Outdoor Living at E-Haus

One of the hardest parts of moving into a new or new build house these days is the sheer quantity of inspirational pictures available to dissatisfy even the most excited home owner. Taking a step back, though, it's good to have to wait, and earn, and dream. 

I wanted a fireplace to be immediately set in our house, to the point where I very nearly pulled the trigger on having one of the house contractors build out a generic mantel for us just so that we could have one done. At another point, someone suggested that we use the same stone from our exterior to build a 2-story stone fireplace and I thought-- yes! that makes sense!-- even though something else in me kept me questioning if it was the right plan. Luckily, my doubt and Nate's steadfast insistence that he build out the fireplace surround kept us from making a hasty choice, and a few months later I came across a picture that I immediately loved. Now, after a few months of tweaking, our fireplace surround is 80 percent complete and we couldn't be happier with our choices. 

All that to say (100 degree summer that would have killed a new lawn aside so yay for waiting until fall for that!), there is a benefit to the time and budget-dictated delay in creating our outdoors spaces. While we'll be spreading topsoil (so. so. so. much topsoil) and grass seed shortly, we're planning our first outdoors construction projects for next spring/ summer so that we can save towards them over the winter. 

Our property is skewed such that our front yard is really where we have both the best view and the space for outdoors living-- so how to we make this work best?! 

Do we put a patio directly in front of the house?

Do we wrap it around to the side and create an outdoors room or screened-in porch? 

Where do we plant our garden-- at the edge of our property? 

Where will we contruct the workshop?

Which project comes first-- the patio or the deck?

And what do we plant in the beds around the house?

(And this, by the way, is the view)

Pretty darn spectacular. So what do we do?!

Outdoor Living at E-Haus

One of the hardest parts of moving into a new or new build house these days is the sheer quantity of inspirational pictures available to dissatisfy even the most excited home owner. Taking a step back, though, it's good to have to wait, and earn, and dream. 

I wanted a fireplace to be immediately set in our house, to the point where I very nearly pulled the trigger on having one of the house contractors build out a generic mantel for us just so that we could have one done. At another point, someone suggested that we use the same stone from our exterior to build a 2-story stone fireplace and I thought-- yes! that makes sense!-- even though something else in me kept me questioning if it was the right plan. Luckily, my doubt and Nate's steadfast insistence that he build out the fireplace surround kept us from making a hasty choice, and a few months later I came across a picture that I immediately loved. Now, after a few months of tweaking, our fireplace surround is 80 percent complete and we couldn't be happier with our choices. 

All that to say (100 degree summer that would have killed a new lawn aside so yay for waiting until fall for that!), there is a benefit to the time and budget-dictated delay in creating our outdoors spaces. While we'll be spreading topsoil (so. so. so. much topsoil) and grass seed shortly, we're planning our first outdoors construction projects for next spring/ summer so that we can save towards them over the winter. 

Our property is skewed such that our front yard is really where we have both the best view and the space for outdoors living-- so how to we make this work best?! 

Do we put a patio directly in front of the house?

Do we wrap it around to the side and create an outdoors room or screened-in porch? 

Where do we plant our garden-- at the edge of our property? 

Where will we contruct the workshop?

Which project comes first-- the patio or the deck?

And what do we plant in the beds around the house?

(And this, by the way, is the view)

Pretty darn spectacular. So what do we do?!

Fireplace construction, continued.

Our supervisor and the current dictator of all our house projects. He's a tough boss but at least he is cute and lets us sleep a little bit at night.

I'm not scared of heights, but the way this ladder balances on its rubber-covered feet slightly stressed me out. We ended up going with a telescoping ladder  that will let us use it as a normal step ladder in addition to getting up high when we need to access the roof or apparently, the windows in our great room. We also found it when it was on sale for less than $130, which was a huge bonus and the reason why we went with 22' instead of 16' or 18'.

You know that your husband is an engineer when he devises strings with washers to ensure that the fireplace surround will be exactly centered and exactly level. He also claims that our kids could climb this frame without damaging themselves or the wall, but we don't plan on testing that theory.

This picture makes me a little seasick, but it's what happens when your husband insists that a lower mantel makes more sense and you are too visual of a person to be able to respond without seeing what it would look like. Ultimately I won this battle and we went with the rule of thirds. The mantel will be at 6 feet (the right side) and exactly a third of the way up the wall.

Now that we're actually making progress on framing the surround and finishing our mantel (more to come on that soon!), we needed to decide on a tile to use around the firebox and I headed to the store. Our initial plan was to utilize a subway-style marble tile but as it turns out, there were lots of viable options. 

(L- I love this pattern and the contrast of black and white that would complement our tuxedo kitchen. I was less sure of how the super graphic pattern would play with all of the other elements of our 18 foot tall fireplace surround. R- Herringbone is classic and I thought this oversized version was fun. But I questioned the beige undertones and monotony of color throughout.)

 

(L- I really think that this basketweave pattern would play well with the rectangles on the upper part of the wall, and the wood-look tile combined with marble is gorgeous. But I wondered if it might be too trendy in the end. R- Our original plan. I don't think subway tile can go wrong!)

(L- We love gray, perhaps a little too much, and the strong variation throughout this marble might give that contrast without going to an extreme like with the black & white tile above. R- Another herringbone option, this time with smaller tiles and both gray and beige undertones throughout. I was a little concerned that the small scale tile would look too tiny on our huge wall.)

Next step will be to lock our multi-hundred pound mantel into place this weekend after it's done curing. We ended up finishing it with a danish oil in a mix of medium and dark walnut to get close to the color of our dark hardwood floors.