Hello! Welcome back! My what a week it has been and its only Tuesday! 

While everyone was sleeping a few mornings ago they used a crane to bring in all of our drywall! 

Okay so I was possibly the only one sleeping but The Hubs had to head over to the house to meet with someone or another (I'm sorry if I dont remember I have been stretched thin lately and my mind is going) Thankfully he snapped these pics for me to share! 

By the time he got to the house they were already halfway done with unloading! I didnt know it would take that amount of effort to bring in all of the sheets! 

This may look like a photo from my last posting but I'm sure you didnt notice that The Hubs was leaning on the one of the many giant piles of drywall (maybe its sheet rock). There was some in the office, master bedroom, and here in the living room. Seriously a massive amount of this stuff! 

So today was the day to begin hanging the drywall (gypsum board) we pulled up to the house and there was still a large crew of guys working... oh did I forget to mention that today was also the day for the Stucco?! Yea, so... we had to walk in the back of the house...

I cant even begin to tell you how long I held my breath walking up to our back door... 

I cried. 

Yep. 

Literally cried. I have never felt such a strong emotion completely wash over me like this! Sure its not complet but it has come so far from the days it looked like this...

I cant, I cant even start to explain how happy I am. This beautiful field of dirt has transformed to my home. MY home! Todd pulled up before we walked in so it was nice to have that moment there with the main man! Just wow. 

I am standing where the fridge is going to go.

This lovely view is from the hallway walking into the master bedroom. How amazing are these archways?! Look at how the trees are split in the windows! The light in this room is just stunning as well! EEEPPP

Here is a view standing from the sliding glass door in the master. 

Look closely there is a bathtub in this photo! Well the tub part isnt here yet but you get it :) 

Master shower... now the next question... do we run the glass all the way to the ceiling or do we keep it   just going half way up? Steamy or not to be steamy? 

Hey black hole... cant wait to fill you up with my clothes! :) 

Look! We have a ceiling outside! Yay! I missed this when I first walked up to it (maybe because I was holding my breath before we walked in the house) Oh my we have some big plans for the patio area! 

Since you can see a little bit of the stucco here from that photo let me give you another! 

Ha I know! It doesnt look like much of a change from the very back yard but I'll give you something else to see! Lets just take a moment to get excited about everything being dead back there!!! Yay! I cant wait for a riding lawn mower! 

Here ya go! Ha I know looks just like the block... only less... prison-esk. :)

Now we do have some decisions to make here... First: color... but we are working on that one. Second: Do we even need to do stone on the front of the house?! Here is where we will be able to save a nice little chunk to go into something else in the house. Eesh. I'm over decisions. 

That is what it looked like when we pulled up today! We got there a little after 6 so they are puttin' in the OT! Woop Woop! 

Fun fact! I cut out what the door looks like in the very first photo of the inside! Haha Sorry I cant just show you what it looks like when it has a plastic sheet over it! Gross :) Guess you'll have to keep waiting! We did get a chance to open it and close it for the first time the other day (the day we found a tree had fallen onto our property)! 

This is a few days after "Bamboo-Gate" guess the high winds got to this tree or maybe some of the crazy lightning we have been having was to blame for this poor feller's fall. I'll quickly touch on "Bamboo-Gate" well we were walking past this pile of block when we saw 3 or 4 super long, super big poles of bamboo laying right next to it... now this grass had just been chopped so maybe it had been sitting there for a few days to a week.... but no way had they been there for more than two months... our neighbor (who is the proud owner of a large patch of very tall, very big bamboo) claims they had nothing to do with this because they just moved in 2 months ago. This is the same crazy raccoon lady from the early days, she must not remember ever talking to us... unless her equally as crazy twin moved in... which could totally happen. :) 

Shiny things

In all the excitement with the front door I completely forgot to mention we purchased our new appliances! At this point I feel like we are spending so much money its seriously not fun to spend anymore! haha :) I kid I'm ready to keep shopping hah!

So this is a thing right now with Home Depot. 

