Room Inspiration

One of the best parts of designing a house is that you can pull from so many different sources of inspiration to create something that is perfect for you.  Brian and I have poured over thousands of photos, magazines, blogs...you name it, we've looked at it.  So it's exciting now that we get to see each element of inspiration coming to life in our house.  

The archway below was a huge driver in our kitchen/dining room/living room design.  We loved how it was open concept but separate; allowing conversation and flow between the rooms but not making it feel like a space that was one big room only delineated through furniture layout.

Here's our archway coming to life, taken from the kitchen looking into the living room.

Brian and I also knew the second we saw it that this was what our staircase should look like.  

And this is our version...

 The living room is the room that honestly I've had the most fun designing.  The kitchen was like a mad love affair - extremely intense and exhausting.  The master bathroom has been interesting and required an inordinate amount of brainpower to say the least, but at the end of the day...it's a bathroom.  The living room has been easy and a light load but with tons of details that I'm obsessed with.

These were the inspiration pictures for the living room built-ins and fireplace:

 

We loved the bench detail, so this is what we planned:

 

And this is what it is looking like as of Saturday:

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...A House!

 Roof trusses going on

More roof trusses

 

Front porch roof being framed

It's getting there!  I'll be planting myself in a chair on that front porch once this project is done.

Framing Con't

The front porch is started!  The roof trusses go on tomorrow and then they will start "drying in" our house.  We've gotten lucky with weather so far but I'm glad this house is going to be fully enclosed in a few days.  You never know when a Denver snowstorm is going to hit.

 

 Front porch framing -

 

Garage framing - I had no idea the Great Wall was the view my neighbors would now have.  Oh well - it's better than what was there before! 

Visual Progress

I've realized that visual progress makes all the difference in the world when building a house.  You plan for a long time with no real physical action so it starts to feel like this house is a figment of your imagination.

It's a figment no more.  It's happening and it's happening fast!  These pictures also give a glimpse into Brian and my personalities.  I drove by Tuesday, parked, got out of the car, made sure there was no dumpster in the picture....Brian does a drive by picture shooting on Wednesday of the exterior but then gets out of the car and takes tons of interior pictures.  

I think he's more interested in seeing where the wires for his surround sound are going to go than what the outside looks like.  Boys and their toys, right?

 Tuesday

 

Wednesday

The Top: Officially Popped

We {almost} have a 2nd story!

Things are going pretty quickly with the construction so I'm going to post a before and after picture every few days to show the progress as it's taking place.  Brian and I both drive by the new house on our way to and home from work, so we stalk any new construction.

Crew chief Ernesto.  Boss.  He calls Brian "that white boy".

Getting ready to frame the side addition.  Hello neighbors.

 She's taking shape.

 

We have liftoff, people!  2nd story being framed.  That window cutout is right above our soaker tub in the master bathroom.  I will spend much-needed quality time in that little piece of heaven.

Topless!

The roof is off!  

Fun little fact - the skylights on the back part of our neighbors house offer a direct view into their master bath shower.  Lovely.

Ripping the Roof Off

It's happening!  Building is actually moving forward now that we officially have our permit...we were about to tell the city where to go and start building anyways when we got word that we finally had approval.  

 

So....the foundation for the new garage and mudroom were poured along with the addition to the living room....

 

Then the backfilling happened....yes, our yard is the size of a postage stamp.  We are very glad that Wash Park and it's 165 acres of gorgeousness are 3 blocks away.

And now...ripping the roof off.  I definitely thought this would be more exciting...like a lobster-claw-like-machinery would be used and would just grab, squash and pull the roof off but I was totally wrong and slightly disappointed.  Oh well.  It should be completely off tomorrow and then the framing of the 2nd story can start!

Kitchen Dreamland

Nothing makes me more excited than this new kitchen, which means I am officially old.  But seriously....how could I not get excited?  I had 22 feet x 23 feet to do whatever my little heart desired in what is essentially going to be the heart of our home.  Well, not exactly whatever I wanted, since kitchens are expensive, but I could dream.  Since it was such a big space, we are incorporating a sitting area - Brian thinks he's also putting a 42 inch flat screen on the wall.  

