Designing a Home | Balls to the (Dry)wall

I can't believe I haven't shared more house build things on here. I guess it's just felt like such a long process and it's taken a while to really see the house take shape to a point where it feels real. Well, folks, it feels real! The drywall is in and as I was leaving the other day they were about to prime the walls - eeek!

I'm sure nothing will top finally getting to see the kitchen in -  right now bare walls don't feel so homey. But it is still incredibly exciting to see.

Below is our front hallway - Kevin is standing in the laundry/craft room and the second opening is the door to the basement. If you turned right after the right hand wall, the hall would lead you to the powder room and mudroom (garage entry). Straight ahead is the great room with the living room on the left and kitchen/dining room to the right.

Don't mind the scaffolding, but below is the living room (I should have stepped back to get a wider shot). Out the back, we have our yard, then there will be fence, then a back lane, and then some "lane style"" homes. We liked the buffer that the back land provided, and if we want, we could put a gate in the back fence for future yacht storage (yeah right).

Without the scaffolding and prior to the fireplace hole being cut.

This view is from the other angle (I'm standing in between the kitchen/dining room for this shot.) As you can see, plenty of natural light which is exactly why we chose so many windows. We will have to wait and see how that plays out with heating and cooling in the home. 

Below is the kitchen. The two small holes in the ceiling are our island pendants to give you a better idea of placement. This wall will have our stove centered on it and cabinetry on either side. To the right is the walk-through pantry (of which another blog post is to come) and on the 90 from there, is our fridge and pantry wall.

And here is the dining room. I was really really concerned about not having a window on the far right wall of the dining room or in the kitchen (since the sink is in the island, and the stove is on the wall, I wasn't sure where to put one without drastically changing the configuration). But, after seeing how much light the home gets, I'm not all that worried anymore. One day, I will do a post on things I learned while building a home and what I wish I had changed/done, but that may be a ways away.

Below is the fireplace with the beginning of the cut out for our 60 inch fireplace. Although our home came with a standard gas fireplace, we opted to omit it in favour of a modern ribbon fireplace (which will be electric). The gas version of the fireplace we wanted was atrociously expensive (many thousands) and we were more concerned about looks and ambience than the gas heat (which is expensive to run if you are looking to heat a room). How we are finishing the fireplace is still very much up in the air. We went to a tile store yesterday and there were so many options that I am beyond overwhelmed. I do still have my white stacked quartz that would be perfect BUT I don't have enough of it to cover the roughly 100 sq ft of the fireplace. Options and a request for your opinion to come in another post!

Look at how happy my hubby is. The cutest. Although this process has been stressful and exhausting at times, this man has kept me sane and his enthusiasm for this build might even surpass mine. Best of all, he loves (most) of my design choices which makes it that much easier. To help even things out a bit, he took the reigns on the exterior and fortunately we are both happy so far!

And there she is in her most recent state! We have hardiboard up to the part where it is finished, and will have acrylic stucco on the unfinished parts (and for my BC friends, stucco is THE main exterior finish of choice in Winnipeg, so although it might seem odd for us to be doing it, it makes sense regionally). And the door has yet to be painted (and because it's already freezing here, it won't be painted until, oh, next summer probably.)

Hope to post soon with our floor plan FINALLY. I really want to design the floor plan on floorplanner.com as opposed to just scanning the plans, so that I can show furniture layout, etc, but I just haven't found the time.

Ciao lovelies!