Seriously we were going to be about 3K over budget on the styles of appliances we wanted... but thankfully Tis' the Season to buy appliances! No seriously, we have been told for months by a ton of people at Best Buy, H H Greg, Lowes, and Home Depot to just wait... The July sales are the best all year. They were not kidding! 

Like I touched on earlier in my posting the smaller the fridge is the more expensive it is, we thankfully got a lot off of that higher price tag from this sale. Washer & Dryer have about $300 off for each unit. Dishwasher a good $300 cheaper. We did take a chance with the double ovens. I loved what I had read about the GE Profile series but they are coming out with an upgrade, so with no reviews but the ones from the older model we took a chance and ordered it. By the time we get it delivered there should be plenty of reviews out there on it and I have the option to exchange it for something else. 

The jury is still out on the wine fridge we are putting in. 

Ooo! Almost forgot to mention that since we were getting 6 appliances we got an additional $400 off! Plus our 5 year warranty on each one we got 10% off! 

SCORE!!!! 

While finishing our purchase at the HD we had a few gift cards from the wedding we wanted to apply to this so we had to be taken up front... apparently there was a man that had been waiting the whole hour we were working on this order (just getting the order processed, we had priced it out the week before) as Bob (our salesman) told the man he would be right back the man decided it would be a great time to FLIP OUT! Long story short... we were over it and snapped right back at him. Come on! Seriously! We just picked out SIX Large appliances and you need a mini fridge! MINI FRIDGE!? 

RELAX. 

Today was FOAM SEAL DAY! 

What once looked like this... 

Now looks like this!!! 

It was seriously cool! Its not your old school pink panther insulation! They come in and spray it on and it expands to all the nooks and crannies of the roof and it changes how EVERYTHING sounds now! 

Its sooo much more peaceful in the house. Its also going to help with our heating and cooling costs on just the pre-limb Energy Efficiency ratings we are at an 83% This Foam sealant actually as of recently has a fire retardant in it as well! By the time the house is finished the crawl space should be about the same temp as the rest of the house (maybe a little bit more because our roof is black). 

We headed out today while at work to pick out our paver driveway! We went with a dark color on this as well to tie in the roof to the ground. Yep, thats the door... Nope, you cant see anymore. 

Okay! SURPRISE! Door handle! Boom. Tell me these dont look like a real castle door handle!? Goodness gracious I love this door. I'm still kinda mad at it but it being so pretty is helping its case. The lines alone on this handle are so sexy. 

We have been picking up paint chips for weeks now. I have seen every single color known to man at this point. I dont have anymore room in my brain for another color! Ha who am I kidding, sure I do. I'll one day make something out of all these paint chips... just you wait and see! 

We tried our first 3 actual paint samples on the block today. 

This is going to be a tough one. As we were painting these on the wall the crazy raccoon lady came out of her house to stand and watch, we then knew she was headed over to talk to us when her boyfriend called out to the kids to go over there with her. Well we had ruled out the blue color, she walked up to us and said that we should pick the blue color. Right. Got it. No. On the plus side she did tell us how beautiful our door is! Yay! We are leaning more with the middle color possibly a little less olive and maybe a little more tan but thats something we will just have to try out more samples with! 

I call these my little hieroglyphs. Its fun to find these little gems here and there... its like finding out what was said while we were at work :) 

We originally got two of these mirrors for the master bathroom, but with the change in the lights we are actually moving one into another bathroom and taking the second one back. I love the lines of this mirror. Just something so interesting about it. 

Also Gabe (our go to guy for anything outside) stopped by the house to spray our grass and weed problem afterwards he headed by our workplace to talk about some other things he is going to be doing for us very soon... He couldnt believe how tall everything was and he said it was quite a lot of work! Yea! I know this first hand. It was completely out of control... then he decided he wanted to buy our car. Yep my sweet little (not so little) Pathfinder is going off to a new home this weekend. I told him he had to take it with all the dog hair in it! Sad face, back to my Highlander that was named after a pair of tighty whities. :( Yea its white and ugly. One of those things that everyone loves to have but doesnt want anyone else to know they have it. Ha! 

