Are you sick of hearing about the fireplace yet?

After three months in our new home, we finally moved our beam to our driveway, where it then sat for a few weeks. But-- but!-- once our motivation set in, things moved quickly. Though our style mostly trends more streamlined, the laws of 1850s barn beams dictate that you appreciate them in (most of) their imperfect, dilapidated glory. So after a power wash and just enough sanding to remove flaking outer layers, we mixed a dark and a natural stain and gave the beam just two coats so that the details in the wood shine. 

Then we waited for a willing soul to stop by and lend some brute strength to the task of bringing this baby into the house. Nate's an engineer, so he ran equations and thought and re-thought the hanging process until he was satisfied that nothing could pull this mantel from the wall.

It was, however, too heavy for even these two strong men to lift from floor to the spot where it would be adhered to the wall, so we devised a levy system out of stools and step ladders. 

 Success at last!

And when you go to all this effort to customize your fireplace, you take an awkward family photo in front of it to commemorate all of the f-bombs and harried child redirection that went into the job.

Adding the remaining pieces to frame out the rest of the surround was comparatively nothing.

Our pretty marble tile arrived. I love that we got such varied marbling in our tiles. Though there's lots of white and gray, there's also a little tan and even purplish tones, and it takes on a sparkling appearance in the evening that is so so pretty. More on the pain-in-the-ass process of herringbone tile manipulation to come.

To be completely clear, these first two pieces of drywall are actually pieces #3 and 4, because it took Nate and I two mega fail moments where we almost had a piece of drywall placed and then it tumbled over backwards and epically smashed on the floor for us to figure out that we needed a different methodology.

See that extension pole on a broom to the left of the fireplace in the photo below? That along with some strategically pre-placed nails for balance was our saving grace, because Nate could take breaks to rest the drywall at intervals on his way up to the ceiling while I pressed the tops of the sheets against the frame with the flat broom to keep them steady while they got screwed in. 

We are so lucky that aside from a few ankle cuts from where the drywall bounced off Nate on its way down the second time, and a few spots of adhesive on our rug, we otherwise escaped unscathed. This is a "do not try this at home" lesson for all. There's a reason why people use professionals for projects such as this one.

After the drywall went up, so did the trim. We intentionally sized our fireplace to minimize drywall cuts, and then the trim ended up covering most of the seams. Score! We tiled before we drywalled the lower section so that we had a better idea of how we needed to trim it out. Again, more on that later.

And though we've managed to get her primed, the autumn and then winter holidays showed up, and I decided that I wanted to decorate my unfinished mantel more than I wanted to finish painting it. So there it remains until after the new year, where it may continue to haunt us for another few months before one of us sucks it up and gets it done.

Nevertheless, we've come a long way.

And the Framing Details Continue.

One of the coolest impromptu experiences of the build happened on the Saturday that we randomly drove over and discovered a whole crew at work installing windows and exterior doors! Not pictured: we didn't get our normal snow this winter, but we definitely have gotten a bunch of rain, so it's basically a mud slick out that door. One of the guys bringing the door in totally slipped in it and fell flat on his back in the muck. He wasn't hurt at all except for perhaps his ego, so we all had a laugh. 

This door was originally designed as a sliding door-- and yes, that would have been practical-- but the romantics in us went for french doors anyway. I just keep imagining them propped open in the sunshine, especially after we get our deck built out there. The space that leads to the doors is going to serve as a dining nook for a few years at least. 

We wanted open living in our house, so we added a nook so that we could have a little separation instead of placing our table directly between the kitchen (that dark hole to the left) and the great room. The planned dining room is going to be a TV/ play room instead, and we added an angled peninsula to our kitchen that utilizes some of the gap space in here.

I had never before and will likely never again be so amazed by the installation of pipes and electrical boxes into a space!

We have an upstairs! This was taken from inside the master bedroom and through the framing you can see the top of our stairs, the laundry room (right next to our bedroom on the left in this picture), our daughter's room (to the right of our stairs), and if you squint hard enough I can see my cute soon-to-be middle child who is standing in our planned open loft space and another bedroom right behind him.

