Time keeps on tickin, tickin

Well hello there....(insert crickets)

I'm dying here. I had decided to embrace the fact that we were going to be in a rental for a while and I wasn't going to be working on "a project" for some time but this is ridonculous! Sadly I can't stand it now. My creative juices need to get to flow before long or I'm gonna burst. Yes for a while we were designing our floor plan. Then we played with the exterior elevations but I'm ready to see concrete(lots of it..hint,hint) textures, paint, and lighting! Bring it on please! We had a closing date for the construction loan last week but yet they found another something has to be reviewed and thus we go to the bottom of the underwriters pile. Tip 145 to building a home: Have Cash and avoid the treacherous waters of the financing industry! If only right?!

So in order to relieve myself(or torture maybe) I took advantage of some time without the kiddos (yay for grandparents coming to visit) to stroll through one of my favorite places! Oh it's yummy in so many ways. I fell in love with Four hands 10 years ago on a warm summer day with a 50% off coupon in my paint covered little hand (they don't do that anymore but do have great warehouse sales). Let me show you why I have a thing for this place. Bad phone pics ahead cause I am way to shy to bring out the big dog while window shopping;)

loved this lacker look sofa table

modern twist on a saw horse for sure

These chandeliers are huge and gorg and of course pricey..

There was a time(before kids) when I wanted the hubs to help me dream up a wood light fixture.  I guess I missed the boat because it has definitely been done now and they are lovely.  I don't think we could have pulled these babies off!

Oh BABY!  I love dining tables..

So much so that over a year ago I bought one here at a warehouse sale and it still patiently awaits us in the garage.  We actually designed our dining nook around it so I suppose I shouldn't change my mind sale it and buy this one if I want to have a healthy marriage right?  But look at those industrial legs...I just drooled a little.

Um yes!  Nothing better than this buffet.  Clean lines, rustic wood..ahhhh

Oh more metal love.  Stools and tables oh my!

Look at the perfect little pop of color in this bad boy.

I may or may not ;) have a plan for this buffet in the casa..We shall see what happens but I get all sweaty just thinking about it!

This chair was awesomely awkward and weird which I am always drawn to.

A little space age collegiate action for the office.  It's for somebody for sure!

You can also find wonderful more traditional pieces too.  This is beautiful in person!

A little more traditionally funky can be found in this chair!  If your tired of me making up design words this may not be the place for you.  I can't help it.

Velvety cozy cool

Kid proof and it looks good.  That is what many of us are searching for when buying new furniture right?  Can't go wrong with this neutral chair in leather (unless your anti leather) then you can go very wrong with this;)

A little bling is always good! Loved these moroccan inspired metal tables.

I can see this holding fluffy towels and bathroom goodies in our master bath.

This grey diddy will also be making himself known soon in a living room near your computer.  Keep your eyes peeled for him.  

Oh mercy! Love the bling, the rustic, and cozy all mixed together.  If I had to define my house "style" I would just hold this picture up and wouldn't have to say a word.  This is it...or what I want it to be anyway.

The only thing missing on this chair are the three jumping kids with blueberry stained fingers.  I will leave this beauty for all you clean and civilized folk out there.

This would have been an awesome fathers day gift for the hubs upcoming home office if we were the kind of people that spent $400 without consulting one another or sleeping on it.  But we aren't so I didn't!  Your welcome honey.  Hope it was good anyway.

I wanted to buy you this one too babe but until we change the rules I can't surprise you with awesomeness like this!

So there was my 30 minutes of bliss last week.  I'm glad you could come along.  It's funny that now that we have a family and are always busy and tired that I find things like perusing target or a place like this with a cup of Jo in my hand pure pleasure but I do! Even though I didn't buy a thing. (YET!)

These sweet cheeks want to be squished! Please help!

We interrupt this shelter/craft blog for a very very special little girl! Do you see this face?

This is Juliette

and she wants to come home to her family that is patiently awaiting her!

Our dear friends were blessed with their happy little Bailey Boo(that's what her daddy calls her) over a year ago and have since fallen in love with (and quite honestly feel called to) the idea of adopting another baby girl with an extra chromosome! I couldn't think of a better family to do this.

This is the always grinning Bailey and her big brother Taylor!  I can't imagine the grins Miss Bailey will provide when she gets to have a sister to play with, learn with, cry with and love on!

