E-Haus: The Guest Room/ Nursery

Though much of our energy over the past 9-10 months has been devoted to the planning and building and putting together of E-Haus, I've been working on a separate project that has not only hit its estimated completion date, but passed it at this point. I am over 40 weeks pregnant with our third child, and though these first two weeks of maternity leave without a baby have been almost necessary in order to finish up a whole host of projects, our impatience to meet this newest little one is growing by the day. 

As I've mentioned before, we planned out our basement so that it will eventually host a nice-sized guest bedroom and bathroom, but before it's finished, we have a four bedroom house. We considered just setting up 3.0 in our bedroom for the first 6-9 months while we kept our guest bed upstairs and then did a rush job on the permanent guest room when it came time to move the babe, but practicality ended up winning out and so we have a half-guest/ half-nursery space. I actually think it'll be great, especially if this baby is anything like Everett, who didn't sleep through the night until 2 years old and still wakes up to join me and Nate on occasion. 

[It hopefully goes without saying, but the pillows and stuffed animals in the crib are all temporary.]

Because space became limited between the crib and the queen sized bed, I set up the closet as an additional nursery nook to hold not only clothes but 3.0's changing table and dresser. We're keeping the name a secret until birth, so I blurred it out, but I couldn't resist putting just a few decorative items in that space. They're all super lightweight and will only exist so long as baby's clothes don't overwhelm the closet. Luckily the closets in this house are all very long, so the rail space extends another few feet in each direction past the end of the doors-- there's lots of room for tiny outfits.

The guest bed and far end of the room. I tried to keep it neutral enough to work for grown ups but playful enough for a nursery. So far it's gotten two thumbs up from the few house guests we've already hosted, so I think we succeeded!

Eventually I have big plans to paint this room, but since time is of the essence and I wanted to avoid choking baby with paint fumes, that will be a project for another day. In the meantime, I continue to feel grateful that we chose such a neutral interior paint color that it can work with any color scheme.

Now come on, baby! We're so excited to hug and kiss you on the outside!

Newsworthy

Today is my wedding anniversary. This means two things: first, that Nate and I have been married for six years, and second, that fall is really here. If we didn't know it before, the chilly and rainy weather this Saturday morning is driving the point home. Fall is here. We all slept in until 8, decided against a fancy homemade breakfast in favor of strawberry-banana smoothies all around, and we're planning on lounging in our jammies until at least noon. Why not? And this is why fall is my favorite.

As much as people love to obsess about the little details of fall (and, oh god, the pumpkin spice lattes-- blech), I think that the truth of it is that while the perks of sweaters and pumpkins are nice, what we really love is our return to structure. When we are working more, the breaks are so much sweeter. And for those of us with kids, this is true threefold. During the summer my kids would clamor for activities and fun and excitement from the first moment they opened their eyes. Now that it's fall and they are back to school and daycare and structured activities, they cheer when they learn it's a day off, and the whole family benefits.

So yeah, here's to schedules and paperwork and hard work! And also to our anniversary. While Nate drives me to the edge occasionally, most days he's my boyfriend and best friend and partner. There's nobody in the world I would rather love and compromise with, and over eight years into our relationship, that's a sweet place to be.

In house news, the hold-out permit has been approved -- the low spot on our land is actually a small bonafide wetland-- and now just needs processed. So fingers crossed that we'll be digging a hole in the ground in the next few weeks! In the meantime, we've got our well and some other secondary jobs to complete. Like gaining access to the part of our property where the house will be, which should be an adventure in and of itself. There's a whole lot of brush and hopefully not too many trees to clear. We've requested that if some mature trees do need felled that they get put aside. We have a contact who will kiln-dry and plane them for us so that they can still find their place in our home.

We've already talked about vinyl versus fiber-cement siding. Now onto our next debate: traditional hardwood versus engineered wood flooring.

And then we bought a lot.

My husband and I are the last people I ever thought would build a house.

We're not supremely wealthy, and he wouldn't survive in a pre-planned community (and though I can't pretend that I would hate it, it's nice to have a place to stretch your legs). We like homes with architectural detail and character, so we assumed that when it was time to upgrade from our 1046 sq. foot ranch, we would move along to another fixer-upper, just in larger scale.

Yet, somehow, some way, last week we signed an agreement with a builder. We're going the new construction route on our soon-to-be almost 5 acre lot. I can't wait to get started!

But first, inspiration, while that land gets poked and prodded and approved for building.

1

2

3

Builder basic, no way.