New Home Update

10/18/2012

My blogging has been a little scarce this week because it’s been busy ’round here. Ali got sick with a cold on Saturday and earlier this week I caught it too. Thankfully I’m not on deadline at work because there is a lot going on at the house and we’ve been running all over town looking at tile and flooring samples and meeting contractors and sub-contractors over at the house. A lot has happened since my last update. The interior walls have all been primed, though a few colors are in wrong places…we’ve been promised they’ll fix it when they do the paint. The doors have all been hung and the trim and baseboards are in progress. The exterior siding is a little more than half way done. We met with our kitchen cabinet guy earlier this week and made the final adjustments to the kitchen design. (I’m so excited about the kitchen!) We’ve had to make our selections for hard wood flooring and tile. We’re narrowing down the light fixtures and fans. A lot of things will be wrapped up in the next couple of weeks…we might even be totally done in a month! We’re hoping to move in or at least get our occupancy permit before Thanksgiving.

The “floating wall” we call it, in the living room is primed with SW Drizzle. The lighting is a little weird in this picture. It’s not quite that greenish.

One wall of the kids’ room will be SW Melangé Green.

Primed for SW Window Pane in the hall bathroom.

My office/laundry room. Boy, that primer is bright! I hope the paint color is not so bright…

Oops… this wall in Ali’s room is supposed to be pink (Rosebay). The black primer was for one of the walls in the den/playroom that will be chalkboard paint.

Oops #2… the kitchen side of the floating wall was supposed to be SW Greek Villa like the rest of the walls in this photo. The painter promises his crew will fix it.

We have a front door!

Interior doors! We were thinking about painting them white at first but once we saw them hung, we decided we love the wood grain.

I have a pocket door. I’ve always wanted a pocket door. It’s between the mud room and the living room. It’s one of those little details that our architect added (I had never mentioned it) that make me so happy!

Our friend Andy won the bid for our kitchen. He’s marking everything out to make sure it will all fit. He was able to include everything on my wish list and he used my sketch as a plan. Cool! I don’t love to cook but I’m determined to do it more once we’re living here. I’m really excited about this kitchen!

The hall bathroom will have turquoise (“Aegean” by Daltile) 1×1 tiles around the tub and some kind of yet-to-be-determined gray tile on the floor.

The master bathroom floor and walk-in shower will all be this 1×1 mosaic called “Beach” by Daltile.

While we were looking for floor tile, we found a great deal on the kind of hickory wood flooring we were looking for!

Hickory is an extremely hard wood (durable). We like the utility grade because it has a ton of color variation including some knots and mineral deposits. It lends itself to rustic design but Jason and I fell in love with it and think it’s going to look really pretty in our house. The variety of color means it’ll match our black-brown furniture as well as our walnut furniture.

It was such a blessing to find that because we were really squeezing our budget to afford hard wood and we really, really didn’t want to go with anything else.

On to the exterior siding!

Originally we were going to do cedar siding. Because of budget we decided to go with Hardie board instead. I love this solution for 2 reasons (3, if you count staying on budget!): 1. it’s very durable and low maintenance and 2. it can be painted any color in the world.

We’re doing a mix of board and batten design and flat panels. The board and batten will be our main color (SW Cast Iron) and flat panels will be our accent color (SW Restful).

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Posted by mahlbrandt

I Just Want to Go Home

09/26/2012

Have you ever had a “DUH” moment, when you realize God has been trying to teach you a lesson for, say, 7 months and then you finally get it?

The other night I was having a self-pity fest. It was just me and Ali hanging out for the evening and I didn’t want to be a bad influence so thankfully, this conversation was just in my head. I was so sick of living at my parents’ house and I was making a list. So sick of not knowing where the tomato sauce is. So sick of cleaning up other people’s drips on the counters. So sick of not having a big plastic serving spoon like the one we have in storage. So sick of storing dishes in my bedroom closet. So sick of this. So sick of that. So sick of feeling like I don’t have a home.

That’s when it hit me. My parents’ house is great and they have been so, so generous to let us stay with them. They provide groceries, many cooked meals, shelter, food, lights, help with childcare, and much more all for a little rent. They’re kind and they give us much grace. We’re getting a great deal and I know, I really do know, that we are very blessed to be here right now while our new home is being built.

