officially ours

Our dream home is officially ours. We closed on Tuesday and have spent the last few days dealing with delivery nightmares, contractors and moving. It's been exhausting.

But our house, our amazing house, turned out perfectly. There are a couple minor things that I may have changed (the tile in our laundry room and guest room, as previously mentioned), but they're minor compared to the rest of it. I can't believe it's ours.

The next few weeks will be filled with more deliveries, unpacking, organizing (and reorganizing), and starting installation with our blinds and landscaping, as well as getting a couple rooms painted.

There's so much to share and I'm excited to walk through the progression from day 1.

Standing on our front porch (a little worse for the wear between moving and delivery disasters)

getting close

We had our walkthrough yesterday and I'm getting pretty excited for Sept. 3. Almost everything was done and we finalized our punch list. There's a lot going on in terms of finalizing choices, furniture, etc., but instead of going on about those, thought I'd do a couple sneak peek photos of how the house is coming together.

Looking at our microwave and oven

Our range and hood

Half the kitchen

Looking into the great room

Looking back to the front door

floor plans

As I don’t have any décor pictures to share yet, I thought it would be a good time to share the floor plan we chose.

 I know we’re bias, but I think it’s one of the best plans of the entire collection – it’s laid out so well. It works great for us giving us ample living space on the main level. One of our favorite things is the two-story great room, which connects to an upstairs loft, maximizing and connecting the areas we can entertain. It’s only three bedrooms, which suits us perfectly as we are not having kids and really only need a guest room for a handful of times throughout the year. The remaining bedroom will be dedicated to Evan for a man cave for man … stuff.

We’ve added some options to our house, most of which I’ve circled. On the main level we also added an outdoor covered patio and upgraded to their gourmet kitchen, which includes a range and wall oven/microwave as well as a hood. I can’t wait to see it!

Main Level floor plan

On the upstairs level, we added a couple things as well. I'm absolutely in love with the alternate master bath we chose, which added a bathtub as well as an extra west-facing window. The views are amazing and I can't wait to take my first bath in our new home.

Upper Level floor plan

We elected not to finish our basement right away. For starters the 2,150 square feet upstairs are way more than enough for us right now. We also are pretty sure we'll do something custom when we do finally finish it, which, to be honest, I'm not even sure is an option through the builder. If it is, I'm sure it's beyond expensive. We did, however, add the rough-in plumbing to make finishing it down the road a little easier.

Basement floor plan

So there you go, our new home. Now, if we could only move in and start replacing blue prints with actual photos. Only 28 days!

celebrations and anxiety

We can officially commence our move-in countdown! Seven weeks from today we’ll be closing on our new house and officially moving in. It seems somewhat surreal that in mere weeks we’ll be packing, unpacking and beginning to figure out how to turn our new house into a home.

I’m ecstatic about moving in … and also a little overwhelmed. I feel like we’ve made a lot of decisions and have made a lot of purchases, but I’m still worried everything will look disconnected and unpolished. I just really want our house to look amazing and I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself with every decision we’ve made and every item we’ve purchased to make sure our house is perfection. And I know it won’t be, and I know that there will still be things we need to buy and changes we want to make … I’m just hung up on every individual detail and what it means and how it looks. Seriously people, it keeps me awake at night. And don’t even get me started on landscaping. That needs a post all on its own.

But decision anxiety aside, I can’t wait to watch all our design selections get installed in our house over the next seven weeks. We’re starting to get to the fun stuff with tile, flooring, etc. and I think it will help ease my fears that we’ve made a ton of crap decisions. We saw a sneak peek of our master bathroom tile (which we upgraded) and it looks AMAZING! The standard tile is also installed in our laundry room and guest bath and looks pretty darn good for being a “free” option. The only thing I wish we would have done is to have gone with a darker grout – a taupe or light grey. But it still looks amazing.

Photos will be posted soon, but in the meantime, here’s a recent shot of stone being installed on the front of our house.

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