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!