Even with all that provision and all that love, its just.not.home. Not my home. Finally after all these months, the message was loud and clear:

Before you make your new home and open it up to more foster kids, I want you to truly understand how frustrating it feels to not have a home. Even with a cozy house, even with tons of provision, even with loving parents, you can still feel homesick—homesick for a place you cannot go.

6 Comments | Faith, Family, Family: Foster Parenting | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home: Kitchen Plan

09/12/2012

I sketched out the plan for our new kitchen in my moleskine journal:

Make sense?

Basically, I want walnut-stained wood cabinet doors on the base cabinets and white wall cabinets. Somewhere on the same wall as the refrigerator, I want a small open shelf for our everyday dishes and glasses. Plus, a whole lot of specifics that won’t matter to anyone but us.

These are my inspiration kitchens:

Source: Uploaded by user via Martina on Pinterest

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Source: designsponge.com via Martina on Pinterest

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Source: designsponge.com via Martina on Pinterest.

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The good thing about our house taking so long is that we have time to change our minds about things as many times as we want. For example, at first we thought we wanted all white cabinets. Now we want half white, half walnut. We thought about doing soapstone countertops or concrete countertops…now we’re set on kashmire granite.

Here’s my inspiration board, our plan for the kitchen (not that we can’t still change our minds!):

Sources

1. Sherwin Williams Greek Villa – (main color throughout the house)

2. IKEA MINUT pendant 10″ globe lights $30 each

3. White upper wall cabinets

4. 3×6 glass subway tiles for backsplash

5. Delta 9159-DST Trinsic with pull down single handle

6. Double under mount sink (50/50) with lower center wall

7. Kashmire (Cashmere) Granite countertops

8. Woodland Garden 2×3 from Urban Outfitters $18

9. Walnut-stained (probably cherry wood) base cabinets

10. Hickory wood floors

11. Tabouret counter-height metal stools $40 each

12. Whirlpool White Ice appliances

13. Whirlpool 30″ stainless range hood

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Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home Update

08/22/2012

The plumbing has been started at our new house and the rough-in is complete. That means a new water line from the street to the house, a new sewer line from the house to the street, and all the plumbing under the house as been installed and led up through the walls so it’s ready for fixtures to be installed later. Not the most exciting pictures but, it is what it is. Progress!

Digging a trench for the sewer line

Trench for the water supply line to the house

Pex

Copper

PVC

Washing machine. Woohoo!

Kitchen plumbing for refrigerator

Master bathroom, plumbing for the sink.

How good is your imagination? We’re thinking something like this for the vanity, medicine cabinet and sconce lights.

Ali checking out the cold water line for the kitchen sink

Where Ali will be taking baths next year… The plumbers fill all the pipes and the tub with water to check for leaks.

I’m pretty excited about this. When our friends built their house, they added a hot water line to one of their outdoor faucets. Great for dog washing. Great for washing the car in cold weather. Great for filling up a kid’s pool (or water table or water balloons.) The plumber loved the idea so much he said he might install one at his own house.

So that’s the plumbing rough-in. Very interesting, right? Is anyone still reading? Chirp chirp. Chirp chirp.

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Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home: Kids Room Plan

05/23/2012

At our last house, I designed a combined nursery and kids room as we were becoming foster parents. It had to be suited for 1 or 2 kids, either gender, newborn up to age 5…all within a 10×11 bedroom. In our new house, we’ll have a nursery for Precious and another bedroom that’s set up for our future foster kids. I’m not really sure what parameters we’ll set next time around so I’m planning this room for 1 or 2 kids, boys or girls, ages 2-12. The room is approximately 10×12. We already own the bed, dresser, curtain, book ledges, owl, sheets and chair. The rest would be new purchases.

Sources

1. Sherwin WIlliams Mélange Green – accent wall color

2. Sherwin Williams Greek Villa – other three walls

3. IKEA VANDRING RÄV duvet cover and pillow case $20

4. Woodland shower curtain from Target Home (as window curtain) – no longer available

5. Owl wall art – vintage

6. Dresser – vintage

7. IKEA VANDRING RÄV Soft toy, set of 2 $8

8. Jimco orange lamp with drum shade from Lowes $40

9. IKEA KURA reversible loft bed $199

10. IKEA RIBBA picture ledges (to use as book ledges), x2, $10 each

11. Target Home 325 Thread Count Wrinkle Free Sheet Set – Blue Diamond $28

12. Chair – vintage

13. IKEA RINGUM 2′ round rug in green, x3, $10

Floor Plan (to scale)

2 Comments | Art, Art: interior design, Art: new home build, Art: new home kids room, Family, Family: Foster Parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

New Home: Nursery Plan

05/16/2012

At our last house, I designed a combined nursery and kids room as we were becoming foster parents. It had to be suited for 1 or 2 kids, either gender, newborn up to age 5…all within a 10×11 bedroom. In our new house, we’ll have TWO bedrooms for set up for kids. Hooray! (And another bedroom that we’ll set up as a den/playroom for now.) Here’s my plan for the nursery, which will be for our daughter. She will be about 1.5 when we move in. The room is approximately 10×11 (not including the doorway). The only new purchase for us in this room will be the curtains.

