Our next big project!

We are so excited to finally be finishing our basement! When we first built our home we knew it was something we had wanted to do but rook the advice of many professionals to wait until the ground surrounding our foundation settled. We are so thankful we did because we had to deal with flooding issues with Richmond for the first three years until they finally put a retaining wall and French drain in our back window well. Plus, we get to design everything how we want without being put into the 'Richmond" box! They are starting tomorrow and I cannot wait to share the progress!

Here are the inspiration photos that we gave to our contractor:

And lastly, we bought this bad boy from the Restoration Hardware Outlet this past week, and I am SO excited about it!

We are so excited to be expanding our house!

Family room: Fall 2015

I think last time I showed you our family room it looked like this.... all decked out for Christmas! Over the last year we have added a few new things including a rug and TV console from American Furniture Warehouse and some blinds from Overstock! I thought I better take some pictures of our fall decorations before I break them down and put up Christmas decorations!

I have been really bad about taking pictures of our home since Leila has been born... that is in large part to baby gear being EVERYWHERE: spit rags, bouncers, Bumbo, blankets, etc. Even now, all of those things are just placed in my dining area to make it appear that we don't have these ugly, colorful plastic things laying around! 

And this is what these guys do when I am cleaning and taking pictures! Leila is up there with them now because they needed "a princess of their throne..." I swear, I did not teach them these gender stereotypes! 

If you have any questions about where I got things, feel free to comment or e-mail me and I will let you know! I have a hungry baby to get to!

Update: Front porch.

In the last month we were able to finally convince Richmond (our builder) to add railing to our front porch. In Colorado, the drop off code is 32.5 inches. Our drop was almost 36 inches. It was dangerous, especially with little kids. At first they were saying it was settling, but it wasn't, it had always been a huge drop off.

Here is the before and after:

Other than our flowers growing a lot, doesn't it look so much better? The whole porch now looks complete! 

Notice the two dead plants, we are also trying to get Richmond to replace those since all they have ever given us are dead plants. We might just bite the bullet and replace them ourselves, but I don't want to let them win, because I know that is what they are banking on. 

Sources:

Flowers: Lowes

Wreath: Home made with supplies from Hobby Lobby

Front door sticker: Etsy

Gray flower pots: IKEA

Green flower pot: TJ Maxx

Rocking chairs: Craigs List

Pillows: Target and Lowes

Welcome bear: Gift

Table: Kohls

Lantern: TJ Maxx

Cotton ball sticks: The Barn (a local antique shop)

Thanks for reading! 

Building a home: Gallery upgrade decisions.

I have had a couple people ask me about the upgrades we chose to do on our home when we built. We actually did a lot of research and put a lot of thought into what we were going to upgrade, and what we were going to pass on.

We were fortunate that our house came with a slab granite, front and back landscaping (including sprinkler), as well as wood floors in the entry, kitchen, and dining area. This saved us a lot of money.

Things to definitely upgrade:

• Ceiling and door height. If your builder gives you the option to have 8 foot doors and 9 foot ceilings, definitely do it. This is not something you can change in the future. We have been into other houses in our neighborhood that did not chose the high doors, and it just makes the homes look so much smaller.
• Carpet. Builder grade carpet and padding is shiny, and looks like a matted stuffed animal after a small amount of wear and tear. Going up one step in the carpet will make a huge difference in the look of your home. Plus, you only usually pay the difference in the cost of the carpet. If you plan on tearing it out in a few years, you will be paying much more for all new carpet than the small difference in cost now. 
  
  
  
• Cabinets. Again, you pay the difference in the cabinets. We opted to do the 42" cabinets, with extra detail, and thicker molding for $1000 more. For a kitchen our size, with custom Java cabinetry would be almost $10,000 to add in the future. The $1000 was a small difference now, but pays off later. 
  
  
  
• An under mounted sink. If you get granite counters, do not get a sink that mounts on the top of the counter, it just looks tacky and cheap. 
• 
  
  
• Bathroom counters. You can put laminate in, which most builders provide. But, to replace the counters in the future is just a pain in the butt. Do it now, pay the difference, ours was less than $500 for both upstairs bathrooms to add corian. 
  
  
  
• Tile work. Unless you are a tile pro, or really good DIY-er, this takes time and patience. Two things we are not really good at. 
  
• Air conditioning. If you do not get air conditioning automatically, and you live in warm climates like Colorado, get it. Ours was an extra $4,000 for it. GASP. 
• Pre-wire for sound system. IF you have a sports fanatic husband, and some day you play to have a sound system, it is much cheaper to wire it when there are no ceilings. 
• Appliances. We wanted stainless steel, and we did not want to go through the hassle of selling the including black appliances and getting new ones in a few years. We only paid the difference to go from black to stainless steel, which cost $399. That is much more worth it, because our last home cost us $1600 for new stainless steel appliances. 
• Wood floors. If you have kids and pets, putting wood floors on the whole main level makes the most sense. We did manufactured wood which is slightly cheaper than hickory and it holds up better in the drastically differing climates of Colorado weather. 
• Fan prewires in the bedroom. This is just hard to do in the future, and incase you want to add your own fan, it is there to do it! 

Things not to upgrade:

• Window coverings. We did not think that spending $1200 dollars on fake wooden blinds (for only the bathrooms and bedrooms) was worth it when we ultimately did not like those anyway. If we would have been able to afford the thousands of dollars for plantation shutters, that is what we would have done. Right now I have bought all of the bedroom and bathroom windows for less than $600 on amazon.com. 
• Paint. Although it is expensive to paint, I am not one to have every room painted the same color (with only the choice of two different colors). It was $1200 to upgrade to a darker color (whole house) and it was still flat paint. Flat paint is not good, ever. So this was seen as a waste to us. 
  
  
  
• Light fixtures. We can easily replace light fixtures on our own, so paying three times as much for a light fixture to be installed was not something we wanted to do. I am not a huge fan of overhead lighting anyway, so in the bathrooms we had 'boob lights,' but will slowly change those out. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• If you do not cook often, do not do a gourmet kitchen. For us, it was a waste of $2500, and took away counter space. 
• Backyard slab. If you live somewhere where the ground settles a lot, wait a year or two before installing slab so your house can settle. 
• Door hardware. If you are fine with the standard look, in our case it was brushed silver, we stuck with the standard and it still looks great.
  

Luxuries that we upgraded but is not necessary:

• Fireplace stone. I liked it so much better than the tile.
  
• Santa Fe doors. The Richmond homes come with standard six panel doors. We liked the look of these better. 
  
• Backsplash. We love ours and did not want to take the time to do it ourselves. 
  
• Window sills. We love the look of an actual sill instead of just sheetrock. 

The official before photos.

We FINALLY closed on our house! Woo hoo! Everything went much more smoothly than the closing of our first home (that was a short sale)! I am so excited to share the before photos. Ignore the blurriness in a few pictures, I was too excited to focus! Pun intended! :)

Looking at the front door:

Office area that will be a playroom while the boys are young:

Upstairs small loft area:

Luke's room:

Laundry room:

Guest room/office:

Boys' bathroom:

Aiden's room:

Our bedroom:

Our bathroom:

Downstairs half bath:

Kitchen:

Family room:

Leaving closing:

Back to put the key in the door!

And this is what we have been doing since then....

I hope everyone has a great week!