Hello! It’s been a week and a half since we signed with the bank and the builder, and we’ve had lots happening! Last week we got our build permit, a portapotty, and our internet cables moved above ground and out of the way of the future house. Yesterday we had electrical lines rerouted, trees removed (sad!), and our basement dug! It was so fun to watch them zip around in the excavator and skid loader!
So far we’ve had no surprises during the initial site prep besides needing to spend about $500 extra to switch to a gas water heater and furnace. When the electrical company came over to splice wires (which allowed them to maintain power to our current house), they said the electrical box we already share with our neighbors would be at capacity. To keep the water heater and furnace as electric, it would be thousands more dollars to upgrade the box AND we’d have to dig up our neighbor’s beautiful yard. Our yard is covered in weeds so I’m not too defensive of it, but our neighbors work so hard to keep their yard looking nice. Which with us being at the end of the lane, makes it almost look like our yard is nice! Safe to say we decided to go the gas route as a workaround!
Today we have workers outside digging footings with a backhoe. They’ll put in rebar, create forms, and pour concrete! Then within a few more days we should have either the basement walls or floors being poured!
With how fast this build is going to go, there’s so much to keep us busy over the summer. One of my maternity leave projects has been to sell anything we don’t want to move over to the new house. I first learned how to sell on FB marketplace when I had some wedding florals to get rid of. It was a great experience and really made me comfortable with listing things we don’t need. So far the only thing we’ve purchased from FB marketplace has been a stove a couple years ago, but I could definitely see myself using it to purchase bigger kids toys secondhand (like dollhouses, play kitchen, etc).
Besides cleaning out our house to help prep for the move, I also really want to tackle a laminate project! There’s a Wilsonart product called Re-Cover that I ordered from Home Depot in Black Alicante. Unfortunately the wrong product was delivered although my order receipt shows the correct item. The color was right, but they sent me a real laminate sheet! That has a more complicated installation process than the Re-Cover laminate I ordered.
Anyway, I’ve got the right product on the way from Lowe’s now, and the Home Depot mixup is on its way back to the store. The reason I want to do a project is to see whether it’s realistic to make a full fireplace surround/mantel out of a stone look laminate. I love the look of the real stone fireplaces, but it is not in the budget for our initial build! I’d love to give this idea a try before deciding if we’ll just need to go with something more simple that’s still within budget. Don’t worry, we’ll have an electric fireplace, so no fire hazard here with the laminate!
We also want to do a kitchen backsplash in the same Black Alicante laminate as what we’re putting on the perimeter countertop. If the Re-Cover laminate is pretty easy to work with, we could either make the backsplash ourselves or possibly create a little ledge like the real stone splashes have! The cost would be so doable, likely $500 or less for a real stone look.
Besides that, I think we have most things figured out for the new house. We won’t be buying anything expensive while we’re beefing up our emergency fund (to account for having a mortgage in our expenses again) and knocking down the loan principal, so I’m excited to see how we can get creative with furnishing our new home. The most important thing will be repurposing what we currently have either with paint, changed hardware, or just being happy and grateful with it until we are able to find something that fits our new house style better. Of course I’ll try to post about any projects we work on, even if the picture quality isn’t good!
That’s all for today! I need to go check the build progress out the window! Thanks for reading!
Davien
fluted wood & marble 
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