Our house in the middle of our street.

Hello All! 

I am currently couch or bed bound, I didn't get though a whole day at work without feeling like absolute garbage. I seriously think that spring time in Florida is the worst time to get sick ever. Thankfully my "boss" is The Hubs so he takes it easy on me... even gave me a ride home when the migraine hit. Bless his heart he came home and got my butt up and out of my sick bed to go see the house! 

 The guys left a ladder up the other day (notice I am smiling this was obviously not today) so we decided to take some cheesy photos. haha! The Hubs got higher up than me for a two reasons:

1. He is much braver than I am

B. As I started up the ladder he called out to me "I did the math in my head and you are 80% more likely to hurt yourself than I am climbing up the ladder!" 

Thanks babe! Your lack of confidence in my coordination is a breath of fresh air. jerk. :) He is probably right. Before I get on to a few more photos I just feel like rambling for a bit.

The faster this house seems to go up the more worried I get. Sure, it does seem a little silly to say that but I have always lived in a house that has pretty much been complete and I never had to make decisions this big before. The Hubs is great for listening to my ideas but on the other hand he doesnt come up with much because he knows that this is truly what I love to do. I got the home decor bug way back starting with Kirklands, then Pier 1, I eventually got out of retail but on my weekends I would head out with my parents and go "Junk" shopping. Our home was always filled with interesting things to catch your eye or start a conversation, I am more than excited for this part! What really worries me is wall placement, is the flow of the home right, flooring, counter tops, cabinets, bedrooms, closet sizes.... pretty much everything that makes a home a home before you can decorate! I usually go into things feeling very confident that I can power though it successfully, this time I dont feel very confident. My expectations of myself for this house are very high! I want a home that people want to come over and stay for a bit. I want my home to be a pure lazy sunday home where your only plans are to get out of bed before the sun sets. I want my home to one day wish it could tell stories of parties past and echo with laughter from celebrations. I think I might just be going though Hostess withdraws :(  Who knows, things are getting more and more serious each day... 

They started measuring out where the walls go today! This is the office area here looking at it from the front door. We had to make a decision on our fridge today as well. Since the fridge is going to be counter depth Todd needed the exact measurements for it. Oh lawd! Thats huge. Thats big. wow. So we are going with the LG fridge. When we got that call from Todd today to make that decision I think thats when I really felt my nerves stand on edge! EEEP! 

Dear Bailey, stop second guessing yourself! You are doing it right!

Love, 

Your not crazy half

This was Thursday! 5-16

This was today! 5-17

All of the peel and stick is up and applied to the roof! This has a texture of the stuff on a skateboard. It comes in these huge rolls and then just like a sticker the backing is pulled off and its put down on the roof. Todd suggested this to us and we decided to go with him on that. I know from watching House Hunters and shows like that how important your roof is and the potential cost of replacing it from being poorly done. We wanted something that is really going to last. Since we also decided to go with materials that could really hold up in a storm the peel and stick was the way to go. Todd told us that if anything on the roof needs to be fixed... in about 30 years... then they would just apply more peel and stick and replace shingles. He doesnt know of any roofer who has decided to take off a layer of peel and stick... so that must mean it really holds its own... I think (pun intended) 

In the second photo you can see the shingles are here now as well. We picked this about a month ago and I honestly wasnt nervous at all about this decision! 

Found this great photo! This is also a photo of the shingle color we picked. 

We decided to go with GAF Timberline Ultra HD Shingles. Click here for more information on this product. Sure a lot of websites go into the great things about this product but they have a lot of great reviews and have a great UV rating which is perfect for our huge amount of sun here in the Sunshine state! They really hold their coloring well here in these areas and Todd just loves them. Our roofer even told us that it was a good choice, after he had some choice words for us about picking the Charcoal colored shingles! haha oops. To offset the dark colored roof we will have foam sprayed inside to really seal it up. This will reduce our energy bill in the long run. We will also have 2 Air conditioning units in the house as well. Some people may see this as being a little excessive but its not. The rental we are living in now isnt sealed up properly and is about 1/2 the size of where we were living our power bill is much higher than the last house. We have closed all the vents in the rooms we are using for storage and still come night time its hot as can be. We sleep in about 70 degrees and kicking down one unit in the master is a lot cheaper than kicking down the one to the main house. 

