Courtyard: Before, Concept & After

12/31/2012

The week before last, we had a load of 5 tons of gravel delivered to our courtyard. Jason graciously spent most of a Friday spreading about 3.5 tons. (The rest will be used somewhere else.) I was so tired so walking through the mud to get to the lovely paver stone path Jason made up to our front door steps…and mainly tired of Lucy getting her paws muddy. We’re taking our landscaping one step at a time but there are a few big things we wanted to tackle ASAP. The courtyard is a high priority to me because it’s the front entrance, the first impression of our house, and we’re expecting a lot of guests in the first weeks and months in our new house. When I looked at the pictures I took of the courtyard, I realized it came out really, really close to my Photoshop rendering!

Before:

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Rendering:

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After:

myMCMlife.com - courtyard at Christmas 2012

I love how the windows reflect the sky.

We’re going to add a short fence and gate between the corner of the garage and the concrete wall to enclose all 4 sides and make it a true courtyard. Here’s the mock up I sent to our contractor, based on the fence we designed and built for our last house.We ultimately decided to keep this element out of the construction budget. Jason and I will build this, hopefully in January.  The opening is only 12′ across so it’ll be so easy compared to a whole fence. And maybe will inspire us to add some privacy fencing around the backyard later in 2013.

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Instagram House Tour

12/26/2012

I love the Instagram community. It’s got to be my favorite iPhone app. A couple of my MCM followers requested an IG house tour so I’m obliging little by little, as rooms are decent enough to share. Since it might be awhile before I’m ready for any kind of more substantial (finished/decorated) house tour with real camera photos, I figured I’d share them here, too.

Kitchen

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Dining Room

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Master Bathroom

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Living Room

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What I’m now calling my work room (tri-purpose: office, craft, laundry)

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This room is also tri-purpose: Den/Playroom/Guestroom … sort of. It pretty much just looks like a playroom for now. One day it might become a bedroom. I’m trying to confuse you… is it working? Let’s just call this the den:

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Hall bathroom

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Master bedroom (we’re shopping for furniture)

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Jason’s studio

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The future kids room has become kind of a catch-all. It’s the only room we have left to unpack and clean up. Besides hanging art everywhere else and coming up with some storage solutions in my office and the garage, we’re settled!

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Are you all sick of seeing photos of our house yet?


It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas…

12/12/2012

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On the eve of moving day, Jason and I went to a fundraiser dinner and a friend snapped this picture of us in front of the ginorous Christmas tree in the lobby. I would just slap it onto a Christmas card template and send it out to our friends and family this year but it’s missing a certain little cutie pie. I’m going to attempt to get a picture of the 3 of us and whip something up in time to send out. I’m also hoping to have time to do some Christmas shopping before I run out of shipping time. Yikes! So much to do this time of the year and we kind of have our hands full with unpacking and all… I did put up a few Christmas decorations as I was unpacking boxes.

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I bought 3 more boxes of vintage ornaments this summer to add to my collection. (Sidenote: I still have a couple of 11×17 Wishing You a Shiny Brite Christmas posters for sale at my etsy shop, as well as some digital download prints.)

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The silver wreath Jason and I made many years ago made it’s way onto our new front door.

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A year or two before she passed away, my Granny gave me two boxes of her vintage Shiny Brite ornaments. They’re half broken and the glitter is a bit corroated but I treasure them. That’s why they’re on this tree stand on the counter, away from toddler hands.

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Speaking of toddler hands, yeah, this is going to be interesting… I’ve already said, “No, Ali, we don’t touch the Christmas tree!” about 500x. Which just makes her want to touch it more, I’m sure. “Ball,” she says as she pokes at the ornaments. No picture of her with the tree yet for obvious reasons.

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We’re Home!

12/11/2012

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Friday was moving day. It felt so different than when we’ve bought houses in the past…we would close at a title company, get our keys and let ourselves into our new, empty house. This time we’ve been in and out of the house almost daily for the past 6 months while it was constructed. On Friday Jason was cleaning the windows while I moved a few things over from my parents house. Then the last inspector from the city came and we paced around nervously while he walked through the house. Our site supervisor Scott put the last of 4 final inspection approval tags on the kitchen counter as he walked the inspector out. And that was it: we’re allowed to move in! Jason and I looked at the 4 final inspection tags on last time and gave each other a high five. Go time.

We met the movers at our storage unit and spent the rest of the day—the rest of the next several days, really—slinging boxes, moving furniture and unpacking. We are physically exhausted but oh-so-happy to be finally in our new home. I had hoped to sneak over early Friday morning and take final photos of a clean, empty house before we started moving in but it didn’t happen. Why? Because early Friday morning the tile guy, Peanut, was finishing grouting the fireplace and the bathroom; John, the painter, was doing touch-ups and Scott, our site supervisor/problem solver extraordinaire was putting the final touches on our front porch railings. In other words, the house was not clean or empty.

