Closet Turned Built-In

One of my favorite details of the house we just left behind was the sweet little built-in bookshelf we made for the basement. 

With everything we had going on, plus adding our third little fella into the mix, it took us longer than I care to admit to get 'er done. But get it done, we did.

It all started when we had the basement dry walled. We had planned for a closet in that spot, but seeing it all framed out and dry walled like that gave us an idea. It was the perfect spot for a built in, and we had plenty of unused closets down there, so why not use that space to make a statement and add some character to our home!

 

We did most of the finish work on our own, with the exception of the staircase, so the trim work and paint fell upon the hubby. He enjoys doing a bit of finish carpentry here and there, and we were under the gun to get the walls painted and the trims in and painted and caulked so the carpet could come. All of this fell around the time I was hospitalized and put on bed rest with little boy #3, so we did the bear minimum to make it work and put off finishing the built-in for a later date. 

As you can see below, we placed the bead board on the back,  and had made a few shelves for it, but didn't complete it for some time.

 

My original plan was just to paint the back white like the rest of the trim work, but on a whim I chose this pretty blue paint and it really helped bring some color into an otherwise neutral space. 

 

Around the time we were prepping our home for selling, we finally rounded up the rest of the materials needed and put the remaining shelves in. I brought in some last minute accessories and we called it good.

I had intentions of filling these cute frames (all from target) with pictures of our own family, but when we sold the house on the first day, it was no longer a priority for me. Instead, we moved to boxing things up and packing up our life. 

So, we only got to enjoy this shelf finished for about a month! Sometimes it's that last little push to finish a long project that just kills us. We always say it's usually the last 10% that we struggle with getting done. Please tell me we're not the only ones! I sure loved walking past it and admiring it for that short period of time though!

Our New House...

It's not really "new" news anymore, but we're still pretty darn excited about it... We are building a house!
 


We Went under contract toward the end of April, and since then we've been busy gathering our selections and getting our permitting and financing. It's been a lot of fun, but we can't wait for it to be finished! We are targeting October for closing. It has been so rainy here this summer (wettest on record from what we hear, totally abnormal) and it's really messed things up with getting the foundations in, not just for us, but for other houses going in near us. I'm hoping we will be in by Halloween.

Here are some of the details:


 



 
The brick is Edgewater, a nice red brick with some variation. I love it. The siding choices are a light grey and arctic white. The only door color I liked was this outer space, it will probably get painted later. They had limited door colors, because it's not painted on site.

The floor plan:

 We love the floor plan. It's exactly what we've dreamed of for a long time now. We've walked through some similar and can't wait to walk into our own!

Master bathroom tile choices:
 

We didn't love any other tile at the design center, so we opted to put in vinyl flooring in the kids bath, mudroom, laundry room areas and tile ourselves. I've been dreaming of hex tile for the kids bath and we couldn't see paying extra for something we knew we would just be ripping out.

Same goes for counter tops. They had about 6 choices of dark and tan granites, I have something else in mind, so we opted to downgrade to laminate for a credit and we will apply that toward taking them out and putting in something we love after we move in...

The cabinets:


I love them! I had to fight for pure white. They offered creme with a glaze, but I guess I'm a purist. I just wanted white. Having renovated three houses now, including white-ifying two of those kitchens, this was just a must. I told them it was a deal breaker, and we ended up going through the sub contractor they use and tracking down the white ones on our own. The funny thing about that was about two weeks later, they got this sample in the showroom and the sales rep said they sent it right after I ordered mine. So I guess white cabinet lovers everywhere can thank me for calling to their attention they needed a white option. Ha ha ha.

The flooring:

 Love it as well. It's hickory, in a distressed finish, becuase it will get that way anyway, might as well make it be on purpose and let the oopsies blend in over time.

The Lot:

 

It's bigger than 1/3 acre, smaller than 1/2. We originally wanted something larger, but this neighborhood was just calling out to us. It is full of kids, and we decided the yard will be plenty big enough, but the boys have really missed having kids to play with close by. The house we are renting has a huge yard and no neighbor kids, and while it's been fun, in our stage of life we chose neighbors and friends for the boys over a massive yard. It won't be tiny though, so we are happy. About the size of our last yard, which was great, but tree-less, so we are very excited about the amount of trees we will have here! 

We got to go through and choose which trees to keep and which ones to clear to make room for the house. Our back yard will have lots of trees. The boys can't wait to build a tree house, and we are looking forward to having a space for playing and entertaining.

The footings are poured!

And I've been busily collecting my ideas for the interior. We ordered pre-wires and no light fixtures so we could pick our own. It's an overwhelming task picking light fixtures for an entire home, but it's so much fun! Here are some of my ideas:

So much to do, but we are enjoying making it our own.

I'll hopefully be back sometime soon and share our house hunt. Although we are really excited to build this time around, there were a few really great houses that caught our eye and made us think twice. It would have been home reno #4 though, and though it's a lot of fun demolishing things and rebuilding, our hands are full with three boys 6 and under running around, so this option is good for us this time around!