Gabe also pulled up a bunch of these... if anyone has any idea what they are please let me know! Apparently they are taking over! Weird!

The Door and some other things...

Well its here! Our front door has finally arrived! Like everything else that I put my name on to order it has come in early and wrong (My wedding dress was ordered incorrectly but came in early just weeks before my big day such a screw up my alterations were free) As I lay stuffed up still sleeping in bed I get a call from The Hubs letting me know that its here! Its 4 days early and he is 10 min away! A quick splash of cold water on my face and some fresh clothes and The Hubs rushes into the house to pick me up. I kid you not he was flooring it off of every red light that we hit to make it to the house in time. He had called all of our good friends to take a few hours away from work to come help us carry this beast off the truck.

But first we had to guide this large semi truck down our over grown dirt road....

Clearly this is one of the times where you have to fit a square box into a round hole. 

First attempt was a no go so he left and circled back around 

This is as far as he got in before our security features (over grown bushes) began to make loud screaching noises. 

He made it past our little trees... after of course doing a little pruning along the way. 

Not sure where to go from here Todd takes over guiding the truck driver.

You see this one branch? He hung on forever but he was not alone a ton of other sticks, leaves, and branches fell off when he left. This probably wont be the last time that we have a Semi trimming our trees, remember we still have to move in and bring in new furniture! haha 

Here she is! Yep thats my name on that top box! She doesnt look like much but each box was an estimated 400 lbs. 

So our troops began unloading.

Even the truck driver helped (He was great! He didnt have to do this at all but he did and he was smiling the whole time) 

All three parts are unloaded now its time to take a look at the door before he drives off into the sunset! 

Box #1 was opened up and revealed... a giant (too big to be our door) glass door. Mind you this first box was also the box that had my name written on it. Of course I was prepared for something like this to happen (my phone was not, yet again I can only talk on speaker phone) and quickly called up our door manufacturer. While on the phone with him he told me: First, that it was not their mix up (its the shipping company's fault). Second, it was my second set of doors (we only ordered ONE set of doors). Third, they had no idea where my door frame was (maybe its somewhere in Florida) Understandably I am clearly sent into a angry tailspin for the lack of clear responses this gentleman in customer service is giving me. I told him he has 1 hour to locate my door frame and get back to me. I am super upset because we had taken time out of our day (before we were scheduled to) to unload this beast, not to mention all of our friends who stopped what they were doing as well to help us out. Temps were hitting in the 100s I kid you not and work was at a stand still on the house while Todd helped us out. 

 These packages were nailed, strapped, and wrapped shut. Power tools were needed to open each and every one and we did end up having blood shed (Todd had a slight cut on his leg but wiped it off like a real man and moved on*) Box #2 & 3 turned out to be right and our doors but that meant we were missing our door frame. The most important part! From what we could see they looked good. We didnt take them out completely because without a door fame we cannot install them at all. We had to refuse the package with my name on it and load it back on to the truck... 

This time the guys went into full man mode and hoisted it up with no lift gate at all. I was super impressed. 

My delivery slip signed with a refusal and noted a missing package the driver was on his way. We too had to leave (me back to my sick bed and The Hubs back to work). On our way back we got a call from the door company again letting us know that they have contacted the delivery service and they will get back to me within a few hours. By 6 I knew that I was not going to get a call back from anyone  and I stopped worrying about it for the day. 

Skip ahead to noon Tuesday and still no call back from the door company. Like I had been thinking no one was answering the phones now in customer service. I left a message and waited... and waited. Still nothing after an hour I tried a new extension and was spoken down to by a very rude man in sales named Lee, after asking him to transfer me to someone higher up he transfered me back to the same jerk in customer service who had not returned any of my calls, who sent me straight to voicemail. When I called back to reach Lee to explain to him how to use his phone they decided to not answer the phone at all. Yep. I am floored, I am pissed, and I am ready to gas up my car and head to Georgia to give this company a tongue lashing like never before! Time to play good cop bad cop or like my husband says "Fire & Ice" we have had a few people work with us in the company and mostly though email so we pulled another name from the hat and he gave her a call. She was supposed to send us in email outlining some of the things that we have already discussed but hours after the phone conversation there was still no email. This email was also to include how we have an extension on our time to see if there are any defects in the door.