I think I feel my migraine coming back... off to shower and sleep for my 19th hour. <3 

The Orb Photo.

We now have shelter!!! woohoo! get your tents ready we are moving in! ha I wish we could. As much as I am enjoying my urban container garden that we recently added too I am ready for some peace and quiet.  A Few days ago one of the many children next door to us fed the dogs something through the crappy little chain link fence... which was then followed up by unspeakable things that a dog owner never wants to have to deal with.... gross. Needless to say I am very unhappy about this even though they are feeling much better I am still throwing dirty looks over the fence every chance I get. 

Pardon my lack of humor I have been on a soup diet for a sore throat which I will also blame on the neighbors (even though I know they have nothing to do with that) 

Before I get into the pictures below I will jump into updates on the cabinets... So we missed a huge discount with Lowes while looking into other people to possibly do our cabinets. We tried Home depot but decided since they didnt make much of an effort to really read my email I sent them we just didnt reply back. Sure not very professional I know but seriously?! I asked for pricing on your Martha Stewart cabinets not for you to do everything with Martha! 

Todd was contacted by another cabinet guy (who looked into our permit box <that says: DO NOT OPEN!>) But we decided to give him a chance and sent him over the floor plans and Lowes drawings for what we had already picked out... well he "had a death in the family" and only got back to us after we emailed him... a week and a half later. He originally said a a few days. I normally wouldnt let this bother me but I'm sorry I am over cabinets. I never thought I would say that but this whole thing seems like everyone just wants to waste time and drag their feet. I am annoyed. Shoot me an email and say something has come up and you will get back to us as soon as you can! DONT JUST NOT RESPOND! oh and the kicker to this guy... He said he usually beats big box stores by a a couple thousand and he came back TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS MORE! MORE! Why you ask? Because he thought we wanted all wood cabinets... way to assume guy! 

Along with this whole mess with the cabinets we still havent been able to find anyone who carries a marble like granite... till a few days ago...

We were headed home from work and saw that this granite yard was still open and we decided to pop in... THEY HAD IT!!!! They had my Super White! Oh I was so excited I almost pee'd! We gave the girl our fabricators info and she said she would get with them and send over everything they need... well... she didnt, but we called Roy over at TH Winston and let him know that we liked that. The only issue with that was they had 5 pieces of it which is perfect... except the top on had a huge fracture in it that you could feel. We asked if we could see any other pieces and she kept telling us to go to the website. <the website only has one photo> When we asked if they were getting anymore she said October would be the soonest even after we told her that we would be moved in and the house complete she said that we could wait.... back to me being annoyed. 

<DUMB> 

Thankfully Roy said he would keep on the look out for other places with Super White. We still might make a trip to Orlando to see some other quartzite.

We met with the guy who is doing our roof because he was still working at 7 pm! They were keeping long hours because he wanted to finish it before he had to make a trip north for his daughters graduation. Unfortunately they didnt get it done before he had to leave so things have been slow going. 

The majority of the roof has been covered with plywood the only thing that was left was the front door area. 

The usual back yard photo! See these vines making their way up the trees? Yea well one trip out to the house I took my gardening gloves out there with me and tore them all down. Pretty easy work since they were not all the way around the tree yet. Next time The Hubs will need to go all George of the Jungle and chop them so they dont creep up my trees again! 

We are thinking of starting some yard work out there to get thing ready for when we move in and do the most amazing things to our back yard the world has ever seen! No. Its not a joke, we are super excited to make a glorious back yard! The Hubs was just okay with my garden till we started getting veggies and now he is just as excited as I am! Get ready for some great parties! 

