Birthday Month

This is a little late, but bear with me... I'm going to deem the month of June as birthday month in my house.  Seriously!  There is a birthday 3 out of the 4 weeks in the month.

June 5th- Kason

June 12th- Rhett

June 18th- Keegan



Yes, Keegan got two birthday cakes.  One on his actual birthday, and the other at his birthday party the following Saturday.

Plus this year during the month of June we had to build our fence, put up our gates, and rake our yard of rocks to get ready for grass seed.  Because if we didn't, Neighborhood Non-profit wouldn't allow us to get our A/C.  And it was HOT. Like 86 degrees inside the house hot.  So I was out helping Rhett build our fence all the way up until the last couple of days I was pregnant.  Then the first day home from the hospital I held Kason in one arm, and steadied fence posts with the other while Rhett poured concrete into the holes. After that we installed our gates.  Then, the next couple of days after that being done we raked, and raked, and raked, and raked some more to get our backyard nice and smoothed out.  I'm telling you, we live in a gravel pit!  I did all of that within a week postpartum on top of the constant diaper changes and feedings about every 2 hours even through the night.  I would go out and rake a couple of hours, then come in and feed, change, and snuggle.  Then repeat until it was done.  But poor Rhett really never got a break from it.  He worked so hard trying to get everything done so we could have a nice cool house.  We still had to wait a week after all of our work was done for the A/C guy to make it up here from Roy (about a 45 minute drive).
 I swear I could hear angels singing when I saw his truck pull up to our house.

After a couple of hours of work, this beauty was installed and cooled off the house about 15 degrees.

Which was AWESOME.  I was so sick and tired of stripping my newborn baby down to a diaper and have a fan blowing on us all the time so he wouldn't over heat.  It was crazy!  With my other babies I was always so worried about them getting cold and keeping their body temperature up.  But it was so hot in the house it was the opposite with Kason.

Oh yeah, and on top of all of the birthdays in the month of June, it is also Father's Day.   We just had a BBQ with some of Rhett's family. 

Overall, it was a crazy, busy, but awesome month.  As if we weren't busy enough though, Rhett started helping his old boss out when he is not at his full-time job last month.  He is a very busy guy.  I'm so grateful for all his hard work.

Almost forgot, but we squeezed in some time to paint Kalista's room pink last month too.  I will share pictures soon!  

New Beginnings

We are officially in our home and I am so happy!  I feel like all the the sacrifices and hard work has finally paid off.  Our Open House day was on May 5th, so a week from tomorrow it will have been a month since we moved in.  It has been so wonderful to feel the joy of being in our own home that I can now fully appreciate all of the hard work we have put into it.

Speaking of hard work, take a look at how many hours Rhett and I have put into the program that assisted us to help build our home.  If you can't read the small print, it says 1822 hours!  And I'm telling you I feel the sacrifice of every one of those hours.  Blood, sweat, and tears literally went into this home, so to see the reward at the end is an amazing feeling.  It took us 9 FULL months.  Exactly 40 weeks of building.  We averaged 45.55 hours of building per week.  Gave up EVERY weekend and most week nights to achieve this dream.  Including such precious family time.  That was the hardest part.  Well that and the fact that....

I was pregnant 35 out of the 40 weeks that we were building!  That's right, I got pregnant with our third child 5 weeks in to this enormous commitment.  I definitely wasn't able to "take it easy" with this pregnancy, but am so fortunate to have had such healthy pregnancies that all of the physical and emotional stress of this project didn't present complications.

First trimester framing, second trimester throwing shingles for roofing and rocking exteriors, third trimester trim, caulking, flooring, landscaping.  Those were the BIG jobs.  With ten thousand little and medium jobs in between.   But the knowledge I gained through this process is invaluable.  The confidence I have in myself and my abilities are so much more.  

As I sit back and look at every detail of my home and know that my husband and I along with the help of some great neighbors did this, I beam with pride.  Although, I can't do much sitting back and relaxing quite yet.

 I am 38 weeks, 2 days pregnant.

With a lot of unpacking and preparing for a newborn to do, my nesting instinct has kicked into full gear!  You see, I had my baby shower that my sweet sister Rebecca threw for me last week.  I got my crib, car seat, and bassinet just last week as well as digging out what I had left of newborn clothes from Keegan from one of my many storage bins.  So there has been a lot of washing, organizing, and putting away baby things.  All while trying to unpack and organizing the rest of the house.  I swear I'm not complaining!  My sweet Kalista has been so helpful too.  The patience my good kids have had with me I am so grateful for, and I can't wait to welcome my sweet baby boy in just a short time.

