Monday, September 9, 2013

Exploring.

We have been in the house for a month this week! It is crazy. I am feeling a tiny but frustrated because the couch we ordered in JUNE is still not here and is delayed until the end of Septemeber. I feel like I cannot really LIVE in the house without a couch. Of course I can live here, I just want to sit in my own house! Right now the only place we have to sit is the barstools at the counter.

We are working on the yard right now, my husband Jeff, is installing a sprinkler system. Then we have 12,000 square feet of top soil and grass... :/  We are trying to get all that done before winter.

Recent adventures:






 


7 comments:

  1. Lovely pictures. Your girls are getting so big! After building our house, we were without a couch for about three months, and without bar stools for another few months. We had to sit in our folding camping chairs! We survived, and I was so happy about being in our house I almost didn't complain...almost. :) Congrats on moving in!!

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  2. Such cute pictures!! I am so glad you guys are moved in and in the process of getting settled in (albeit the missing couch;). Please please pretty please share pictures of the house if you have a chance! Dying to see how it all turned out!

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  3. Hey my friend, It's been quite a while since you've blogged anything. No doubt you've been swamped with getting settled and dealing with all the myriad little issues that go with moving into a new house (did that new sofa EVER arrive??) but I do hope all is well with you and yours. Since you haven't blogged I'm a bit worried that all may not be quite as rosy in paradise as you imagined it would be once you were all living together again in your wonderful new home.

    If that is the case, please know that as stressful as it was for you and hubby to be apart while building the house, it can also be stressful to get used to living together under one roof again! Plus, he's worked so hard to get everything perfect in the house that, if the least little thing still needs a tiny bit of work and you mention it, he may feel like you're complaining and not appreciative of all that he accomplished. And you worked equally hard to take care of and raise the girl's while he was focused on building the house. And, since he wasn't seeing them on a daily basis, he hasn't been aware of their childish foibles and phases. Thus, for example, he might wonder why your littlest one still wants a nightlight or why the older still can't pour milk from a container without spilling it... not realizing that these are perfectly normal for children their age. But if he says anything, you might take it as a personal criticism of the child rearing you did while he was away.

    Of course, I'm only guessing at what may be going on in your lives but it's based on remembering how DH and I reacted when we FINALLY got moved into our new home after futzing around with an AWFUL builder for a year and then firing him and taking over finishing the house ourselves which took another 18 months. At first, we were EUPHORIC to finally be living in the house...but then we both went thru a bit of a minor depression. Looking back I realize now that two things were going on. 1) We had been so focused on house-building for so long that we'd pretty much forgotten how to talk with each other about much of anything else. And 2) while the house was wonderful, there were still some minor things that needed fixing plus a few issues that were NEVER going to be perfect. Whenever one of us would mention one of those "imperfect" things, the other would tend to take it as a personal judgment...especially if it involved some aspect of the house that we personally had been involved in getting completed. (Eg., if he mentioned a spot where the tile wasn't laid quite straight, I got defensive because I hired the guy who laid the tile. If I mentioned a spot where the wood trim needed a bit of touch up on the stain, he got defensive because he and a friend did all the woodwork staining. If he mentioned that one of the windows needed cleaning, I got mad because I'd spent HOURS and HOURS cleaning windows. Well, you get the idea.

    For a short while we argued more than we had ever argued before in our thirty years of marriage. After a while though, things settled down as we finally got the last of the fixable house issues fixed and learned to stop noticing - or at least commenting on - those things that could not be fixed without more trouble/expense than the fixing was worth. And most importantly, we finally picked up the threads of our lives that we'd almost completely dropped for two years started talking about and focusing on things other than housebuilding again.

    So, just wanted to say if you're finding that life hasn't quite settled down the way you anticipated, give yourselves some time. You'll get your rhythm back again.

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    1. Bev, you are right. The frustrating thing is that we had to throw so much money at so many problems during the build, we thought that would stop when we moved in, HA! We did not have to pay our mortgage until this month because we had a reserve account set up for the whole year of 2013 but instead of using that money to buy cute, homey things for the house, we had to spend it on the yard. And that was very frustrating because it still doesn't feel cozy in here because it turns out when you get rid of all you possessions, buying new ones costs a lot of money :) But overall we love the house and I feel very lucky to live in it. We are ALMOST finished with the girls bathroom and I will do a post about that and a post about the kitchen. I just have so many other things going on. Thank you for your wonderful words and support <3

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    2. Oh and we finally got the couch in late Nov! Ugh!!

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  4. I can't wait to embark on this adventure! I'm so excited yet scared about everything going wrong! It normally does!! I love your house!
    Please look at me blog! www.mrsetherintgon.blogspot.com xx

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