Sources

1. Sherwin WIlliams Rosebay – accent wall color

2. Sherwin Williams Greek Villa – other three walls

3. Petit Collage Animal ABC – Basic $40

4. IKEA BARBRO curtains $15

5. Lamp – vintage, thrifted

6. Dresser – vintage (changing table height)

7. Mr. French Poster Pop-Tone Monkey $30

8. Mobile – handmade by me

9. IKEA SOMNAT crib – no longer available

10. IKEA RIBBA picture ledges (to use as book ledges), x2, $10 each

11. IKEA GOSSIG SPANIEL – no longer available

12. Braxton Studio Letterio White Cradle Chair $80-120

13. IKEA TOFTBO bathmat (x4, taped together, MACHINE WASHABLE!) – no longer available in this color $13

14. Nightstand – vintage, refinished by me

Floor Plan (to scale)

1 Comment | Art, Art: interior design, Art: new home build, Art: new home nursery | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Cedar Siding

04/26/2012

Our new home exterior will have cedar siding, as well as concrete block on most of the front, and hardie plank accents around the side and back. I was having trouble visualizing the cedar so I did some homework and looked for images on Pinterest.

 

Source: houzz.com via Virginia on Pinterest

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Source: contemporist.com via Matthew on Pinterest

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Source: banjarinfo.com via Amy on Pinterest

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Source: 3ghomeimprovements.com via Yunkyung on Pinterest

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Source: Uploaded by user via Lindstrom on Pinterest

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Source: realcedar.org via Meghan on Pinterest

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Source: cococozy.com via Alli on Pinterest

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Source: houzz.com via Jutta on Pinterest

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Source: flickr.com via Amy on Pinterest

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Here is what I DON’T want it to look like!

Source: dwell.com via Colby on Pinterest

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Or like this. Too rustic for my taste.

Source: tinyhouselistings.com via Melissa Barr on Pinterest

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I stumbled upon this image, also. This house has several elements similar to ours. Concrete facade, cedar siding, courtyard entrance, glass store front style door. I also really love the unexpected pop of blue.

Source: plusmood.com via Martina on Pinterest

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Posted by mahlbrandt

House and Home Update

02/20/2012

• This week movers are coming to clear out our old house. Everything that we don’t antipate we’ll need in the next 6 months is going into storage. We sold our big IKEA living room sofa sectional so we’ll be couch hunting in the next couple of months. We also sold our IKEA MALM bed frame. We’ll also be searching for new furniture for our master bedroom, preferably vintage but we’ll see what we can find. We have a lot of hunting to do this year at estate sales, thrift stores, yard sales—and I’m really looking forward to it!

• Our architect is finishing up our house plans so we can start getting bids from contractors. We’re getting antsy, excited! We close on our old house on March 1. Once we close we’ll be completely debt-free! For a few days, at least. Until we open our construction loan. Haha… but it still feels freeing. We have just a tiny bit of debt right now besides our mortgage and with the little money we’ll make off our home sale, we’ll get rid of the last (less than $3000) we owe on our school loans. The rest of the profit will go straight back towards the new home.

• We don’t know the construction timeline yet because we haven’t settled on a contractor yet. That will depend on who can give us the best price and is someone we can trust and want to work with. I’m not really looking forward to the contractor selection process… Pray it’s an obvious choice and we find the right guy (or lady, I suppose.)

• Precious just turned 7 months old. She got her two bottom teeth and has been trying lots of new foods. (Pictured eating broccoli for the first time above—she loved it!) I’ll give a more thorough update once I edit her monthly photos. She is a beam of sunshine on these gray winter days. We’re still waiting to hear from our attorney on the court date for the adoption finalization. I’m eager to know because I want to plan a big adoption day party!

