Wednesday, June 27, 2012

 Surprise!
Michelle came to visit this weekend.  Before she came, we spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out what to do about the house.  We didn't really want to show it to her - we've worked really hard at keeping it a secret and it kinda felt like we'd ruin all of our efforts if we showed anyone before the house was completed. However, the lot that we used last time to 'deter' our family now has a partially finished house on it, so using that again was out of the question.  The only other options were to either find another lot or avoid taking her to our lot while she was here.  We knew both of those options would be tough. We also knew that Michelle probably wouldn't be returning to Grand Junction for another year or so, meaning it would be awhile before she got the chance to see our house. Because of this we decided to just go ahead and show her.  We were a little disappointed with our decision at first, but it didn't take us long to get over it and decide we were actually really excited and kind of relieved to finally be showing someone.
On Saturday morning we told her we had a surprise for her.  We hopped into the car and headed to our lot.  When we turned into our development, we told her we were going to show her our lot.  At that point I began to feel butterflies in my stomach. A few seconds later we pulled in and just waited until she realized what was going on. Her response didn't take long and was something along the lines of....'wait...you guys have a house?!?!'  It was SO much fun.  We were hoping she'd be pumped and her reaction did not disappoint at all.  She was pretty excited (thanks Michelle!) and we had so much fun walking her through the entire house.  Now we cannot wait to show our parents once the house is actually finished. It's going to be FANTASTIC!  I just hope they react like Michelle did - she made my day:)

Another picture of our beautiful stone. 
Today we finally chose a grout to go in between the stone.   Choosing the grout was about a 5 day process that included lots of trips to the house, lots of pictures sent to our fabulous designer Jennifer, and a handful of on-the-spot phone calls with Jennifer. Who knew that choosing grout would be so difficult? I was a little worried for a bit. None of the samples seemed right, but I had no idea what 'right' was so I didn't know how to fix what was obvious wrong.  We just kept trying different things and then today it happened.  We looked at yet another sample and it just clicked. We all knew it was the one.  It was so exciting and such a relief. (Sounds a little melodramatic, but it's the truth.)

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Garage Doors 
 We gave a Nate a picture of a garage door that we loved (from the Utah house that has been our inspiration all along). He in turn gave that to his garage door guy.  When that guy (super nice guy, just can't remember his name) saw it, he knew exactly what door it was (company, style, etc.).  The doors didn't come in a shade quite as dark as we wanted, but they were close enough, so he ordered them for us and gave us an awesome deal (saved us about $1500). He also sweetened the deal by throwing in a free key pad door opener, which I was really excited about.  Our beautiful garage doors were installed early this week and we love them!



Saturday, June 16, 2012

Stone 
We LOVE homes with stone on the outside, so we of course decided to use a lot.  (We're actually using a lot on the inside too.)  The stone just got started this week and we are so ridiculously excited to see the finished product! So far we love how it looks with the siding and the painted trusses.  Should end up looking pretty sharp