This photo makes me laugh because as we pulled up I am screeching (yes, screeching) at The Hubs to not get any closer to the house because of the nails laying around! Bless his heart he was so excited to just get this close with the car... as I jumped out right at my door there was a giant nail! I was so totally right! Silly man. :)  

I am over city living. Its too hot and muggy to walk downtown anymore, its just so much easier to drive 3 blocks to get to where we want to go. We recently had an outbreak of Bums (Pan handlers for those of you who want to be politically correct) No joke we had them on every single street corner. Some of the signs were so redick its not even funny... there was a guy in a suit who was holding one that said "recently divorced and need to get drunk" there was another guy who had whiter shoes than I have ever had in my life! How are you homeless and your shoes are so white?! There was this one lady who was pushing her shopping cart down my street and she was screaming at my neighbors dog saying she was going to sue them... then she got to our house where the dogs were sitting nicely watching this crazy lady through the fence and she started screaming at them... and me of course and that she was going to sue us. Great. She finally moved along to a foreclosed house down the street and tucked herself in... the cops moved her along. A few days later we were headed to dinner with some friends and I am telling them about this crazy lady when we turn the corner and I kid you not she was right there... still in her blue flannel trench coat I was describing to them! Of course we died laughing! What are the chances!!! We sat down for dinner outside and saw a cop pull up to her and move her along again... after leaving this restaurant (because you really need to be in the mood for chicken and waffles)  we brought up that lady again and as we turned another corner and saw her pounding on a dry cleaners front door. Shes everywhere! After making plans with all of our friends to head out there with our own signs (on our ipads) the city has cracked down a little bit on them... but now its some legal war going on... tisk tisk. 

I wanted to include this photo for my family... who are true believers in the orbs.... well... here are two. No way this place is haunted though, but this will make for some great stories to make up and scare each other with like when we were growing up (Ali, Blake, Mallory, Aunt Terry, and Adam, I know you remember what I am talking about!)  

To the front!

So, sure I was exhausted from going to the Husky Olympics with the pack yesterday but I really felt like designing some rooms last night after we had dinner... or lunch? I'm not sure where our day went but it was fun. 

Finally I have my full sized floor plan views to share with everyone! I learned from my mother how to try out some color with these and will be doing that in a few days after I get some copies made. We still aren't decided on what our outside color will look like but I think I will pick up some color options for The Hubs later today and then draw up some mocks. As you can see we will be doing a rock accent on the front of the house. We are hoping to carry this back to the back wall of the house as well. I am super excited about the natural look and thankfully so is The Hubs. 

We went to a new antique/ estate house the other weekend and found some amazing things for the house... as much as the hubs wants this crazy red cabinet we just dont have the place for that to go... but its nice to see that he is suggesting colors! We then headed into the back room of this place and found the Venetian mirror mecca.... boxes and boxes and boxes of them in all sizes and shapes! I cant even tell you how excited I was to see this!!!! And for once they didnt cost an arm and a leg for a bigger one. We had found a smaller one that was kinda pretty but not everything that I ever dreamed of at the same place where we found the overpriced table... for about $1100. yes. gross. No thanks. This new place had the large ones for $350. yep. I'll take them all thank you. :) I kid I kid! 

We then found a ton of cast iron in that same back room! Oh so exciting! I cant wait to bring some of this to the new home and get to decorating. 

I am more than excited to do that part of it all, I know it will be overwhelming but I am ready for it. We have a very different style and its exciting to know that when we have people over there will be something different and weird to look at and something that really can tell about our adventures :)   

still just dirt.

Well not too much going on here on the "Home Front" :( sadly we are still waiting on the bank to get back to us, we heard from a little birdy that the appraisal was to be turned in by tomorrow... so we might just bug our friend at the bank.

The land is finally cleared... a 4 day job took about 2 weeks to be complete.... yes I am making this face right now { :|  } 

Some damage was done to the neighbors fence.... This is not entirely our land clearing people fault. These trees have been growing wild for years and when they went to take out the trees next to it on our side of the fence the roots were tangled and took down the fence.... when I went out there today all of this was on the ground, I'm thinking we have had some visitors out there lately being hoodlums. Grrreeeaat. 

Had to do a little land owner up-keep myself while I was out there. We lost our some of our property lines with all the dust and dirt flying around so I picked up this cute little can of spray paint (at the craft store) and made my lines appear again! 

