For Julianne...

This post is entirely for Julianne, my dear friend who is planning her future dream house and wants pictures, pictures, pictures and opinions of ours. I figured I could have sent her 18 emails with all the pictures and answers to her questions, or do one long blog post. Easy decision. I am lazy.

So, here you go, Julianne...



Our master bedroom is on the main level. It is the open door down the hallway in the pic above. Deciding whether to have the master on the main or to do an upstairs with all the bedrooms, was a tough decision for me and Kyle. In the end, we decided on the main level for two main reasons...

1. We want this to be our FOREVER house. Old, gray, decrepit, can't do stairs house.
2. We know there will come a time when our kids will want some space (and we just may want some space too)

I do not regret having the master on the main floor, but I do wish we could have figured out a way to have it a little more separated from the rest of the house. Because we wanted our stairway open, with a railing instead of a wall, the mater bedroom is pretty exposed to noise and the other goings on in the main living area. However, I wasn't and still am not willing to sacrifice a big wall in place of our banister, which is one of my favorite things.

We would have loved to have a smaller upstairs made from the trusses of the house. I love the idea of having a loft area and a couple of bedrooms upstairs, but once we decided we wanted the master on the main floor, that also meant we wanted another bedroom (baby room) on the main floor. Because the basement is the cheapest part of the house, we knew we wanted to have the same square footage downstairs as the main level. Adding an upstairs on top of all the other square footage would have grown our home more than we were willing. So, we had to nix the upstairs idea. However, I still love the idea of an upstairs.

Picture taken standing right in front of the white bench in other picture.
Half bath door on left and garage door straight ahead.

In my opinion, the mud room is one of the most important rooms of the house. Its functionality is crucial. In our original plans, we wanted our mudroom to have built in lockers for each child. As we got nearer to completing our home, we realized that custom lockers just weren't going to cut it in the budget. So, we opted for some Ikea cabinets and a two long rows of hooks on the wall (less than 1/4 the cost of custom cabinets).

I think a mud room should be as big as you can realistically make it and full of lots of natural light. Our mudroom is definitely sufficient for our needs but I would not complain if it were at least a little bit bigger.



Shoulda-woulda-coulda...
One thing I would change in our house is to have more seating at the kitchen island. I wish I would have cut out some of the cabinetry space in the island and had an overhang for stools on the back and one side of the island. It is so convenient to have people sitting right there at the island, and the more that can fit, the better.





The above two pictures are taken right in front of our kitchen sink. So, the kitchen opens up into the living room, but not completely. We really wanted to have the great room feel a part of the kitchen, yet separate also. The partial window wall to the left and the lone column in the middle really help to keep it separate but together.




This is the stone we finally decided on. That was quite a process in and of itself, but I am really happy with how it turned out. We wanted the stone to look old. The installers did an "over-grout" technique, where they bring the grout right to the edge and sometimes over the edge of each stone piece. This really helped achieve the look we wanted.







Here is our completed window wall. The window openings stayed bare for about 2 1/2 months after we moved in. We had the windows and frames for a good 3 months before that, but due to some poor choices by the home owners, the frames ended up stuck together in a hot car, totally ruining their paint job....TWICE. Oh, those frames have had lots of love given to them with hours of sanding and painting. Kyle hung the windows and frames a few weeks ago, and I could not be happier with the way they turned out.




This was my "deal" for our new house. Rather than buy a cheesy pre-made vanity for our main upstairs bath, I decided I wanted to find an old dresser and convert it into a vanity. After looking and looking at several antique stores, and not having much luck finding the right type of dresser, Kyle and I stopped by an antique dealer's shop in American Fork. As we looked around outside, I spied the beauty in the picture above. Actually, there two identical beauties right next to each other. I was flabbergasted! Here I had been looking for a dresser that I could spend hours and hours converting into a vanity, and there in front of me were two vanities.

I asked the owner how much he wanted for one and he responded, "Free! As long as you take them both." So, I took them both home, used parts of one to fix up the other, sanded, painted, and voila...





These three pictures are of the girl's downstairs bathroom. We would have loved to have a Jack and Jill bathroom, but the layout of the basement wouldn't accommodate that. So, we ended up doing a room with the vanity and a closet, then a separate room with the toilet and bath. I really like this because one girl can be using the toilet or bath, while another is brushing her teeth or getting ready. It just makes the bathroom more usable.





When you are standing at our kitchen sink, the pantry is just to the right. It has two, double doors. The left set open to slanted shelving for our canned goods. This makes rotating food storage a breeze, because you can load the new cans from inside the pantry, and use the older cans right inside the doors. I LOVE my slanted shelves. The doors on the right open up so you can walk in the pantry.

So, there is enough house stuff to bore most of you for the rest of your lives and to appease Julianne for at least another week :)