small spaces and big decisions

You may have noticed in my first post I mentioned quickly selling our townhome and simultaneously signing a contract to build our new place ... which begs the question, where are we living now?

Evan and I are both Colorado natives and incredibly fortunate to still live close to our families. As luck would have it, my Dad is an extremely generous and patient man and invited Evan and I, our dog, Dudley, and a box or two of our things (or 20 and a couch) to stay at his house while our new one was being built. 

It's been a great solution for us as we're not only able to save a boat load of money, but it also gives us a built-in dog-sitter (more on that later) and, most importantly, time to hang out with my Dad.

The downside is downsizing from a 1,700 sq. ft. townhome to a bedroom, bathroom and shared living space (albeit, downside is a relative term considering we have no bills and unlimited wine). We're a little ... cramped, which is leading to daydreaming. Lots of daydreaming. Too much daydreaming.

We've furnished, refurnished and re-refurnished our great room at least 10 times on paper; countless times in our minds. We're fortunate to be able to buy all new furniture for a couple rooms in our house (more on that later too), but our lack of space has somehow brought on indecision and as we're holed up in our bedroom we keep vacillating between this coffee table and that couch, or this couch and that coffee table. 

It's not that we don't have time to finalize these decisions, but I feel like we're living in some decorator's version of "Groundhog Day" and we'll get so sick of trying to make a decision that we won't, and our great room will consist of a whole lotta "great" nothin'. 

At least there's always Pinterest.

dreaming up our dream home

It all began with a dream ...

After owning (and living) in our townhome for seven years we began dreaming about what and where our next home will be. Given that it took us two years to get there (thanks economy and the brilliance of buying a suburban townhome), we dreamt a lot. We pictured renovating a great Denver bungalow, talked about how we'd tear out walls, knock down cabinets and blaze a hardwood trail to our new-to-us home. Depending on the time of year, available budget and level of angst with our old home, our dreams varied from grandiose to simple changes. But the dream of renovating an older home and making it 100% us was always at the forefront of our mind.

So imagine our surprise when during a trip to a builder in a suburban community, on a random Saturday I burst into tears because we "found our home." Instantaneously our dreams flipped and we were suddenly talking about building our own home and choosing our floor plan, finishes and extras. And with the quick (finally) sale of our townhome, we signed on the dotted line and anxiously began visiting our plot of dirt that would eventually be the foundation for our future.

So why had a new build never entered our dreams? For starters, we thought a home we'd fall in love with would be far outside our price range. I'll be honest; we're picky -- like really, really picky. For us the concept of building a new home was more closely attached to seven figures than reality. Once we got past the budget conversation, it was always about location. The only places we knew of that were building new homes were places we really didn't want to live. Nice, fun, amazing places for sure. But not the place a couple of lifelong DINKs were jumping to move into.

Solterra, our suburban community, and Cardel, our builder, blew our mind and all of our preconceived notions about new builds out the window and we're counting down the days until we can open the door to our brand new dream home.

our little plot of dirt, February 10, 2013