soap box

i would like to state for the record, that some of the reason we are even getting to build this house is because we've been planning forever. some people hoard newspapers, letters, old buttons. chris and i hoard hardwood flooring, exterior doors, tile flooring....things such as this. that is no lie. we took johnny cash at his word and started with the "one piece at a time" years ago. remember the laundry room sink from a few posts back?? i will re purpose something quick like. if i could have bought a few 2 x4's every time i went to lowes we would be super set. alas, chris said that was a dumb idea.

so anywhoo, off the soap box. back to patchwork quilt house.

notice the little kick offs above the porch. me like.

ceiling in the living room. chris wanted it higher than this. i said no.

what it looks like when i leave the job site. incidentally if i leave there at 6, i leave about 2 hours after the work day there has ended.

bo says her baby "claire reese" is really excited to move in. and aren't they done yet?

same old same old. and elvis.

for some reason, i am fascinated by this side of the house....
i think its because of the roof line, and the fact that our pool will be located here some day. and by "our" pool. i do also mean my friend lee anna's pool. she refers to it as "our" pool. she says things like "whens our pool going to be ready?" so i'm thinking i may need to start referring to the guest room as "their room". and i will say things like when are "WE" going to clean "our" pool. you know.
chris told me yesterday to come on, it was time to leave. and i said i need some more pictures. he says you have enough pictures. i say "it looks different today, doesn't it?" i'm not really sure. but by goodness, i have documentation.

and the littlest building inspector has taken to making job site visits in ray ban's. looks pretty good to me. actually she sort of looks like me here. i do think its the glasses tho.
the other side of the house. and jade learns the hard way, if you go visit the house with me. you get your picture made and on the blog. standard procedure.
and lastly, a little Elvis bathroom preview for you. i mean come on, how could you not want a gallery wall of pictures such as this? oh and if you see chris, don't really strike up a conversation about the bathroom, yet. i mean once the installation is complete. sure, knock yourself out. but until then, lets just let it be our little surprise. yea that's it, surprise.

the swedish clampetts

is pretty much what we looked like on the way home from ikea on monday. in the back of this truck, and i am not over embellishing here, are the following items : 8 drawer dresser, 2 nightstands, 2 living room chairs, a couch, and some dogfood bowl stands. i can't even list all of the things in the front of the truck. notice how jodie is cowering away from the truck like at any moment something may let loose. which it did in the parking lot of ikea.
the back seat also included mom until we crow barred her out. luckily we all got tool kits at ikea. so we had it covered.

so we have found out that exuberance and determination while in ikea may not necessarily be a good thing. mom kept saying "why don't you go ahead and get this while you are here?". and jodie and i kept saying "sure we can fit that in". our downfall came when we had to pick something up AFTER check out. and that thing ended up being 2 huge boxes of chairs. which was not part of our plan. but thanks to hector, whom we have determined was a swedish spaniard, we got it all in. he bungeed corded and twined everything and said "sure you go now. look good" until mom opened a tool box on the side of the truck. a bungee cord ricocheted across the truck and at mom. hector promptly disappeared. i kid you not.

the reason i was actually near ikea was to complete a fun filled weekend of painting a 3 level house. good times. but i got to see this girl. love her so much! and she even helped paint!

so back to the house, here she sits across the pond....

roof is starting to shape up some more....

and finally, your first gander at the back of the house. is it right for a porch ceiling to be about 15 feet high? hmm. where is fast eddie?

the token shot of the littlest building inspector. who was more interested in shop cat today. and shop cat was more interested in bo's "huggy bears" aka gummy fruit snack.

and lastly, i know you are thinking it. and i know it. ikea furniture is not heirloom furniture. no i will not be passing it down to bo as a treasured possession. is it cheap? yes. is it fun? yes. do i like it? yes. will i feel bad when i chunk it? nope.

now we're talking

finally. we can actually compare the real house to the house i envisioned, pictured in the header above.

here bo points out some trash of course. that or goose poop. her other obsession. if there is a goose in a 5 mile radius, she will know.

obviously she sees some more over by the garage area. also notice the salt box type profile we were trying to achieve. it was hard to work out, but i think we got it done.