It's hard to imagine so many precious babies are given up for adoption at birth because they have Down's Syndrome?  It's heart wrenching and there is a way we can do our part to help place these children in happy healthy homes and get them out of orphanages.  Miss Juliette happens to be in Eastern Europe.  Adoption is expensive and as you can imagine traveling to Europe several times through the process to bring her home will be very expensive.  Danny and Christy are reaching out and trying to get the funds needed to bring their girl home!  I hope you will take a minute to stop by Juliette's blog to watch her journey home and maybe even help get her here!  Danny and Christy have offered up an iPad Giveaway to get the ball rolling on raising some funds and the giveaway ends in 6 days so hurry and head over.  Seriously people an IPad Giveaway!  As if Miss Juliette's face wasn't enough of a reason to help!

Chipped, Chopped, and Sawn Oh My!

Hi there!  We've been drowning in decisions and loan docs over here but I've managed to gather up a few pics of the process that we've taken to choose some exterior finishes.  Since the last post we've picked up some stone samples and that made a big difference when looking at colors for the stucco.  I  had previously chosen some colors that were way too light and now that I have the stone next to them we can make a more accurate decision.  

So how do you even begin to know where to start?  I've been collecting pictures, pictures and more pictures.  Even before the days of good ol' Pinterest I had a folder on the computer where I would throw anything that appealed to me in any way.  After collecting pics for some time you begin to see what you like the most over and over again.

I had many many pics of the overall look and feel of the architecture but when it came down to details I just love this one!

This was a picture that I had stored away from a picture on a real estate web site so I don't have a link or any more detailed pictures:(

I can't decide what I love the most about it.  Is it the stone, the pattern of the stone, the door, windows?  I like it all but this picture is what led me to the type of stone we will go with.  It's called Lueders stone.     

After sending this picture to the stone company that we will probably be ordering through I was told it is more than likely "antique" lueders.  Lueders is quarried in Texas but surprisingly I had never heard of it and now that I know better I see it's all over the place here in central TX.  After a few phone calls I found a place with a price for Lueders in our budget.  Yay!  Don't you hate it when you think you've found the thing that will work and yet it is beyond your reach and you have to start over?  

It's amazing how there are soo many decisions that you need to make when you are starting from scratch.  Not only will we choose the stone, but the pattern of the stone and then the grout!  Below is one of the random patterns we have considered. (yes we drive around and take pictures of random buildings with our phones)  It may very well creep people out if they see us.  It would me!  Except for the fact that we are rollin in the mini van..

This is what I'm calling a "random" pattern but have no idea if that's what the professionals call it;)

Here is another pic of the same pattern but with bigger stones.  Ah yes we need to decide the stone size too.  This was actually one of my faves at the stone yard and we brought some home to play with.

Below I'm trying the tried but not so sure if it's true...Lay it on the shingles next to a paint swatch trick.   I liked it with the Sherwin Williams Pavestone and the charcoal shingles.

Oh but it looks pretty good with the Gateway Grey too.

Oh and not to confuse you as much as we began to get confused but you have to decide if you want the cut "chopped" or "sawn".  The above stones are chopped and the pic below is sawn.  Can you see the difference?  

We actually ended up at this particular stone yard because of the Lueders prices that I mentioned above.  I had also seen grey lueders that looked great online but in person it was super blah.  It looked very bland and there was almost no color variation.  We don't want a lot of variation but don't want it to look like concrete blocks either.

See what I mean?

This Santa Maria below actually looked kinda cool in person but seeing it here I don't like it at all.  They actually achieved this look by chipping off the "skin" of the stone in some areas to give it a more rustic look. 

So just to make it more complicated you can have it "chipped" too!  You can see how we might have felt just a little "stoned" when we left now huh?

And then we came across these pretty babies.  This one is called Sonoma Tan and it made me realize that I wasn't really as in love with Mr. Lueder as I thought I was.  I think senior Sonoma may just be the perfect one for our casa.  There was some slight variation in the stones and it was laid in the same pattern as the awesome house in the first picture in this post so Mr. Sonoma stole my heart from Mr. Lueder and just so happens he is in our budget too!

I think we may have a winner in the paint department too!  As I downloaded these pics I realized that I was apparently really digging the mix of the Sonoma Tan with the Pavestone from sherwin williams, the charcoal shingles and you see that little sample there?..that is the metal roof that is a greyish color as well.  

See what I mean?  I took a ton of pics of this combo and you know what?  I like it!!  One bonus about selecting the Sonoma Tan in the pattern above (I wish I knew what it is called, I will soon I'm sure!) is that we won't have to select a grout color. Score!  One less decision in this process is a good thing!  I can't wait to see how it all comes together.  When it's all on the house and not just small little samples will it look totally different?  Only time will tell! 

