Sunday, October 18, 2009

Stone

If you've been following this blog long, then you know that our home is undergoing an Extreme Makeover that involves everything from gutting our entire main level and building on additions, to taking off our old roof and putting a whole new roof on. And, if you've been following this blog long, you also know that we're doing most of the work ourselves. Let me share an equation with you that pretty much sums up our situation...

Lots of renovation + doing the work ourselves = slow progress.

I'll admit, part of the reason there is so much renovation is that we are picky. Extremely picky to be exact. I have grand ideas of how I want our home to look, down to every last detail. In fact, I have an entire binder full of home photos and pictures from magazines of what I like about different houses. I am definitely opinionated when it comes to the look of our home.

And then there's Jason who sees the big picture, and I mean BIG picture (he kept adding on square footage to our home when we were having the plans drawn up, things like a bump out for our master bedroom sitting area and a screened-in deck.)

Basically, God has blessed us both with a vision for the end product, even in the midst of a chaotic mess. But having not been blessed with an income to match our vision, we're forced to save money by being our own general contractor and doing most of the labor ourselves too.

Yes, we're both to 'blame' for the work ahead of us. But we also both know that if we put in the time and effort now, we'll have a home that is our dream home and we won't regret not going for it. Jason and I both appreciate character and charm in a house, and just couldn't envision living in a cookie cutter home free of those little details that make a house special and unique.

That being said, the exterior of our house incorporates many, many windows, two different types and colors of siding, and stone...lots of stone. Jason and our dads put all the windows in themselves. We hired someone to do the siding because we knew it would take Jason forever to do it. But the stone, like the windows, is a project we thought we could do ourselves.

Well, yesterday is the day we actually began putting stone on the house, after preparing the house for stone for the last few weekends. And let me tell you, the application is pretty easy, but man is it ever time consuming! And being the perfectionist that I am, I have to make sure that it all looks like I envisioned which takes a little more time than just grabbing any random color or shape of stone and slapping it on the wall. (Yes, it's suppose to be a random pattern. But it takes a lot of work to get the right random pattern!)

We are happy with the progress we made on Saturday, and absolutely love how it looks so far.

I thought I'd give you a sneak peak...







We know that Chloe likes the stone. I had them laid out on the ground ready to apply to the house and she kept saying, "Oooh, really pretty rocks mom," in her excited Chloe voice.



Hopefully soon we'll have all the stone completed and will be one step closer to a finished exterior. And you can expect many, many photos when that day comes!

3 comments:

Tara Anderson said...

I LOVE the stone!!! And I totally understand your need to add personality to a "cookie cutter home". We're doing the same thing--our home is in a "master planned community" with a limited number of floorplans and options to choose from so we're adding custom touches to our home to make it stand out--as our income allows, which I'm sure will be not at all until we're home from China! I guess in the meantime I'll just have to drool over your pictures, :)

Unknown said...

I love the stone and I just knew the siding would be exactly what I would pick! I can't wait to see more pictures!

It looks great!

TanyaLea said...

The stone looks GREAT! And there is no need to explain away... I am the exact same way when it comes to my house. I will wait until it can be done right. My husband and I are "do-it-yourselfers" too! Sometimes by choice and sometimes by necessity. But in any case, there is definitely a pride of ownership when your own blood, sweat and tears have gone into making it your home! :) I can't wait to see more photos of your 'projects' as they unfold!