Yesterday our building permit was finally issued, WAHOO! Holy Smokes, we have been working on getting this since February when we closed on the land. We have been learning a lot through all the set backs between having to recreate the original wet signed conservation commission paperwork, the whole well debacle, waiting on the septic plan drawing, waiting on the town to approve the septic plan then waiting on the building dept to issue the permit card. We have had to pretend to be patient people : ) but, the more we are set back in timeline the more we can save up.
We were hoping to start in May and be done by December so we are really only a couple months off. Sorry mom and dad, we are homeless and bringing a newborn into your house for a month or two. Also, thanks mom and dad!
Next steps are for the soil to be brought in. Our lot is set down from the road so we'll be bringing in a lot of fill to build it up and grade it correctly. Once the dirt shows up the cement trucks will be able to get in and pour the foundation. It's going to be surreal, after years of planning, to see this house go up.
In the meantime I've been pulling together all the design elements; colors, tiles, finishes, etc. I've had the vision of all the interior elements for a while, I'm a freak and I've known what I want down to the exact paint colors. Our style of plan was hard to find close to 2 years ago, we had to seek it out. Today, our specific plan is the 3rd most popular on architectural designs and now there are a lot of similar ones out there too. With all that the whole modern farmhouse - fixerupperstyle picking up I've really benefited because there is a lot of amazing inspiration out in IG and Pintrest!!
Family Room Inspiration
Flooring When we decided to build we weren't jazzed about shiny new, squeaky clean looking everything. That's just not us and with two dogs we can't keep up with that even if we wanted to. We are trying to incorporate a mix of old (or old looking) throughout the house and the floors were a great place to do that. We've always loved wide plank floors that are in a lot of the older houses here in New England, as a nod to all of that, we picked 5'5" wide character grade walnut. Character grade means it has the knots and imperfections in the wood that we absolutely love, we will finish with a med/dark stain to bring in the rustic antique feeling.
Fireplace I'm really excited about this one! It will have a perfect blend of both me and the hubs. We are going to have stone up to the mantel, sort of like the photo but it'll go the full width. Then for me, shiplap up to the top of the 24' cathedral ceiling. At first we were all over the place thinking that we didn't want to invest in stone and wanted to keep things simple with a mantle and simple sheet rock up the wall but since it's a major focal point of the house we decided to just go for it.
Wood Beams
Another need to have is the beams, there is something about beams that give a house a big impact when you walk in, plus they have the rustic feel we want and don't break the bank. The family room will have beams going up the cathedral ceiling, they are also called for in the kitchen. This photo is from a build in Texas that used our actual floorplan. We saw they carried the kitchen beams into the dining room and we immediately decided we had to do the same or it would look strangely cut off. Side note, it's been so helpful to see our actual floorplan used in other builds, it's really nice to see how it'll really look and feel, the drawings can be so misleading.
