Building our home. Where do I start. It's now been 9 months since we started building and i'm still not sure i'm fully untired yet. Just looking at these pictures makes me want to take a nap. I guess it's because we've only been in the house for almost a couple of months and there are still a few boxes needing my attention!
Well this may seem like the beginning but we've been planning and working with architects for a few years up to this point. Our lot is 1.27 acres of pretty much straight up mountain and everyone thought we couldn't build a house on it. We wanted to prove everyone wrong but also always had the thoughts in the back of our head of can we, is there enough land, can we afford the retaining and surprises that are bound to come up.
But we tredged forward!
Things moved very quickly. We ended up with 10 foot basement ceilings for about the same price and were thrilled. It seems huge downstairs. We are at the house about every day to see the progress.
The framing went up so quickly. That was so much fun to see the progress and see how the layout actually worked out. We never saw a 3D image or anything other than a few lines that made up our house. So, we were thrilled that it was turning out so amazingly. The views that we were hoping for worked out great.
This is were our fun or most days, not so fun, began.
Tyler came down to help us get started on a very large retaining wall project. Those boys are amazing and rather impressive working that equipment.
This 10 foot wall caused us many nights of restless sleep. We didn't exactly follow the cities proposed plans because their demands were rather ridiculous so we were so afraid we'd have to start over. Luckily it passed great and looks fabulous.
The boys loved helping out.
This is the upstairs all framed in. I had no idea how huge the kids rooms were going to be or how amazing each of their views are. We chose city views for the girls and mountain views for the boys. Its turned out perfectly and they all love their rooms.
This was so so so so so so much work. We had no idea what we were getting into. We got pavers and installed them for the same price we could have done concrete. We thought it would look so much much better than cement and we were right. It looks incredible but was so much harder than we thought it would be. Jesse had almost 2 months off in the summer and we wanted to go on a trip but we ended up working almost every day from about 6:00 am to 11:00 pm. We would go home for lunch and play with the kids even though we wanted to collapse we wanted them to know how much they meant to us and that we were sorry we weren't there all the time. My amazing watched them while we were gone, but a lot of the time they came with us. No TV, no toys, no air conditioning. I felt so bad for them and for the most part they were troopers.
Slow and steady we made progress.
Jesse did more retaining walls in the front and then we did the sprinklers and landscaped the yard all by ourselves.
Jesse's talent surpassed everyone's expectations. When we told our builder what we were planning to do he agreed but was very nervous it would turn out horribly. Now, he can't stop bragging about how amazing it turned out and told him he needs to go into business. We both fully agree NO WAY.
We put cabinets together and truly didn't take breaks.
These pillars turned out great. Again, we got a lot of flack about using these and were told just to do faux beams but that's just not our style. We wanted to use these unique beams in our house and kind of planned the whole house around them. The sub contractors kept drawing all over them and we'd have to keep telling them that those beams were staying!
Picking out colors for everything required lots and lots of back and forth trips to find the right colors to coordinate. We couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out. We were glad to have Brandi there to verify our choices.
We were also very proud of our kids because when they were there they would help us and work very hard. Especially Bodee and Lexi. They are little work horses.
We are beyond excited about our final product. We feel extremely blessed that we were able to make this dream come true for our family. It is more than we could have ever imagined and there were several times that tears would well up with the gratitude I have for my husband and his many years of hard work, the work that I have received , and the savior that has truly blessed us with a beautiful family and a great way of life. I am grateful for the struggles we've had that have helped us get here. I hope our kids one day understand how hard work can pay off and that living frugal lives can help you reach your goals.
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