Trigger Pulled

So we pulled the trigger on Sunday afternoon.  We close at the end of the month and there is really no going back (though who would want to)!  We are so excited!  Lots of decisions to make but I have been searching the internet to decide what details I want in the house.  Some decisions we will need to make during the building process (cabinets, tile etc).  Some we can add as we go (design details).  Like this arc lamp.  This is my #1 item I want to aquire.  I would love to get an original mid-century vintage one but will take a modern replica as well.  Keep your eyes out for me.
I found this one on Apartment Therapy:

Prepping Our Home for Sale

All I have to say is Why?  Why didn't we do this stuff to improve our home while we were here those 7 years.  I guess we had small kids and busy lives and we did do alot of updating.  But I am amazed at how much of an impact a new lighting fixture or change in cabinet hardware makes.  A little elbow grease goes a long way. 

Spent most of my day off today ripping off wallpaper borders.  Good news and bad!  Good news: the bathroom border ripped off in one long strip...EASY PEASY!
Bad news: the laundry room paper was a B*&$%...I mean pain.  I am certain that getting out of bed tomorrow will be tough. 

Also changed out the hardare in the master bath, kids bath and linen closet!  I am loving the using the power tools!

Mom is coming tomorrow to help with some painting..she is a saint!  SAINT LOIE!  I love it!
Next Friday will be all about tackling Ben's room.
Will post pictures soon.

Elevation

Below is the elevation the designer drew up at one of our meetings.  Since Steve and I have more of a modern/contemporary aesthetic, we wanted style of home that would compliment that and what better style than a Frank Lloyd Wright looking Prairie Home.  The designer was true to the style and added small square windows and 3' overhangs to create an authentic look.

Of course, if I won the lottery, I would build something more like this home in California built by LivingHomes :) :

Just Getting Started

It happened about 6 months ago, during a visit to one of our favorite Stillwater hot spots, PD Pappy's.  We were enjoying one of our favorite bands (Kurt Jorgensen Band) and I was having so much fun with our friends (Elaine, Shawn, Kelly, Al, Jim and Amy) that I said to Steve, "We should move to Stillwater".  It wasn't until months later that we actually started to run with the idea.  Our plan was to move before Tess hit middle school.  Since she is in fourth grade this year, that would give us two years to research and plan plus give us plenty of time to prep our house in Andover to sell.  We realized though that we might want to capitalize on the great interest rates and started seriously thinking about moving the summer of 2011.

Originally we planned to put the house on the market and try get an offer before we seriously started looking for a new home in Stillwater.  But we quickly realized that the Stillwater market had a lack of homes we liked in our price range.  We looked at some exhisting homes with the help of Adam Nyberg but weren't quite happy with what we saw.  There were homes that we could sink some money into to make "our own" and there we homes over our price range but nothing quite fit.

One Saturday afternoon, Tess, Ben and I went driving around to look at neighborhoods and decided to walk thru a model in the Emerald Falls development in Baytown TWP.  It was fun but I knew the house was out of our price range.  As we continued to pour through MLS listings online, Jim Abrams, a close friend kept encouraging Steve to build a home.  Jim and Amy had just moved into their new home built by McDonald Construction.  Ironically, McDonald Construction is the builder for the Emerald Falls development.  So we started to look into the lot prices and also start converstations with McDonald.  Surprisingly they confirmed that they could build a home in our price range in that development.  One plus to the development is that a bank owns the lots due to the past builder foreclosing on the land.  This allowed us to negotiate a great price on the land.

As of this week, we have bought the land :) YEAH!  And have worked through many details of the home with the builder.  This week we will sign the purchase agreement with the builder.

Here we go....Creating a Home!