The Wilson's Build Their Dream House Update

Last Thursday Eli and I walked down to see the progress on the new house and found that our brick had been delivered. YAY! It's called Old Colony and I am in love with the color. It was kind of crazy how we stumbled upon this particular brick. A couple of months ago, we were driving around one day and went into a neighboring town to look at a branch of Josh's bank. They had just completely remodeled their branch and we wanted to see what it looked like. Once we saw the brick on the exterior, we knew we had found our brick. Josh knew the guy that helped build the bank so he called him and asked him what it was called. After that we called the company we were going to buy our brick from and requested the same brick. I was so excited to finally see it at our house!

They also installed some of our exterior doors. This door leads into the mudroom.

Here is a view of the french doors in the living room. They have the blinds on the inside. YAY!

Tuesday our insulation crew got to work. We went with the cellulose insulation. It's made from recycled newspapers. I guess you could say the Wilson's have gone "green". I included a link just in case you want to read about it. We're very happy with it. In fact, Josh said while he was there watching them work, one of the guys picked up a wad of the insulation and attempted to light it with a lighter to prove to Josh how fire retardant it was. It wouldn't light at all! Isn't that awesome?! Eli and I stopped by for a few minutes to watch them spray it into the walls. 

That stuff sure was messy though! 

I couldn't believe that all of that insulation was going to go in my house. That's a lot!

That same day our brick crew arrived and started laying the brick on the back of the house. I was so excited to see it. I loved it!

Josh and I stopped by the house later that night to see how much progress they made that day and I was very impressed.

I also was able to see our brick pavers that are going to go on our patio. Josh said these are very old bricks from an old abandoned warehouse up north. I love them because they're going to give our house so much character.

Here's more of the brick they're going to use. It's quite a bit!

We also saw that the insulation crew had lined most of the walls in the house where we were going to try to muffle out noise between the kitchen and our bedroom.

Here's a view of the insulation around the french doors. Just in case you're wondering, the area in the middle is going to be a gas insert fireplace.

Being the "one man's trash is another man's treasure" girl that I am, I found some small pieces of wood that I plan to paint and make some cute crafty things with this summer. We have a huge pile in our backyard full of scraps of wood, foam insulation, and plywood. I have too many ideas of what I can do with that to let it all go to waste, so I'm going to be dumpster diving again pretty soon. This is all I managed to get this trip though. Eli let us use his wagon so we could get them home in one piece.

Thursday we all traveled to a granite warehouse called Louisiana Stone to select the slab of granite we want to use for our kitchen area. OH.MY.WORD. Just look below at all the granite I could select from! This wasn't even the entire warehouse either. There were two other areas just as big as this with more granite!

We discovered that picking out granite for us was a lot like a psychology lesson. It's so funny because our personalities came right through when we started selecting our granite pieces. Josh loves change and variation, so he was drawn to a lot of the granite that had the runs and rivers in it. I tend to like consistency :) I was drawn to the granite that had the same pattern throughout the entire slab. I like it to all look uniform. I didn't think we were ever going to make a decision because we both kept picking out different things and neither one of us liked the other person's choice, until we saw this next piece.

I told Josh this was my compromise to him. It had enough consistency in it to satisfy my need for uniformity and he said it had enough variation in it to keep him happy too. We asked the workers to pull the slab out for us so we could look at it in the light and that settled it...

I didn't like it at all. Oh well. Back to square one.

Eli came with us on our trip and thankfully a friend of ours, Mrs. Faith, was able to help watch Eli while we looked at all the granite. Oh, did I mention it was hot inside? Ugh! I hate it when everything starts sticking together. Eli and I found a fan and we decided to take a break from looking at granite and enjoy the nice, cool breeze. We may or may not have both lifted our shirts up a little bit to cool off our bellies. Haha :)

We walked around the warehouse some more and then we found this piece called Juperana Persa.

We were in love, well, at least I was. This piece seemed to capture both of our personalities perfectly. We thought we had a winner until we discovered it was at the very tip top of our price range. UGH! I even snapped a family picture in front of it hoping that this was it.

We decided to find one more slab that we liked that was a little less just in case we weren't going to get the other slab. (By the way, how do I manage to pick out the cheapest and the most expensive piece of granite? Only me!) We found this next slab and both really liked it, too. It's called New Venetian Brown. We're both torn and can't decide what we want to do. I think both of them are going to look great in the kitchen, but we both want something that's going to make a statement. What do you think? Pretend price wasn't an option...which one do you like?

Friday we went by the hardware store to look at our front door that had been delivered. It may not look like much now, but just wait until the stain is applied. It's going to be a gorgeous door!

Then we drove by the house to see what all they had accomplished. We got there while the crew was hanging the hardiboard on the front porch.

The insulation is completely finished for now. They still have to do the attic, but they'll do that later.

Look how far our brick layers got on the house! This is the side of the garage.

They started working on the brick around the patio.

This is the completed back of the garage. WOW!

Eli "borrowed" our foreman's measuring tape while we were there and he was telling me that he was going to go measure my bedroom for me. Thanks, buddy!

Looking from the hallway into the living room/kitchen area.

 Master Bedroom/Bathroom

 Laundry Room

 Eli measuring my bathtub.

The workers also installed the hardiboard on the ceiling of the back patio. It's going to look great when it's painted!

This is all for this week. They are delivering the sheetrock today (Friday) and will begin hanging it on Monday. WOO HOO! We are so so thankful to God that we are able to build this beautiful house. I can't wait for family, friends, and neighbors are able to visit. It's my prayer that it is always a house that makes others feel loved and welcomed. Until next time...