When we arrived back to our house, my mom had set up sloppy joes in her crock pot for us, as well as dropped off a bunch of food to get us through the first couple of days. She’s the best!

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After her afternoon nap, my parents brought Ali down to check out her new room. She hasn’t seen most of this stuff since she was 7 month old…so basically, she’s seeing it all for the first time. Who needs Christmas gifts!

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She was so excited about all the “new” toys that she climbed into her toy box.

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…and assembled:

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The first morning in our new house!

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On Day 2, my sister-in-law Ginger came over to help while my niece Eliza played with Ali. After they left, my parents and Jason’s parents helped us unpack and move more things from my parents’ house all day. It’s so wonderful to have such an awesome family to help us! I was too preoccupied to take many pictures on Saturday but I did snap this one of Ali. Nana (Jason’s mom) was unpacking a box with Ali and found some of my sunglasses…

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Day 3 in our new house: Sunday.

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Ali seems to really like her new room. It’s one of the most complete rooms in the house. All that’s missing are things that hang on the wall: pictures, book ledges, curtain rod, etc.

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Ali also seems to love her playroom (AKA the den) and it’s nice to have 2 rooms in the house that are mostly kid-safe.

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The hall bathroom is for Ali and guests:

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The living room is pretty much a big mess because the two couch pieces of our sectional and an armchair are being used in a home staging project. They’ll be back in a few weeks. I’ve been meaning to write about that. I’ll do that soon…

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Meanwhile, this is our makeshift couch: a pile of old blankets and pillows on the floor. Lucy approves.

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LuLu can be a very anxious dog but she seems to be adjusting really well. To my knowledge she hasn’t peed on anything or had any seizures so that says a lot for her.

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The kitchen is almost mostly complete, however it’s still a big mess because it’s the heart of the house. (Note the tool box and cleaning supplies on the counter, the step ladder in the dining room.)

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I really, really love how the kitcehn came together.

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We’re planning to add a tile backsplash at a later date.

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The coffee and tea bar is pretty much my favorite thing ever.

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After three days of hard work, we decided to use our last bit of energy on Sunday night to set up the TV so we could properly relax. It involved a mount that fixes to the concrete fireplace with a floating shelf below the TV. I’ll tell you about that later. We don’t have cable or internet yet, but we could use the DVD player so we found our box full of Seinfeld DVDs.

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Random: Any Nashvillites interested in a beautiful, big, heavy gold vinyl sleeper sofa? I was planning to use it in the den but it’s too big for that room so we’re selling it. It’s on craigslist for $100. Sold! Thank you to Mark and his wife. I hope you enjoy it!

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New Home Update – The End is Near

12/06/2012

Weak, I know… it’s the day before we move in and I really (still) don’t have time for a proper blog post. Instead, here is a dump of photos from my iPhone from the last week. I promise a proper “New Home Update” or perhaps… “New Home Tour” next week!

We had our first meal at our new house last Wednesday. We ate pizza as these guys were installing our granite countertops.

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Den/Playroom … I still don’t know if this wall is chalkboard paint or if it’s just painted black. Our contractor needs to ask the painter.

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The fireplace is not quite complete (though as I’m writing this, it’s getting finished). Lights and fans are all in.

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Bathroom vanities, medicine cabinets and sconce lights are in. Plumbing fixtures, too, but I guess I don’t have a picture of those yet.

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Ali playing in the playroom.

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And in Jason’s studio closet/recording booth.

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For the past week or so, as soon as Ali is asleep for the night (at my parents’ house where we’re living) Jason and I head over to our house to work. One night we assembled this MASKROS light from IKEA. It’s means “dandelion” in Swedish. I wonder why?

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Jason is so excited about having a gas range. I think he’s fired it up about 15 times just to make sure it’s still working.

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We had a gorgeous first weekend in December with sunshine and highs touching 70 degrees. After a bday party in the morning, we stopped by Jason’s favorite garden center. They had everything 40% off so we decided to go for a few big things: two arborvite and a topiary.

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Ali was zonked out in the van during the entire plant buying process.

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Naked house.

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Dressed house (though still scantily clad.) It was dark when we finished up so the pictures aren’t the greatest, but we’re still very pleased with getting a start on our landscaping.

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Later that night we went to Home Depot to buy closet shelving. We had the most awesome lady helping us. She was so cheerful and patient. She took all of our measurements down and did the math so we’d have little waste, and she even took the time to label each shelf with the measurement so we’d know which was which when we got home. You just don’t get customer service experiences like that often enough!

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A few daylight pictures from Sunday…

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Yeah, still looks pretty bare.

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My tea and coffee bar! I’m excited about this.

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The 4 yellow stools I ordered arrived this week. I love.