And the view from our upstairs balcony into the great room! My absolute favorite thing about this space besides the two-story windows themselves is the way that we angled our house altogether so that they all look directly into the woods. I can't think of a better view to watch the seasons change throughout the year!

This is the flat-on back view of our house. Now imagine it with a desk in the space the right that wraps around the right side of the house, and a low patio across the rest of the back. Also some grass and landscaping. 

The garage side and the top of one of the egress windows in our basement. It's funny how much Tyvek, windows and shingles make a structure start to look like a real house! Maybe we don't need siding after all...

E-Haus: Framing, Continued.

The downside of construction is the massive amount of mud. Thanks to a good amount of rain (though thankfully very little snow) throughout the build process up until this point, it's been a messy mess to go visit "New House." Tyvek really helped make it seem real. Here's our framed-in garage. Thankfully, the walls have made it evident that though the garage will be full of cars, it is also big enough to accommodate the fair amount of clutter that it will inevitably collect in it.

Here's the view from the doorway between the garage and mud room. To the right will be a big closet, we plan to build in cubbies right against the shared great room wall that's been framed in ahead, and to the left is our future kitchen.

I actually really loved how the stairs in our house come down at an angle and don't face directly toward the front. I also like the landing halfway up that just adds some interest and a safety buffer in case that kids (or me) take a tumble. That's also partially the reason that we've opted to have them carpeted to start. It will be a fun project to re-finish them someday, but it wasn't worth the 4k upcharge at this point in our lives to get hardwood treads.

The little cave is our future kitchen! The doorway in the back will lead to a "butler's pantry" and then the empty space to the right behind the kitchen is our pantry! It's not huge but it's many times larger than any food storage space we've had in the past, so this feature feels like an absolute luxury to us.

Another great room view! We haven't made any fireplace decisions other than gas (I insisted-- I want to be able to use my fireplace at the flick of a switch, and we just aren't clean enough people to effectively deal with the byproducts of a wood fire haha), but those will come. Maybe not until after we've moved in, but that's okay. We're just not willing to make a four-figure mistake on what will eventually be a main focal point of our home. Plus, DIY runs thick in our blood even as we're handing over many other house projects to sub-contractors.

Our future powder room, where we'll no longer have to frantically hide our toiletries every. single. time we have guests over (the single bathroom in our final house had an extra-narrow single sink cabinet and a 2 inch nook behind the mirror- toiletries basically lived in our rooms or behind the shower curtain).

This room is called the "library" on the plans, and I've taken that suggestion seriously. We opted against a side window on the right so that we can DIY some built-ins. I was an English major and have dreamed of a giant bookshelf that could house my entire collection, so a library fits! It will otherwise function as a playroom for the kids.

The library will be open to what is labeled a "dining room" on the plans, but is going to be a TV/ den space instead.

Another view of the stairs!

The upstairs requires a little more imagination at this point.

N in her future room!

E in his future room!

E

The start of a front door view... I'm imagining it'll look pretty different once the second story is framed, but even so, I like where this is headed! Especially as far as that bay window is concerned.

E-Haus: On to Framing

It's so strange how house building can take forever to get from even thinking about a floorplan to getting the final loan approved, and then even longer to get permits together, but once ground is broken the project can move forward at lightning speed. Our builder was adamant that our home would take approximately 5 months to build from foundation to completion, and though we heeded the advice that is EVERYWHERE online and mentally added several months in our heads, he's on track so far. In fact, there are crews of men on site 6-7 days per week. So we'll have to see what winter brings. Snow has a tendency to slow life down...

It sounds strange to say, but though our house looked enormous to me when the foundation walls went up, once the floorboards went on I started to wonder why we had chosen such a tiny home. Then the rest of the house got framed and once again, it looked big. Square footage, as with life, completely depends on the place from which you are viewing it.

This shot actually terrified me. I have no personal fear of heights but when my kids get within 10 feet of any kind of drop, I become convinced that their lives are in peril.

That tall wall on the right is the start to our (great!) great room!

And that bank of windows makes me smile so hard. I love the woods view, and I can't wait to watch the seasons change from a cozy seat within!