The story above was written on June 17th and 18th and today I have finally gotten back to (after days of being angry) finish it. Today is July 1st and we finally have a door installed! I am jumping ahead a little bit so lets go back... last thing we were dealing with was the missing door frame. Well... by the middle of the week they FINALLY found it... it was... wait for it.... STILL SITTING IN THE WAREHOUSE! So then they decided to re-deliver it (we are getting near the end of the week so if anything goes wrong at this point we might just be SOL. So the new delivery day comes and I still havent heard from anyone and its 3 in the afternoon... so I give them a call, I tell them that I am NOT getting off the phone until I know it will be delivered today... well she comes back on the line to let me know that.... ITS NOT EVEN ON THE TRUCK! She says "yea... I'm looking at it right now, the driver picked up the wrong package" 

ARE YOU JOKING?! AM I BEING PUNKED?! YOU SO SILLY. 

Not a joke, and its friday and they wont be delivering it over the weekend.

Monday comes along and we were scheduled to have our frame delivered first thing in the morning.... 

Welp. It did. This time the driver decided to be a real D*ck and wouldnt pull completely down the road, so now the frame had to carted down the road... remember each one of these is about 400 lbs. this man is here EARLY, and it has been raining for 2 days now so our dirt road was more like a giant road of sinking quicksand. Lets just add the sprinkles to the top and mention that this driver has a bad back and cant help my husband lug this thing all the way down! I cant. I just cant. So bless his heart... He got it done, a guy who was working next door saw this and DID end up helping at the end.

Yes. Before this door even becomes an exciting thing in my daily life, it continues to just get worse. The frame is inches shorter on each side, making the radius off and there are no holes to drill the bolts into the wall that this is supposed to line up with! At this point we have gotten ahold of an Engineer in Tampa who now must write up how to drill the holes in this door so we can be in compliance! Aye dios mio!

Thankfully I can now skip ahead to say that....

She is installed! 

Sorry there is nothing wrong with your screen, this is all that I am giving you! Hahaha after all this build up this is it... Dont worry my darlings you will get to see it when its complete! I do have other things that I can share with you!

We are on day 943 of rain, at this point I think my plants are just going to drown in my garden box. 

This Grand Canyon is currently being used as our temporary water feature, till we getting something cool... like a real fountain! Ha! I actually love this little run-off stream for the strangest reason with the birds always chirping and the trees swaying I start to sing Pocahontas songs! :) I might still be a little girl at heart. With all this rain comes weeds and grass... 

Lots....

And lots....

And lots of weeds & grass. 

You cant even see me its so tall! Ha just kidding I was crouching a little bit... but not much :) 

But we started to take care of it here is a before & after:

We headed out here one day after work and put in some good sweat equity! We also were out there this past sunday but this time we decided to just spray it first and let it dye. Weirdly enough the guy who is going to be doing our sod said he would stop by to kill them :) 

I have also picked out some new lights for the master bath since we had to toss out my idea of having a light fixture over the bathtub... Silly me I just dont know building codes! I did get the 'Okay' to still have a chandelier in the bathroom! yay! Its going to be so sparkly now! Hahah :) I'll save it for another posting though! We start insulation tomorrow so its another BIG day! 

*I want to just note that building a home is super stressful and I honestly wouldnt be able to do it without the men we have had working on it with us. I am truly thankful that Todd treats us like his own kids (both his sons have helped us with this house as well) we may have panic moments but he is always ready to calm us and explain what is going on when we have no clue what-so-ever. My husband always talked to Jake (Todd's son) about one day having his dad build his home and we are beyond blessed to make this a reality. Its really exciting to know that once this house is complete we will be able to celebrate with him and everyone else who has helped with this project.