Now he's the one dreaming.

Most of the inspiration came from pictures like these - and funny enough, our interior designer labeled them all coastal casual, which pretty much describes me.  Stuck in a landlocked state.  Oh well.  At least my kitchen will be reminiscent of the water.

The farmhouse apron sink was the first thing picked out

 The blue-ish turquoise island was the next must do

White perimeter cabinets and glass-front uppers came from this

Gray/white subway tile for the backsplash

And this is the last decision - super white granite for easy clean-up even though I don't love granite, or carrera marble because it's fantastically beautiful but stains?  Still thinking on that one.  Either way it will be white.

An amazing perk of working with a kitchen designer are the visuals that they can create for you - this is what our kitchen layout will actually look like.  The doorway on the left is a walk-in pantry and the all-freezer and all-refrigerator are on opposite sides of the back wall. 

Visual from behind the island

Behind the island looking out.  Many family dinners to come!

Excavations and Bobcats and Holes

This is what's been going on at our house - 

sidewalks, original front porch foundation, and who knows what else ripped out

 And then magically it's all gone and we are ready for the foundation to be poured!

We FINALLY have holes in the dirt for our additions and new garage!  It hasn't rained in Denver in almost two months and the week our excavating was done it rained for 24 hours straight.  We had some swimming pools in our back and side yards.  Luckily it went right back to being sunny and hot so we are all dried out.

Brian in the doorway of what will be the new front porch....

Our front porch wraps around the front of the house - I'm standing where a rocking chair will be.

Trying to climb out of this was fun....#notthinkingclearly #toomuchwinethenightbefore

This is where the family room addition is going....

 

HGTV Lies, Lies, Lies

Not that I thought gutting, designing, and adding an additional 1500 square feet to an existing house was going to be easy, but that little liar HGTV had me hoping that things would at least maybe take less than FOREVER to finish.  Apparently Denver is the only city in the world where homebuilding is actually booming, and 10 weeks is the projected timeline for permits.  That's just to GET PERMISSION to build.  Then we tack on another 24 weeks for construction and probably 4 weeks for weather delays if it decides to snow this winter, and I'm going to be 30 when we move into this house.  

I've never been more ready to rip a roof off of a house.

Anyways....while we continue to wait, there are some changes that have taken place.  We've had a lot of masonry work done to move windows, brick up windows, cut new windows, doors, etc. 

Below is our front door opening before:

This is after moving it over 6 inches and taking out the additional width of the old sidelights.  It's an amazing art to be able to tooth in brick like this:

These are the new windows in the sitting room off the kitchen (there was zero light on this side of the house - very depressing).  They are HUGE - we actually had no idea how big until we went to check out the progress last Sunday.

More pics that show the handiwork of the mason - the written instructions on the wall were classic.

Anyways, I know it's hump day and on hump day the week never seems like it's going to be over, but I leave you with this little nugget that a client sent to me:

Down with the tree

Believe it or not, Brian and I put an offer on this house without even seeing it. The owners put it on the market but weren't doing showings for another couple of weeks, and we knew it would go fast.  So we checked the size of the lot, put a lot of contingency language that would get us out if we realized we just made the biggest mistake of our lives, and said a prayer.  

So when we actually got the chance to look at the house that we were buying, one of the things we loved was this 150+ year old tree in the backyard.  We loved it right up until we bought the house and realized it took up all our yard, its roots were growing into our sewer line and cracking it, and it probably was about to fall over on our house due to being stressed from drought.  So, down it came.  This is what the backyard looked like with the garage and junk of the previous owners:

I drove by last week after they had taken it down (along with the garage) and almost crashed my car.  It's amazing how much bigger the lot actually looks when all of the overgrown plants and shrubbery are ripped out.

Now we have moved on to picking out finishes.  4 hours at Ferguson made me need a drink badly.  But we got a lot done and someday soon you'll be sitting on this in our guest bathroom!