NEW HOUSE!!!!!! Picture time!

NEW HOUSE!!!!!! Picture time!

• 8.31.2012

OMG you guys, I am SO excited to share photos of the new house with you. The past week and a half has been a whirlwind and of course we didn't have internet for most of it so my posting abilities were limited! But I stayed up late last night to edit these pics so I could show them to you ASAP!

So, you may have been watching the construction process since we picked the house out in January... we are so excited to own our beautiful new townhome, which is so much nicer (and bigger!) than any of our crappy apartments, and it's ours. Buying a house has been a dream of mine since I was about 15, really, and I'm lucky I've been able to prioritize making that step so early on in my adult life. And I'm lucky my husband has been on board! He wasn't working until just a couple months ago, but he shared my drive to save money and work toward making this huge purchase!

And we are both just over the moon every minute we spend in our new place!! It's just... so nice! We're used to older houses, which have their charm, but we don't trust ourselves to renovate at this point, so for a first house, brand new is good. But, we can't wait to learn some new homeowner skills and build some closets, get creative with paint, recover furniture (me), etc... I'm excited to show you when I have some progress!

But, of course you have to see the blank slate first. Here's our home, with nothing in it, first thing on moving day (well, second thing, after our little sage-burning ritual to christen it!). Tour beginning now!

Entry area and stairs upstairs. I've been told by everyone who comes in that I need a bench in that corner so people can take off their shoes. OK, it's on the list.

The paint color throughout the house is "Snowfall" from Sherwin Williams. We paid extra to choose the color--rather than the standard medium beige-ey tan that the builder uses in the other units. It is super icky. Not my style at all. I wanted grey walls, but real grey would have been too dark to put it everywhere, so this is the pales shade on a card of very warm greys, and I plan to buy one or two of the darker shades to paint other rooms or accent walls.

We also varied from the builder's standard look by requesting brushed chrome handles, hinges, lighting, etc. in the house rather than bronze! (Just cuz it's funny to see--here are photos of the model for this development (2015 update: they've upgraded a few things since they built ours!). How totally NOT ME are those colors????)

Below: Living room, dining room, and kitchen. The builder of this neighborhood insists on real wood and granite, so we had our pick of those, but paid for the upgrade to have hardwoods throughout the living room rather than carpet. And I'm so glad we did, totally worth it. I wanted very dark floors, but these ones will be easier to keep looking clean, and I love that they have little bits of dark coloring in them to pick up on the cabinet color.

The cabinet color was also a special order... the choices they offered us were about 5 shades of medium brown. I was dreaming of a white kitchen, but that would have been another huge upgrade, and also harder to keep clean, so we picked out a custom stain and it turned out perfectly. I love the color of dark wood! And I love my white subway tile backsplash! The builder threw that in as a freebie because she knew it would look better.

The lighting in the kitchen and dining room are from Globe Lighting, which the builder uses and told me I could take my pick from. We ended up paying a little extra for lighting upgrades, but it was worth it compared to what they normally use and what we would have paid at Lowe's or IKEA or west elm to replace them.

Along the other living room wall, you'll see the stairway down to the bonus room and garage on the basement level. The bonus room is pretty bland, and doesn't have a window, but my husband is pretty thrilled anyway since it means he can keep his massive book collection and big TV down there--and I'm happy I won't have to listen to him and his buddies laughing at their video games while I try to have a conversation in the next room. ;) This room will be a bit of a challenge to decorate, though, since it's so pale and the TV and bookshelves are so dark. We'll see. But, this means we won't have to have a TV in the living room!

Let's head back upstairs to the living room, and then turn right again onto the stairs to the upstairs. Not sure what to do with this bland stairway, either--trying to hang art is so intimidating in a blank-slate, brand new place!

At the top of the stairs on your right, you'll see the laundry area doors, and ahead of you is the linen closet. To the right of that is the guest bathroom, and to the left you see the entry to the office/sewing room.

Here were are in the office/sewing room--that closet has got to be one of the first ones to get some construction help, since I need somewhere to put my fabric ASAP! I think I want to fill the whole thing with shelves.

Below you see the entry to the guest room on the left, and sewing room/office on the right. I am so excited to have a guest room, too. I've wanted one for ages. I love decorating bedrooms and having a cozy place for friends to stay--and I'm excited for the extra closet to store out-of-season clothes! Another blank slate in that room, not sure how we want to go with it but it's gotta be fun and full of cool stuff so it's not a depressing, empty, boring guestroom.

And here's the master bed and bath. Yaaaaaaaaay. We've already said "Wahooo! We have two bathrooms!!!" on at least one occasion, and I love our bathroom with its little window and pretty light fixture I picked out. Same dark cabinets up there; again I would have loved white, but I'm working with them.

Our bedroom is great, too--sort of a long, skinny shape but has a high ceiling so feels really open. OMG, I can't wait to decorate it. As you know from my Pinterest, I love bedrooms.

So there you go! The very basics of our house--I seriously can't wait to get decorating and show you some real progress. Been pinning a lot of home dec ideas and shopping Craigslist obsessively. And am looking forward to the holiday weekend and hope to get some painting done on Monday!!

Tonight's date night includes couch-shopping and a trip to Lowe's. And, of course, my Marshalls/HomeGoods/Ross/Dollar Tree/Goodwill list is never-ending. We have been keeping very busy but loving every minute of it! We are so excited to have our home!