• Jason just wrapped up a busy two months of travel and he’ll be home a bit more now. Travel=work=pay so these past two months have been great. But I’m also happy that the longer stretches are done for a little while. The awesome thing about his job as a traveling musician is that he gets to spend a ton of time at home when he’s off. He calculated it once, just to prove it to himself, and even with the number of days per year he’s traveling, he gets to spend more time at home with Precious than he would if he worked a 9-5 job. We feel like it’s the best of both worlds. He gets to make a living doing what he loves and he gets to spend a lot of time at home with us.

• Jason’s Acoustic Lullabies album is finally OUT! I am über proud of him. It’s selling well on the road and we’ll have it up online for sale soon. More about that coming soon.

And lots of pictures of Precious, just because…

2 Comments | Family, Family: Jason, Family: Me, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

SOLD!

01/31/2012

We got a contract on our house last night! For our asking price minus some closing costs. I’m thankful. Relieved. And honestly, sad. It’s been an exhausting week (wait, it’s only Tuesday?) so maybe I’m a little extra emotional. I really do love this house. As I was looking for a picture to put with this post, I saw so many projects we’ve done here…our master bathroom, Jason’s studio, landscaping, the fireplace. And there are thousands of memories here from the last 5 years, especially from last year as our family grew from two to three to two and back to three. It’s bittersweet. Even more so than I expected.

Our new house will be nice and most importantly, it’ll have room for more kids we can reach as foster parents. I’m looking forward to the whole process of designing and building a home. But I feel like it’s extra hard to say goodbye to one house when we don’t have another house to move into. I love the character and quirks of our old house and “new” scares me a little bit. I don’t know anything about the buyer except that she seems to really like the house. I hope she appreciates it as much as we do. I hope she likes to garden and is happy with the updates we did.

We’ll be staying with my parents during the transition period—several of you have asked. They also live in our neighborhood so we’ll be close to the new house as it’s being constructed. We’ll be gradually packing up and moving out in February. I know I’ll be so consumed with the next season that soon I’ll detach from this one, but for today I just want to savor this old house a little longer.

8 Comments | Art, Art: mid-century design, Art: Old House Favorites | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

House Plans: Initial Drawings

01/13/2012

We’ve got plans! However, I want to protect the original work of our architect so I’m not going to fully share the plans at this point. We are thrilled! We wanted a lot of mid-century influence but figured it was going to be a modern twist, since it is 2012 after all, and we’re not planning to try to trick anyone into believing our home was built in the mid-1900s. Jason and I were hoping Ryan, our architect, would not just take our (many) ideas into consideration but also throw in a good mix of his own ideas and creativity. We were not disappointed. The exterior is different than what we expected and anything we’ve seen before. “Stunned” is the word that comes to mind with my initial reaction. Stunned/stunning are pretty similar words, right? Now I think it’s stunning.

The front of the house, according to these plans (which I’m sure will change some), will be a mix of cinder block and stained wood. I scribbled in the landscaping to help me visualize it. The most notable elements are the roof line—Ryan’s idea to let a ton of light flood into the great room which will have vaulted ceilings with exposed beams—and the lack of apparent front door. There is a front door, of course, but it’s concealed behind the wall of a courtyard.

I woke up early one morning walking through this house in my head and getting ideas along the way. I had to get out of bed to fetch some tracing paper and start scribbling down my ideas. We’re still waiting for our house to sell—we’ve had 13 showings in the first month!—which means we can take our time in the design and planning phase for now.

Here’s my “Dream House Wishlist” in case you’re curious:
• great room (kitchen, dining room, living room)
• wood-burning fireplace
• 3 bedrooms minimum
• 2 full bathrooms
• 4th bedroom that will serve as a den/playroom/guestroom for now, until/unless we need it for more kids
• studio for Jason
• laundry room/office/craft room area for me
• courtyard or atrium
• mid-century design influence
• great natural light and big windows
• garage
• wood floors
• lots of other little ideas

Oh, it’s exciting! It will be sad to say goodbye to this house that we love so much but having a new place to look forward to helps. We’re also anxious to get back to fostering kids. I’m glad we’re finally not getting placement calls anymore because it was heartbreaking to have to keep saying no, but we’re still very aware of the need and that every day there are kids that need a safe place to go. We’re feeling like this year and transition time will go by very quickly, or maybe we’re just ready to jump ahead to moving into our finished house.

2 Comments | Art, Art: new home build | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

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