Fun Find Friday #5

The basement in this house will be Joe's domain.  At first I wasn't sure how I would decorate this "man cave" thing. After a few clicks and scrolls through Pinterest and Houzz, I knew exactly what would fit Joe. As most men, Joe LOVES sports. If Sports Center is on in a 50 yard radius, we have lost him until the next commercial break. I want to give him the sports loving cave he deserves. I am thinking vintage Seattle Mariners and Seahawks accessories with an industrial/rustic sports bar feel.

When we were discussing the layout of the basement bar, we were trying to decide at what height to make it. Counter height or bar height. Though we already have the counter height stools to furnish this future bar, a man needs to "belly up" to a bar. (Not hip up) Coming from Florida, outdoor living is equal to basement living in Washington. It is cheap and easy added square footage. Every member of my family has built a bar in their back yard. In fact, I am pretty sure my dad built his bar before we even had beds in our house. From that experience I learned, a man needs a place to belly up!

So Belly Up it is! Now I needed to find bar height stools. No problem here when it comes to finding chairs. More on my chair addiction later. I love looking for cool chairs.

Contemporary Bar Stools And Counter Stools

With a little patience and a lot of looking, I found exactly what I wanted on Craigslist. I found 3 Crate & Barrel bar height aluminum stools for the same price of one new chair! I am in love with them and think they will bring the vintage sports bar look to Joe's man cave.

Raise The Roof!

July brings a busy calendar for our family. Lots of fun summer things going on like camps, road trips, weddings, BBQs, oh and building a house! Things are steadily moving a long as best as they can. The roof trusses are up and the place is really coming to life. All the planning on paper makes so much more sense to me now that I can see it in 3D. Here are picture of the progress we found the past couple of weekends. Along with the newest questions we are asking ourselves.

This will be a mini balcony at the front entrance. I saw this idea on Houzz and thought it would be an easy way to give the foyer a little more WOW! I hope it comes out like I envisioned :-)

This is the view from that mini balcony. The dilemma I am having now is, do I put a hanging light fixture? If so, where would I center it? The upper window, the window straight ahead or in-between?

 

The other question we had was about the window placement in one of the kids bedrooms. This room doesn't really have a good headboard wall. The only full wall would be the wall behind you as you walk in. I like to have a bed as a focal point when you walk in for both decorating and staging purposes. We think these windows are high enough off the ground to be able to fit a headboard under, but are they far enough apart?

This is the other wall you see when you walk into that room. We can't change this window because it is at the front of the house and would throw off the architecture.

 

 

 Master Bedroom

Hallway leading to laundry, bedrooms and bathroom

Bonus room

 

I finally got to see the view on a beautiful clear summer day! You can see downtown and the Cascade Mountains!!!

 

We typically make a family visit to the construction site once a week. Joe obviously is there several times everyday, but for me it is once a week. If you have ever met my son Olen, a construction site really isn't a place you would feel comfortable having him roam around. There are far too many places for him to practice flying like Superman, if you know what I mean. So when we visit, he and Lila must stay out in the backyard. Joe and I take turns going through the house, while the other one stays in the back with the kids. The "yard" that is really just a field of dirt, rocks and wood scraps is the perfect place for the children of a home builder to be. They wanted me to take pictures of their latest creations. 

"Fairy Rock Garden" by Lila

"Daddy's House" by Olen

The latest look of our nest!

Fun Find Friday #4 (on a Monday)

**I thought I had set this to post on Friday, for Fun Find Friday. But I guess I am still learning this blogging stuff. Anyway, I wanted to share this with you all ASAP in case anyone is looking for exterior lights. Screaming deals go fast.

A few weeks ago Joe and I spotted an amazing deal on exterior lights at Costco. They are regularly $39.99 (at a Costco price which is good), but on sale for $19.99!!! The limit is 4 per customer. I was just there this week and they have them in stock and are still on sale! So if you are in the market for exterior lights at an amazing price, here ya go!

Good News/Bad News

I will start this entry the way Joe likes to update me on the house......

"I've got good news and bad news. Which one do you want to hear first?"

The good news is, the housing market is on FIRE in the Seattle area. Inventory is low and demand is high. This is great news to hear after the last couple of years. A hot housing market means people have jobs again! WOO HOO!

Now the bad news. Because the market is booming, labor is hard to find. My friend Lynly, who is also a real estate agent, shared an article she read about this crazy market. It explained how during the recession a lot workers in the construction industry, in all areas; framing, dry wall, tile install, etc. had to go out and find new careers. Now things are hot again and they are hard to find. The ones that are still in the industry can charge premium rates. Supply & Demand.

Which leads me to the bad news...our house was on hold for a total of a week and a half because the framer had so many jobs going at once, but didn't have enough crews to work them. Great for him, not so great for us. Each week that it is pushed back, creeps us slowing into the holiday season for our move in date.

Even with that delay, those boys are working their booties off  to make up time. Here is the progress in the past couple of weeks.

Backyard view

 

Kitchen

 

Family Room

 

Stairway (to Heaven as of now)

 

Front Entry

Views from the second floor

 

 

While we were there this weekend we noticed some changes that we would like to make on a couple of the window heights. 

This is the window that will be above the kitchen sink. We would like to lower the bottom ledge. It would be nice for my 5'4" self to be able to see out into the backyard while I do dishes.

This is one out of a pair of windows in the office/den. I think this ledge should be raised for both our privacy and the people next door.

 

The street view.

 

 

Make Along Monday Challenge

My dear friend Shelly, from Dolen Diaries, teamed up with several other amazing bloggers to do a fun monthly challenge called Make Along Mondays. The first Monday of the month they announce a creative challenge. The last Monday of the month you post a picture of what you made. You don't need to be a blogger to participate. You can just snap a pic and post it on her Facebook page. It is just a fun way to give you a reason to create! So pop over to her blog and check it out.