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Jason and I spent another evening cleaning. This kitchen is now sparkling clean, even the insides of the cupboards! Ready to unpack this weekend.

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The kitchen is missing a few things… the doors for the corner cabinet and the metal chase for the vent hood above the gas range. The chase and vent hood are stainless but have a white protective sticker on them. (That confused me for a minute.)

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Jason and I (mostly Jason) made this walkway in the courtyard with super, über, really-really heavy paver stones. Eventually we’ll get a load of gravel and we’ll build a gate.

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As of the writing of this post (Wednesday evening) we’ve passed 2 of the 4 needed inspections. We have the other two scheduled for Thursday and Friday. It’s all starting to get REAL!!

(PS. WordPress has new photo upload software. Yay! Made this post quicker. 😉 )


New Home Update

11/29/2012

It’s been 2 weeks since my last update so there is a lot to share. Two big things: our wood flooring is all done and our kitchen cabinets and appliances have been installed. This week the electrical is getting finished, the countertops are being installed and the plumbing will be done. All of that makes for a pretty much finished house. I’m a little behind in my picture taking so next week I will probably have pictures of a completely finished house. We’re moving in next Friday. Holla! On to the pics:

Den/playroom

I’m loving this fancy pull out trash and recycling drawer!

There will be doors on the corner cabinet up there, they just didn’t have the right hinge with them.

Those upper cabinets of the pantry will have white doors sometime this week.

That air compressor around the corner is a bit scary…

Blowing kisses at the granite yard

We chose these slabs of kashmir granite

Ali knows this is her room. She runs up the pink wall and slaps her hands on it, babbling incoherently. I think she approves.

Master:

Next kids room:

Ali’s room:

Master bedroom

Cherry cabinets stained a walnut color (I don’t remember the name of the specific finish)

I love the white ice appliances in our house as much as I did in the store.

I’m realizing I haven’t taken many new photos of the laundry room or Jason’s studio – those were the last rooms to have the flooring finished. I also haven’t photographed the bathrooms lately. We did have one little snafu with the tile in the master bathroom. We didn’t order enough the first time around so we had to get some more. The tile company sent the wrong color and the tile guy installed it anyway. (What the ?!) So that needs to be scraped up and the tile company promises the new tile will arrive by the end of this week. So, no big deal but a small set back nonetheless. It may or may not be fixed by moving day, but it will be fixed soon.


Posters for Sale

11/27/2012

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it seems everyone is getting into the Christmas spirit. Here we’re getting into the almost time to move into the new house spirit. Christmas decorating is in the way, way back of my mind. I wanted to remind you that I put the Wishing You a Shiny Brite Christmas poster back in my Etsy shop again this year. It’s 11×17 and $12 plus shipping.

I’m trying something new this year. I also turned two color variations of the Shiny Brite Christmas poster into downloadable PDFs that can be printed at home on 8.5″ x 11″ paper. They’re $2 a piece and free shipping, of course.

Shiny Brite Poster – Green Print-at-Home   /  Shiny Brite Poster – Brown Print-at-Home

 


Secret Projects and Randomness

11/20/2012

I probably won’t get around to doing a full New Home Update this week because of all that’s going on with Thanksgiving, family visiting and a boat load of graphic design work I need to do this week, but here are a couple of shots of our new wood floors in the great room.

There is still a lot of slippery sawdust on the floors. Ali looked like she was at a skating rink.

I moved/helped move a huge amount of furniture this weekend (no… we’re not moving into our new house for another couple weeks) including this sofa (with hide-a-bed), desk, wall cabinet and a large media cabinet  (not pictured because it’s for my parents) from an estate sale…

And also all this furniture for a secret project that has been in the works for many, many months… Here’s a sneak peek at our first home staging job. Much more about that coming soon… including the official launch of our new business, more photos and hopefully a video tour of this house:

This goober is 16 months old today! I’ve been looking forward to 16 months for a long time because that’s how old Ladybug was when we parented her. Oh, 16 months! I have experience with that age! Of course, the two girls are very different.


New Home Update

11/15/2012

Well things didn’t go quite as quickly as we had planned this week. The hold up has been getting the electric connected by the electric company, passing the city inspection and then getting the gas company to come out and set up the meter which involves a lot of people coming out and is completely out of our control. We didn’t have any problems, it just took longer than we were hoping and as I’m writing this on Wednesday night, we still don’t have gas (should be hooked up tomorrow) which means we don’t have heat, which means they can’t put the wood flooring in yet, which means the kitchen won’t go in until next week… which means… we probably won’t be moving in Thanksgiving week after all. The house should essentially be done, but there is a series of inspections the city has to do before we can get an occupancy permit and with it being a holiday week, it’s unlikely they will all happen before Thanksgiving. We can’t move in without an occupancy permit. The good news is that we were originally hoping we’d be in by Christmas and getting in by Thanksgiving was just a nice surprise. We don’t have any rush except excitement. Thank God we have a place to stay at my parents’ house for as long as we need.