Choices

Way back in May and June we made all of the color and style choices for our house.  It was much harder than I thought!  But one thing that everyone warned Rhett and I about never happened.  We didn't argue or even really disagree about any of the choices we picked!  I should probably be really grateful that we have such similar tastes. :)

One of our huge things that needed to be decided on was the rock color and style.  After lots of contemplating and comparing our rock choice with our siding choice to make sure they would go well together, we ended up going with Dutch Quality Sienna Weather Ledge.  The color of siding we chose was Harbor Gray.  That will be for the horizontal siding as well as the board and batten siding. 

(By the way this is not my home, it is a home in the local Parade of Homes that has the same color of siding that I chose for my home being built)

Do you like??

I love it! And I think I stayed pretty close to the color pallet I wanted to go with in this post.

There were tons of other little details that needed to be decided on for our exterior like, soffit and fascia-white, roof-midnight black, gutters-white, vents color and style-white and rectangle, and many other tiny little details. 

 I'm very happy with our over all choices and think we made the right decisions that we can be happy with for a very long time!  I just can't wait until I can see it all coming together on my house!

Progress!

It has been almost two months since I last posted!  Building has definitely changed in the last couple of months.  For instance, we have gone from building in sunny warm weather to frigid cold snowy weather.  I knew I shouldn't have been complaining about how hot it was! haha  Building in winter months definitely has its challenges, but I think we have done very well coping and keep going.  

Here is our progress!!!

                                                                     All framed in!

                                     
                                                                  Getting roof trusses on!

 
                                                                   Roof getting sheeted!

 
                   Tar paper on roof, shingles dropped off on roof, house wrap on, and windows in!

                           Doors in, tar paper and mesh on bottom of house for rock, and shingling done!

Looks like the kids are excited about our progress too!  But do you see all of those piles of snow lining the front of our house?  All of the lovely white stuff was covering our roof and had to be shoveled and swept off.  Soooooooo glad that the roof is on and we no longer have to worry about it.  Once we get the rock on then we move on into the inside and don't have to worry so much about the freezing cold!

Frame it in

Bearing walls in...  check!















Rim board and floor joists in...  check!

Walls being built... check!

Walls being lifted... check!
(Wow I look like I'm really struggling! haha)

Hold up the wall... check!

Nail wall down... check!

Take it all in... check!

Rhett and I spending half a day fixing the layout of our front window and door because they were off 18 inches... check! check!












Yeah that job really really sucked!

  

It's most definitely a process

First an empty lot...

Then we staked out our lot so they could dig the hole...

Then we had our very own hole! (not sure if that sounded right!)

Footings and a foundation were next...

Then they dumped gravel into the basement and garage and we put on the window wells...

Then comes the back-filling baby!

Slowly but surely we are coming along! Can you see those other homes already framed in?  We are participating in the Mutual Self-Help housing program and we have a group of nine houses that we build collectively.  We help build their houses, they help build ours.  We have already finished framing 6 houses in two months! So our house will be one of the next ones up to start framing and I'm so excited!

We already got to do a few things to get it ready for the basement and garage floor to be poured...

Can't wait for the next step!

The Plans...

Our Home!!!!

There are so many things I love about this home.  The long front porch, the added details of the different pitches with the vertical siding, the cultured stone that runs along the bottom of the home, the list goes on and on.... <3 

This is the upstairs floorplan.  I'm super excited about the mudroom off of the garage, and the walk-in closet in the master bedroom.  I'm convinced I will be able to keep my house a whole lot cleaner because of them! haha




 Anyway, I'm still trying to decide on colors for the exterior of the home so if you have any suggestions let me know!  I know I want a color in this pallet but still not sure exactly which one.

Approved!!!

That's right! Our house got approved on our corner building lot and I'm so excited!  We went to a meeting yesterday to sign some papers and go over our house plans and it felt very surreal.  I never thought I would be able to have my own home.  I of course always dreamed of it.  But after living in apartments most of my life, this just seems like a dream.  Like I will just wake up and it will all be gone.  I just need to stay positive!


Anyway... here is what our lot looks like. 

                                                           This is the view from the corner

                                     This is the view from where the front of the house will be




 I know it doesn't look like much yet, but I cannot wait until it transforms into home.  I will be back later to post our house plan!