This month the challenge was to make a summer style wreath. In addition to that, I challenged myself to... 1.) actually complete this project and 2.) only use supplies I had at home. This forced me to think on the fly. I had seen a lot of really cute wreaths made from rope so I took that as a jumping off point.

 As I started wrapping the foam wreath with rope, I noticed it was beginning to gap. I don't know if I was pulling it too tight, but the look it was making was driving me nuts. So I scratched that idea.

Now I had a problem. I had been hot gluing the rope down as I went, so I couldn't get it off the foam. My only option was to cover it with something. I found some scraps of burlap in my stash of fabric. (Yes, I do have a craft supply hoarding problem, don't judge.) I took the scraps, folded in the frayed edges and wrapped it, erasing my ugly mistake.

I wanted to embellish it with shells to give it a summer feel, so I dug through everything looking for shells to glue on. Being from Florida, I made a vow a long time ago that I would never BUY a shell. I have so many shells that came straight from the beautiful beaches of the Gulf Coast of Florida. But all of those shells are packed and in storage. So I was back to the drawing board again.

What screams summer? Think.....Outdoor festivals, fun in the sun, childhood....I came up with making a mini bunting to string across the wreath. I simply cut small triangles, punched a hole on each top corner and strung it on a piece of twine. I handwrote the letters, but you could use stamps if you have them. Next, I jazzed it up with some festive ribbon.

Pinwheels always remind me of being a kid. So I broke out my amazing, life changing Silhouette Cameo machine and cut some pinwheels using fun paper. If you don't have a Silhouette machine, here is a link to a video on YouTube by One Minute Crafts showing how to make one yourself. I tied the mini bunting on with twine and just pinned in the pinwheels, that way I can change it up with the season. And Ta-Da!

 

In the end, it was so much fun! It was the therapy I needed at the end of the day.

 

 

Exterior Details

It is time to finalize the choices for the exterior details such as the doors, windows, garage doors and paint colors. Joe and I took a little field trip to research house colors and front door designs. In the end we learned one thing, one of us must be color blind. Which one of us it is, is still up for debate. When I see gray, he sees brown. When I see brown, he sees gray. Who knows what color our house will be.

I love the classic look of what I think is a gray house with bright white trim. The only problem, there is already a darker gray home with off white trim cattycorner across the street from our home. So we are trying to find something to set them apart. Here it is.

I am a pretty shy person in general and don't typically initiate conversations with strangers. Something my daughter has no problem with, which makes me really uncomfortable. But I am not uncomfortable with knocking on the door of house I love to ask questions. While living in our last house, people rang the doorbell multiple times to ask a question about something they liked about our home. It was very flattering, so I feel I can pay it forward to another homeowner. You would be surprised at how nice and helpful people are when you tell them you love their home.

Here are some exterior colors we like. Some I found on Houzz.com, while others I found on our field trip.

Traditional Exterior by Minneapolis Architects & Designers Charlie Simmons - Charlie & Co. Design, Ltd.

I LOVE this house. I have pretty much every angle there is on Houzz.com saved in my idea book. The back of the this house is even more amazing than the front.

 

Traditional Entry by Downers Grove General Contractors Matthies Builders

I love this house color. Not a huge fan of the door, but it isn't ugly by any means.

 

This is the home of a lady I bought my dining room table from off of Craigslist. Her home was absolutely amazing inside. I wanted to buy things that weren't even for sale.This may classify me as a stalker, but I had to drive by and take a picture of the paint colors and details.

Is this house a little more in the brown family?

 

 On the computer screen, all these homes look like the same exact color to me. In real life they look much different. Or it could be that I am the color blind one.

 

DOORS, DOORS, and more DOORS.

 

As I am sure you can see by now, our home will be craftsman style. Lots of straight lines and square angles. We would like our front door to go with the architecture of course. We know the style, we just can't decide on whether to stain it or paint it bright white like the trim.

 

 

Traditional Spaces by San Francisco Architects & Designers Studio S Squared Architecture, Inc.

 

Traditional Porch by Vancouver General Contractors Richardson Homes Ltd

 

Traditional Exterior by New Canaan Architects & Designers James Schettino Architects

I didn't get a very bright picture of this door. The neighbors probably would have called the police if I got any closer.

I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts, there was a really neat Dutch door on the original home. We tried to salvage it, but it was pretty beat up from the former owners screwing drywall over and into the door. I am really bummed because I had already accepted that door in my vision and it is there to stay. Now I am in the hunt of a perfect, budget friendly, Dutch door for the entrance way out to the deck. Once I get it in my head, it is hard for me to change my mind. Poor Joe.

 

Traditional Entry by Seattle Kitchen & Bath Designers Kayron Brewer, CKD, CBD / Studio K B

 

 

Traditional Patio by Newport Beach Interior Designers & Decorators Kim Woods

 

Now to make an eye appointment to have my vision checked.

Making Progress

While we were gone, our superstar project manager, Karl was hard at work doing his best against the weather to keep progress going. When we left for vacation, there was just 'one nice looking hole.' When we returned, it became one nice looking basement. Joe was so excited to see the progress, he drove there the night we got back into town to see if for himself.

Even with all the rain, they were able to build and pour the foundation and basement. That is what you do in the Pacific Northwest, you build in the rain or you would never get a project complete.

Here is the street view.

 

Framing began this past Friday!! YAY!

The basement bonus room. AKA Joe's Man Cave.

 

This will be Nonni and Bob's (that is what the kids call my parents) room for when they visit. Lila always designates the guest room for them. When other guests come, she tells them they can stay in Nonni and Bob's room.

 



"If you build it, they will come." - Field of Dreams