5. that's the number of goose poops shes found. or the number of minutes she thinks this trash needs to be cleaned up in.

super confusing roof line, on the courtyard side. thank goodness for Eddie. or Fast Eddie. that's what i told bo our head framer's name was. if she ever sees him i really hope she calls him that. i'm on a mission to get a picture of him. he has proven to be about as elusive as Bigfoot.

and finally the find of the day. as i start to thinking about fixtures we need. my mind obviously wonders to the crap we already have laying around. enter the fine sink below. which i am hoping will become our laundry sink. at this point, i can practically hear my mother sigh as she reads this. she calls me a "shit shifter" like i just shift shit from one place to the other. which is true. but i'm going to turn this shit to sugar. it just needs some cleaning. which speaking of, my mom also clearly has little faith in my elvis bathroom project. which is fine. almost always when i have a project she is unsure about, at the end of it she says "well you pulled it off again". so i don't worry too much. she will go along with me, even if she thinks i'm nutty.

elvas! Oh! elvaaaaaaas!

i noticed as i was watching wall to wall Elvis coverage this weekend, that when the women screamed for Elvis, it was more like elvaaaaaas. i have also come to another realization. and that is i am dedicating my half bath to Elvis. i have moments of clarity each month, usually about 3 days a month i think straight. today is one of them. now you may not thinking dedicating a half bathroom to Elvis is a moment of clarity per se. but for me it is. i just feel its right. thus i am bidding on no less than like 15 pictures of him on ebay right now. in my mind its a classy gallery wall installation. right now you are thinking Elvis+bathroom is not equal to classy. i will make it happen. you watch.

now at the same time i realize this is wrong an a couple of levels. Elvis may or may not have died in the bathroom. depending on 1)if you believe he is in fact dead (i don't) and 2) if you believe he died in the bathroom or not. its a moot point with me, since of course i believe he lives like in Rio De Janerio or somewhere and 2)chris has not been apprised of this situation yet. here are my responses to that. 1)Elvis had a good sense of humor, he would appreciate the irony here. and 2)chris just made a couple of new purchases. he currently has no room to argue with me.

oh and the house, did you come here to find out about progress and not just Elvis?

the roof. the roof. oh and people i am related to who shall be forced into manual labor later on in this project. such as: my mother in law, my mother, and my sister (the one with the infants hat on)

our bedroom ceiling/roof. whatever. contractor talk eludes me. and my dad. he is head babysitter.

it was cold. well digger cold. we all stole hats from bo to wear. no kidding.

so i'm pretty sure that by now you have put 2 and 2 together to get 6 about me. well that's pretty much how the interior design of this house is going to go. sorry mom and suzy, sometimes you got to step outside the box. but not outside the bathroom, because thats where elvis is.

oh the views

part of our initial house building issue was where exactly to put the house. there was much debate about a)the actual site and b) the orientation of the house on said site. finally chris came round to my way of thinking and we put it in between two ponds and reversed the footprint so that the courtyard/pool was right by the main pond. thus the two ponds and a house. chris wanted to be farther away from the road, and while i agree on that note, the views from this particular site were too good to pass up. we will begin construction of one of those 50 foot walls like you see on the interstate after the house is done. but for now, we have some really good waterfront real estate.

this is looking into the courtyard area, where the magical pool will be one day. the front pond is just behind and to the left of me.
this is the view from the kitchen out through the living room, looking at the front pond.

view from the dining room, towards the back pond. i think the port o potty, dumpster and cell phone tower form a trifecta of ambiance.

so all of that being said, chris is, and i quote, "tickled pink" about the views. if you know chris, he doesn't get tinkled or pink very often. so it was really hard for me not to say "i told you so" but i held it in. and as i said earlier, the littlest building inspector has a birds eye view of BOTH ponds.

a long time in between posts means...

actual progress. it's starting to look like a real house. here the first floor is almost complete.

like with walls and everything. at this point i am standing in the living room, looking into the kitchen.
and the second floor has begun. you can't really tell it from this vantage point, but that second floor is up there. waaaaaay up there. (also notice the familiar rain clouds moving in.)

the littlest building inspector pulled some strings and got the best view of anyone. a huge window on either side of her room. each looks out onto a different pond. i know this because i climbed up there. more like shimmied. this is also how i know it is very high up there. i was reminded that i do not really care for heights. i was also reminded that i had to come down from up there. sans a ladder or any sort of stairs. i do not have spider man skills.

the littlest building inspector does have make-up skills tho. look at that. looking gooooood. since this photo she has moved on to the eyeshadow. which i was informed is applied above the eyebrow. bad move Christmas gift? probably.

hope everyone had a fabulous holiday. jodie made it back safely from far off Qatar. if you want to know all about her trippie check out http://www.qatarchristmas.blogspot.com/

the weather is rain free, but cold here. so maybe i can manage a couple more updates this week.