House Photos - Finally!

Before a full month has passed since we moved, I'd like to finally post a few highlights about our new house! For posterity's sake, I have to tell the whole story of how it all came about so bear with me.

The journey towards our new house began back in September or October of 2008. Some friends of ours in our ward, the Fuhrimans, had found out about a neighborhood of nice homes, not far from where we lived, that was a veritable ghost town. There were 8 houses there, all but one sitting vacant and in various stages of completion. A few of the houses had been owned, and even lived in, but had been lost to foreclosure. Most of them, however, had been built by the same builder who had gone bankrupt. A bank had taken them over but then had also gone bankrupt, landing the houses in the custody of the FDIC. The Fuhrimans were excited about the possibility of purchasing one of the homes from the FDIC for a rock-bottom price, and began to pursue it. They passed their excitement onto another family in our ward, the Giles, as well as to us. For us though, it was nothing more than a mild interest as we were quite happy in our old house and planning to stay for another 5 years or so (we still hadn't packed it to the rafters with our offspring, you see).

But as tends to happen with us, life takes an unexpected course and the Lord shows us that our plans are not always His. The more we looked into purchasing this house, the more undeniable it became that it would be a very good investment and an opportunity we were unlikely to have again. So after some prayer and some very large gulps, we dove into the process of acquiring this home. It was a LONG, drawn-out waiting game. The FDIC was very slow to even respond to our offer and it took some 5 or 6 months and an awesomely-persistent realtor to bring it all about. The Fuhrimans and the Giles were also successful in purchasing homes here and we feel so lucky to have hand-picked neighbors and friends!

The House at Purchase Time

The house was unfinished when we bought it, which suited us perfectly! We've always dreamed of building our own home that would be a reflection of our tastes. The Lord took that dream, toned it down a bit (our dreams usually need to be reined in a bit anyway), and gave us a home that we could finish in our own style. The floorplan was not immediately our ideal, but it has really grown on us. The house has 5 bedrooms with the master suite located on the main floor and the others all upstairs. I was pretty concerned about being far away from the kids at night, but with some tweaking it has worked out well. The master bedroom was ridiculously large, so we walled off part of it and created a small nursery that we can use while we're still having babies, and later turn it into an exercise/craft/storage space. Either that, or a Panic Room...

There was a lot of other work to do on the house, some of which we opted to do. After some consideration, we decided that we would only purchase the house if we changed a few things that were already completed. If this was going to be somewhere that we planned to live for the rest of our lives, it needed to fit us. Thankfully, we got such a good price for the house that we could afford to re-do a few features inside. #1 on that list was the kitchen. The cabinets were boring, there was little usable counter space, and overall the style was going completely the wrong direction for us.

Here's the kitchen before:

And here's the kitchen after:

Wood floors became a beautiful rectangular tile (the wood floor was banished to the Master Bdrm and given a dark espresso-makeover), the quartz countertops are plentiful, the appliances are stylish but functional, and the cabinets (oooh, aaaah) now sing!! I just have to say, the kitchen is my pride and joy. For me, redesigning the kitchen was absolutely central to giving the house the right direction in style. Clean. Contemporary. Cool. Soothing. I love it. Someday I'll even accessorize it...

My Inspiration Photo for the Kitchen (courtesy bhg.com) How'd I do?

I have to just insert for a moment what a trooper Brett has been through the whole design process. I think he thought I was a little crazy at times, when he couldn't exactly see my vision. At first this created a bit of contention, but he was good to me and decided to just go with it and trust me. It didn't take long for him to grasp the vision and we have both been so happy with the results! Thanks honey!

Another major change that we made was re-painting all the trim from ivory to white. This house has some beautiful trim-work and highlighting it in white not only keeps it in line with my design style, but makes it pop even more! We also changed all of the lighting and hardware in the house. As you can see from the before picture of the kitchen, the lighting and hardware was all antique bronze. Lovely on it's own, but definitely not in line with my style at all. We went with brushed nickel throughout. Another rather sad "before" feature in the house was the fireplace. It is located in the family room (great room) where we have 20 foot ceilings! The old fireplace did little to focus all that open space (and the tile was horrid):

Now the fireplace is a beautiful showpiece! We pushed it out from the wall and built out above it as well, giving the eye a lot more to look at. I have great plans for a display on the mantle, but for now it has to hold it's own (which it can do) and settle with some slightly boring grass:

Another highlight in the project, for me, has been designing the railings for the stairs. There were no railings when we bought the house, so luckily we were starting from scratch there. After flipping through several railings books and websites, I realized that there just wasn't anything out there on the mass market that was going to fit my style. Wrought iron was definitely out, but everything I saw in wood was way too traditional or country. Finally, a trip to the library and several design books later, I stumbled across the perfect inspiration for our railings. Now they are absolutely beautiful and totally custom:

Someday we may actually have things on the walls...

The Inspiration Photo for the Railings

The lighting all turned out great. I spent hours pouring over lighting sites online, and was ready to give up that I'd ever find the perfect chandeliers, when I stumbled upon this:

It's contemporary without being too harsh or funky. It's delicate and different and I love it! There's a smaller version above the dining table. They are particularly lovely when lit.

So that's it for my favorite features of the new house! There is, of course, a lot more to it and if you'd like to see it all please come and visit us! We'll give you the tour.

As for the future, we plan to replace the front door as soon as is reasonably possible. It is an unfinished, raw wood door that has been baking in the sun for 2 years. It's not pretty. But my inspiration for a new one is:

One room we could not afford to change was the master bath. I'll save you from the pain of looking at the current bathroom, but I will tell you it is brown, it is boring, and it is blah. At least compared to this:

Come to Momma

And while we're dreaming here, I think the family room has great potential...

But for now, I think we have to keep our priorities straight:

Did I mention that this house is situated on 1 full acre of land? Yep - we love it. Well, it's more of a love-hate relationship at this point. But we'll get there.

And there are the perks -- riding lawnmower, remember?