So, what did happen this week? The HVAC was installed along with the hot water heater. We got power! At the point of me writing this, about half of our lights are installed. Door handles were installed. Jason and I took the master key on Tuesday night and had new specialty keys made for ourselves. We also picked up some LED lights to put up on our light shelf, but we need to get more. We guessed on the 100 lights/33 ft. set.

I had to run out to the hardware store to grab a couple of lights for closets that we had forgotten about. Jason was out of town and happened to have horrible reception while I was at the store so I couldn’t even consult with him. This was the picture I sent him to say, “I got these. OK?”

Outlets and some fixtures are in.

We were going to get fans for every bedroom but we decided to save money and get some cheapos for now and we’ll replace them one at a time later on.

We still got a nice fan for our bedroom and we’ll have one in the living room as well.

This is a silent “door bell” in Jason’s studio. Remind me to tell you about that later.

The HVAC looks like it was custom painted to match our house. It was not but that would be cool, wouldn’t it?

We like dimmers. We’re going to have a lot of dimmers.

It was foggy one morning while I was walking Lucy and I took this pretty autumny photo.

Lights! Jason, who is a perfectionist (I love that about him!) is straightening one of many crocked door handles.

We got these squarish door levers and it’s really noticeable if they’re a little bit off.

Jason is checking out the hall bathroom.

This is the first time we’ve really been able to see the tile and paint color because this is the only windowless room in the house and it has always been dark until now. That’s precisely why I wanted a light airy color on the walls (SW window pane) and I’m really happy with how it goes with the light gray tile and white tub (we’ll also have a white toilet, white vanity, white sink/countertop.)

Only 1 of 4 lights was installed so it’ll get a lot brighter in here.

We turned on all of the lights that we could and ran back outside in the cold to see what it looks like lit up. We have lights in the eaves around the house so once they’re installed it’ll really light up at night.

We have 2 workable outside lights on either side of the garage.

A custom house justifies custom keys right?

Kitchen:

Living room:

From mudroom/office (green room) pocket door looking toward the living room, kitchen and dining room:

Next update I should have pictures of finished tile work, finished hardwood floors, finished lighting, finished kitchen … hopefully a finished house!!


New Home Update

11/08/2012

Last week the concrete was poured for our back patio and our driveway. The painters finished their work inside and outside. And the house had major clean-up done inside and outside as well. All of that was finished in time to get the house ready for a modern architecture home tour that took place on Saturday. Our house was 1 of 5 on the self-guided tour. The tour was good promotion for our architect and our builder but it was also fun for me to hear people’s feedback, questions and encouragement. I put Ali in play clothes and she finally had a chance to really explore the house, the driveway and the yard. (Usually there are too many hazards everywhere to let her just go and be a curious toddler.) I also had a chance to chat with some of our neighbors. I’m really thankful we get to stay in the neighborhood that we’ve loved for the past 6 years. We’ve got great people living all around us. I also had a ton of time to talk with one of the guys from our construction company and I’m again so grateful that we found them—such good, honest, hard-working people. Integrity is somewhat rare in the contracting business. On to the pictures (mostly taken before the inside was cleaned.)

The concrete guy was really sweet and offered to help us put Ali’s handprint in the patio. She kept trying to grab a handful of the concrete so it didn’t come out great, but he did his best to clean it up and he carved her initials and the date before it was dry. My parents built a house when I was a baby and all 5 of us had our handprints in the back patio. I always loved to put my hand in the prints to see how small my hand used to be, how close it was to growing into my big brother’s print and how small my hand was (and still is) compared to my dad’s.

Front door, entry, dining room (looking through the kitchen):

Kitchen and dining room:

Pocket door!

Living room:

The natural light in the great room is ahhhhmazing! (Credit for excellent design goes to our architect, Ryan Thewes.)

Kitchen:

The den/playroom:

Ali’s room:

Future kids room:

Front door (second door is a coat closet)

Again with the amazing natural light! We’re hardly ever going to need to turn the lights on during the day here.

My office and the laundry room. It’s green.

Jason’s studio. It’s not very photogenic yet.

Garage lights:

Electric meter is ready to go. Yeah, we don’t have underground electricity here. We have ugly wires that go from one corner of the house to a pole across the street. It ain’t pretty.

I got a new doormat at Target special for the tour. And now it’s filthy…but at least it was welcoming!

I love getting to watch Ali transform from a baby into a kid.

Walking all around like she owns the place! Oh wait, she does.

Next up HVAC, Electricity, Gas? Tile?

Next week we should have wood flooring, tile work, plumbing, kitchen cabinets. We’ll be living here in 2 weeks. Ack!