Oh The Choices We Make

One would think after contemplating building a house for a few years that one would know exactly what they want it to look like (within one's budget of course).  

Well this "one" doesn't.  I actually amaze myself;)  How can a girl who likes everything home and has spent many many hours contemplating spaces, efficiency and of course looks not have every detail all figured out?

Because there are too many choices!  

Here were 3 of my missions today: going to Costco because we are out of the two things I use most often in this casa...coffee and laundry detergent! Driving 60 miles to pick up a stone sample for the exterior of the house and picking a shingle color, metal roof color, and stucco color that all look good together.

I accomplished 1/2 of one of those missions.  Although I didn't have the stone to help guide me along I started trying to put together some exterior colors.  I have an old Sherwin Williams paint deck, some shingle samples and some itty bitty samples of metal roofing..I mean ITTY!

All along we have been thinking of leaning towards more gray tones on the exterior.  I have a few reservations about it being to "cold" so lately I have been drawn to some more taupey gray tones.  I have been "pinning" away for what seems like ages to help me grasp what we are looking for.

Here are some of the looks that have caught my eye.

While our house will be quite different, I love this look and the mix of materials.

                 modern exterior design by calgary general contractor Veranda Estate Homes & Interiors

Here are more of the gray tones we are drawn to.

                        modern exterior design by seattle architect Rhodes Architecture +Light

This is a little closer to the way our home will look.  There will be a lightish stone, stucco, and some metal roof mixed in.

                     eclectic pool design by austin general contractor New Urban Home Builders

I LOVE this home.. Modern yet warm and perfectly contemporary Texas to me.  I looked into this type of stone for our casa and it was way out of our budget.  Bummer!

So I finally laid some samples out today and started playing around.  I did it outside to try to bring out the true colors.  To the right you'll see some of the gray tones I ripped out of my paint deck because I have a hard time visualizing if I can't lay the colors right next to each other.  I think these pics make the grays look a lot lighter and washed out than they are.  I'm playing with the "sticks and stones" color on in the middle of the palate on top of the paint deck too.

Here are those itty bitty metal roof samples I mentioned.  I actually tore off the slate gray color so I can play.

Here I laid the slate gray roof which reads pretty taupey  on top of the driftwood color composite shingle.  We can't afford to do the whole roof in metal and actually almost nixed it completely until we found out that some of the very slight pitches on our porches and over our garage won't allow for shingles.  So we will have a mixed material roof instead.  I like metal a LOT so I'm cool with that!

Here is the gray shingle that we are considering with the itty bitty metal color 

sample and sherwin williams stamped concrete for the stucco color.

Here are the metal and stucco colors against the driftwood roof color which has some gray and brown and may feel a little warmer for us.  Plus from what I understand the lighter the roof the better as far as avoiding the mean ol' Texas sun goes.

This is a horribly washed out picture.  These two potential stucco colors are way darker than they are showing up here against the gray roof materials.

Actually here they are against the driftwood.  See what I mean?

And here is a "gateway gray" against the driftwood for good measure.

Here it is against the gray shingles.

O.k. So I was hoping as I wrote this post I would gain some clarity but I didn't!  Doh!  You see why these decisions are so hard.  They are all so very similar but I have no idea how they will all come together on the big canvas that will be our house!

So that is what I accomplished today on the home building front.  I have a hard time putting the energy into this at times...you want to know why?

At the moment there are many things going on in the 

"not building yet" process.

For instance: 

Friday the frame engineering was completed!  Yipee!

Sunday I paid for the the engineering plan received it via email and sent it to the builder in hopes that we can finally get the completed construction contract to the bank.

 Monday I get a call from the hubs that starts with "Don't panic but....I've been on the phone with the builder and the engineer off and on all day and we have a problem"  Woohoo!

The builder apparently thinks that it is all "over-engineered" and the engineer says that he is not surprised and that they hear that often from builders.  He also was right to assume that the builder felt the foundation was also "over-engineered". 

You wanna know the best part?  The plan that the engineer suggests will add a whopping 15 grand to our costs per the builder.  Seeing as we are already at our max budget we most certainly DO "have a problem".

The next step is to get the builder, framer, and framing engineer together to see how we can safely and affordably deal with this issue.

