AWER HOUSE #3: WAITING FOR THE PLANS

Okay, as promised, it’s time for a little house update! I last wrote about the house almost two months ago and lots has happened since then. And then, I have to laugh, because we have little-to-nothing to show for the work we’ve done in that time. But hey! Any progress is progress! 😀 Here’s what we’ve been up to:

We received our first draft of the main level floor plan from our architect the first weekend of December, which was so exciting. Ryan and I drew our house plans from scratch based off our lot’s orientation, size and our family’s needs, so we were stoked to see the architect’s professional sketch. Some of what we drew up wasn’t implemented and other things were added to our sketch that we didn’t ask for, so we went back and forth editing there for a while, then Ryan and I thought of more improvements to make, the architect made those changes, and then finally – right after Christmas! – we moved onto working on the second floor. Like the main floor, we drew a sketch for the architect to draw up, and we’re currently waiting to see the professional draw-up there. Hopefully it’s close to our vision! We pulled in one of our builder friends to take a look at our plans before we finalize them architecturally, and holy, has he been helpful. No one tells you to have an actual builder to look at your house plans before they’re done, but that might be my first piece of advice with building a home as his insights have been pretty invaluable. It’s kind of like having a professional chef look at your original recipe before you publish your recipe and make your dish to share with others — you think you’ve come up with something great based off of what you know, but the chef has been there, done that, so her tweaks will make your good recipe great. Same deal here with our ideas and our builder friend, and we’ve been so grateful for his help. My friend, Eryn, came in clutch in this same way this week, actually. Eryn is an interior designer (she is so good at what she does), and again — no one tells you to get the opinions of an interior designer on your spaces and how they’ll be planned out before you finish your plans, but man, you should! Eryn’s tips prompted a good plan tweak and we’re so grateful for her, too.

So! In the meantime, while we wait for our second floor to make its appearance, we’re learning. Learning learning learning! All the ins-and-outs of good home design, sourcing materials, cost-efficient options for high-end looks — all the things. Like today over lunch, I read a loooong article on the difference between LP and Hardie siding and why/how I should pick which one we use for our exterior. Didn’t even know either one of those materials/companies existed four months ago! See? Learning! The Dear Alice podcast has been our BF on the learning front, PS. We love it. Highly recommend tuning into that if you’re remodeling/building.

This sounds kind of funny, but we’re also envisioning what we’ve come up with. I actually walk through the house in my mind every single night as I snuggle the girls to sleep. I start at the front door, pausing at the hallway entry (looking for just a sec at the vestibule leading to Ry’s office there to the right), then I move on through to the great room, then I head over to the kitchen, and then on through the rest of the house. I picture colors, textures, furniture pieces — I can even see the sunflowers on the counter top next to the wooden bowl of citrus fruit and bananas. My mind is working on getting this place down. 😉 And in all seriousness, it’s such a happy place for my mind to be.

Lastly, we’re getting totally inspired by other houses everywhere we go. We notice everything now – roof lines and pitches, window types, flooring types, paint colors. Our eyes are super attune to seeing the little details of homes, which means we’re seeing a whole new world within the world we’ve always known here.For example, these pics below. The little girls were going on a bike ride around the neighborhood yesterday when an old pioneer house that I’ve seen probably thousands of times in my lifetime stopped me dead in my tracks.

I mean, cutest door with panes. I want window panes just like that!

Cutest window with, again, the cutest panes. Traditional + clean + charming.

Cutest custom trim (hello charming craftsmanship! Totally inspiring)!

And then there were these cutest girls — the whole reason we’re building this home! I love thinking about these babies and their friends and cousins running all over the house. Where they’ll go, how they’ll play in certain rooms, how many times they’ll run to the pantry to grab something from the snack drawer (a snack, BTW, is all over Chloe’s face, ha!). I can’t wait for those little visions to come to life most of all.

It’s going to be good!

Now the last, big thing we’re thinking about as we polish off these plans is when we’ll start to build our little house. From what we can tell right now, the house is probably going to be on the higher end our budget (we need to get bids in order to know), so we may hold off for a bit and save more money to build it out the way we really want to. Plus the building market is still juuuust a little wild here (insert sarcasm. The building market is really wild here), so maybe holding off a little bit will be to our benefit? Maybe materials prices will dip?? Or maybe they won’t? Maybe prices will just keep going up? Man it’s hard to tell. We’d love to build right away. That’s still Plan A. But we’re trying to play it smart with this major life investment. We’re studying things out and praying constantly for tips from up above regarding this house. I actually really love how Heavenly Father works when it comes to making big decisions in life. I believe – based off of what He says in scripture here – that He respects our agency so much, and He values our personal ideas and hopes and dreams so much, that when we choose a positive path to take in life – if what we want to do is a good thing (because He is all in favor of every kind of good thing! — see here and here) – all we need to do is run our plan by Him. I don’t believe that God wants to be a dictator of everything we need to do/that He wants to tell us everything we should do. I think He has an overall, perfect plan for our lives and that He is thrilled when – on our own! – we make good, informed, positive choices that add beautiful detail to that plan. So yes. 🙂 We’ll keep coming up with our plan and we’ll run it by Him and we’ll just see where this thing goes.

Stay tuned for the next update — maybe it’ll be in another month! Actually, please bless it won’t be, hahah. All we need is our second-floor floor plan and then we should be good to gooooo!

I’ll keep you posted. 🙂