The Hubs assigned me the task of finding quotes for our fencing we need to have while we build and afterwards for the pups... I lined up about 5 quotes and met with 2 of them in person. Since Todd gave me all the measurements we needed and told me the lingo I needed to use when talking to these guys I thought that it was going to be a walk in the park. 

No. Not true. Clearly some of these men take me for a fool... or just a typical woman. Not happy. I told one guy that I needed 450ft of fence and 20 of that was going to be a large gate (which is do-able) he called me back and told me that I actually needed 554ft of fence and that didnt include the gate.... where in the world did he get over 100ft MORE than what I was asking for?! I had to go over everything with him and he was pulling some huge numbers out of his ass and I decided to just let him talk and then threw out his quote. 

Another one of my quotes I got was WAAAY too low... but he was a nice man and just did it over the phone... I think he might have missed some numbers and I cant fault him for that. 

The quote I got today I think I told the guy probably 20 times that I needed 8ft high fence in the back and I needed a quote for temporary fencing and also a separate one for the repairs on the neighbors fence (we will only be paying half) when I got the quote today it didnt have any of this included. 

Are you kidding me?! Maybe I am not speaking clearly... nope that cant be it I went to speech therapy for 3 years! 

As for our rental.... oh man. This place is a hot mess fo-real. So currently we have at least 4 outlets that do not work. This includes the one and only outlet in the master bath... and the guest bath. I have been curling my hair while sitting on the floor in the middle of the bedroom. <heavy blinks> I also had to blow some leaves with this miniature leaf blower that our landlord left us and found out that the only outlet outside doesnt work either. 

Being born and raaaised (say it with a southern accent) in Florida, I know that there is a very likely chance I will encounter bugs from time to time... more specifically roaches and I have recently taught myself to not scream bloody murder and now have resorted to calling The Hubs. When I am alone depending on the size of the bug I will sometimes sacrifice one of my dogs and use a paw. The larger ones sometimes get hairspray or windex.... or the tried and true shoe if it is around. This house though.... ((shivvers))  when we moved in I saw no signs of bugs at all... now its like a breeding ground. Okay so with the help of Todd's son and a trip to Lowes we have controlled the masses. I can now walk into the kitchen at midnight and not have to worry about anything under my feet but a dog or two. :) The kitchen sink is leaking... seems to have been like this for a while and our landlord doesnt really care so I have decided to throw an air freshener under there and call it a day. Rot or not I dont care enough to try and get this fixed. 

We still are not using any of the cabinets or drawers, I have my pots and pans I use on the daily out and on a shelf that used to live in my craft room this is also my make-shift pantry. Its working for me for now. I was going to just live out of boxes till the house was complete but The Hubs wanted some artwork on the walls. 

so I gave him this option.... I think its actually going to stick around. :) 

We got busy at work and I packed up at the end of the day and didnt complete this post so I will give you this mornings updates:

The bank called us and we were sent to underwriting! YAY! We asked what our timeframe was looking like and she said it was looking good for being done soon! Yes.... I almost cried. Its like music to our ears right now! We want this sooo bad! 

I also got an email back from the fence guy I met with yesterday... he thinks I just dont understand his email.... uh hello. yes I did and clearly you weren't listening to me when I was talking to you! Stupid men! 

On a good note we found a beaut of a path to take the dogs to the park. This park is amazing too! So many pathways to bike the dogs! We headed out on sunday and did our first treck with them and then biked through the local art show afterwards... We are quite a site too haha I think one day we are going to cause an accident. 

Back to work I go... I'll keep you updated on what happens :) 

Fence Companies Used: Arrow, H&Y, Johns Fencing, some other guy, and USA Fence. 

Look!

DO YOU SEE THIS?! 

Yes! This is our land getting cleared! I went out there this morning and saw... no work being done... but its saturday and it was only 9:30 but there was a large tree already down! How exciting!!!! 

It makes it look like the end is near! Just kidding! 