Side note for the uber thrifty:  If you are ever considering building a home and can purchase a house plan online that already has all of these things done for you I would strongly suggest you look into it.  I know they can seem pricey but we have definitely made an investment in the plans and engineering for this home and it would have been much more budget friendly had we been able to find a house plan that would work on our lot.  Don't forget we are uber conservative with our $ and what may seem like a big investment for us may not for another. 

That being said it is really hard to find a house plan that has everything that your looking for accommodates the dimensions of your lot and works with the topography of the land.

While I have to admit this kind of news about increasing costs(which makes it undoable) is not what I want to hear I have a confession to make.

I have been praying about this process a lot.  Not like a "Dear God please help us to get this house built" kind of prayer but something just the opposite really.  While it's obvious I dig this kind of thing...the planning, the imagining the attempt at designing I don't want it to define me or our family.  Yes it would/will be a fun place to raise our kids.  It's 2.6 acres of entertainment and memory making as far as I'm concerned.  But...I also know that memories can be made and fun can be had absolutely anywhere and honestly it may be better for our family not to go through the mental, physical, and financial stress of building.  

I think this crumbling little rental house has made me realize this more than anything.  Do I like it? No..it has many issues and we are cramped but my kids could care less and are happy and that is all I could ever, ever want!  So I will keep asking God to make it apparent to us.  If we are biting off more than we can chew I would rather know now that's for sure.

Moving on....

You may recall I've been slowly but surely working on helping Marc and Lori with their master bedroom makeover.

Well guess what?  It's still not done;)  Thankfully none of us had the expectation that it would get done quickly but sheesh!  I am so ready to post some real before and after pics!  Put two working moms who live 45 minutes away from each other on a project and watch how it moves at a snails pace;)  Our shopping for the room consists of me trying to find time to "get away" and look for pieces that will look good in the room.  I then send her a picture and she says yay or nay.  What did we do before smart phones?

In the meantime we have become a little distracted;)  While I was looking for accessories for their bedroom I saw this rug and thought  " those are the colors Lori was kinda leaning towards for their  living  room".

You see they also want to overhaul their main living area.  At this price and only one available I did what any girl would do and sent her a picture and said do you want me to get this for you?

She said Yay!

I also found these 3 pictures that I thought looked great with it.

She said "yay" again..

I have learned over time that it is easier to start a room based off of a rug or a fabric than to try to find the rug after the fact.  Hence one of the reasons I think I'm struggling finding a rug for the master bedroom makeover.  Oh and when you are looking for a decent price it makes it even more challenging too right?

Anyway, after I found the rug I came home and put together this mood board.

Marc and Lori have had big dark leather furniture and were ready for a change.  It's really fun to have a client that is ready and willing to invest in new furniture too!

Here is the "somewhat before".  Since we hadn't planned on tackling this room until the bedroom was done we don't have a real before.  This is it after she got her brand new 8 x 10 rug home.

Another phone pic of course because that is how we roll!

One of Marc's requests is that we find a recliner for him.  Uh oh...right?  Thankfully recliners aren't all as bad as they use to be.

We also need to make the HUGE tv and console work.  I havent' even started thinking about this area yet.

This is an angled wall to the left of the wall with the t.v.

Anyway, after the rug purchase we got busy talking about and looking for a new sofa, a recliner and an accent chair.  I thought we should lighten it all up a bit and go for a light microfiber since they have a little one and also thought the tufted leather ottoman was a good option for their growing family.  It brings in a cozy element too.  With a large tray they can still sit drinks and what not on it.

We thought we may have to abandon the tufted ottoman when we realized how much it was going to cost!  Thankfully when I sent them to a recent Four Hands sale(I've mentioned my love for this place before and I'm sure I will again) they found this handsome feller..

 Lori texted me a picture and I got to say "yes" this time!

So now we were here....

Lori placed the pics up on the nails where the original wall art was just to see and they sold their furniture on craigslist and viola!  No place to sit in their new room!  We have got to get this done pronto.

Lori's main mission has been to find a light colored microfiber sofa at a good price point and a decent looking leather recliner and she did!  Or shall I say they did..don't want to leave you out Marc.

We are getting there.  She already has the curtains we just need to find a rod that we like.  Then once we get pillows, and lamps and some little finishing touches we are golden!  So exciting to get to this point and who knew I wold love shopping vicariously through others so much.  Since we are in between homes and don't have the budget or the room for new house stuff this has been a great way for me to get it out of my system for sure.

Meanwhile I have changed the mood board a little to pull out the orange in some of the rusty color of the rug and I think we are going this route now.  Can't wait to see how it all turns out and frankly I just can't wait to see if we "get er done!"