We signed our official contract with Todd the other day (I had yet another migraine and was trying to hold my stomach down the whole time) But we got it done. Yes it is a little odd that we have gotten this far before signing a contract with our builder but he is a family friend so he has been great working with us! We also went over everything with him (price wise) and came to the conclusion that our dreams are a lot bigger than we once thought. We are upping our loan amount to cover this since we had originally were looking to just stay on the lower end of it. Not a big deal we just dont want to have a huge mortgage for 30 years, so time to hustle at work! :) 

Speaking of loans... we headed to both banks we had 'pre-approvals' from yesterday to get our paperwork started and start comparing rates... well we found out that our actual bank wasted more of our time. Thankfully they gave us the wrong information for the second time and when the MLO FINALLY looked though our paperwork an hour and a half into our meeting he informed us that he was a liar. Okay so I am exaggerating a little bit... everyone knows people who work at banks wont ever admit to lying. ha! 

I think I did really good this time though, I didnt snap the paperwork together and attempt to walk out like I did with the last bank that did this to us. I sat there gritting my teeth... till the jerk had the balls to say "I see the frustration on your faces" to which I replied "Oh yea, thats correct I am more than frustraited that you have yet again wasted our time when we clearly asked this question once before to you and you gave us a completely different answer. So thankfully 3 of you here in this department have wasted our time." as we walked out I made it clear to say to The Hubs that it was time to pull all of our accounts out of this bank. This will be done within this next week. By the time we were back on the road heading back to work we were hungry and angry and I cried. Yes. I broke and I cried. No actual tears fell down but I got that burning / blurry sensation in my eyes. 

After eating we called our other bank to get a few things cleared up... she wasnt quite sure and had to call us back. When she called back with the answer we were looking for it was time to celebrate a small victory. 

This is then when we dusted off the Makers Mark that we had been saving for a special occasion. 

Some of the better whiskey I've had... but then again I havent had much because I dont really care for the taste. yuck. 

Good morning from the land of 'I'm only half an iced coffe in and I'm still a little grumpy'!!

This weekend my husband decided to gift me a sunday doing what I wanted to do because we went to the gun show for him... and spent a good 2 hours there (one of which was just waiting in line) So what did I pick to do?! FURNITURE SHOPPING! Yes when we went we didnt know the full size of the room but I am ready to get ideas and see some couches and such now so I can whip it out as soon as we move in!

This pretty baby is from Ashley Furniture. We found it a few weeks ago when we went shopping out of town. This is when we figured out that each couch needs to go through the test... 

((Step 1. Remove all unnecessary pillows. Step 2 Have The Hubs lay down. Step 3 lay down next to The Hubs and close eyes.)) Yes, we do get some strange looks but who really cares! If you invest money into something like furniture you need to know if it will be what you really want! 

This couch is a top contender! 

We found this one this weekend. Sorry for the sucks picture but after searching 45 pages of couches I never found it on the website and just took a picture of a picture. I love this couch its great and even has  my decorative nail heads in it but I think the color is too light. Its also double the price of the couch above. It did pass the test though! As much as I want something with the decorative nail heads in it I think we are going to pass on this one. Sad to say its out since its the only thing so far The Hubs has liked with this detail but oh well! 

Found this little table as well. The sides fold up into it so its a perfect table to have behind a couch. Once you open it up that means you are having a cocktail party... or this is how I feel it would work. :) 

We are IN LOVE with this Ethan Allen coffee table... but as you all know that store most of it starts at like a million dollars... so we will wait on this guy. But the wood and metal together is a beautiful look!

This Chandelier. Oh. M. G. yea! So I originally found this same exact one online months ago and fell in love. I have actually been looking for a table to go under it for our dining room I love it that much. Well The Hubs got to see it first hand and he loved it as well. Of course we didnt even look at that price since we were still at EA but online its about $600 or so. It makes a huge statement and I am in lovvvveeee

We also dabbled in entertainment centers. This we liked (in a dark color) its the tallest and widest we have seen so far. We might have to make a custom piece later on. 

We decided to not make a ton of furniture choices until we are actually in the house for now... maybe its because the shock of using a tape measurer to see things is really hard. ha! A 22ft wall doesnt seem super huge.... till you use a tape measurer in a small-ish room.