They Built A Home

Maui: Day Three

2012-01-12T06:30:00.001-05:00

The first Friday we spent in Maui ended up being one of my favorite days there. I thought I fell love with Hawaii the 36 hours prior, but that love affair grew tenfold this day.

Before we left for the trip, I’d booked several tours and experiences knowing that Don wouldn’t want to sit at the pool all day, though I would’ve been perfectly content. One of the trips I read the most about was a bike tour down Haleakala.

Haleakala is considered an active volcano, but it hasn’t erupted since 1790. It’s part of Haleakala National Park, and the summit is more than 10,000 feet above sea level. And for someone who hasn’t spent a great deal of time around mountains (me), it’s massive.

We drove up to the North shore of Maui and hung out at a beach park while we waited to be picked up for the tour.

Apparently, you haven’t lived until you’ve watched the sunrise from the summit of Haleakala, and there are several tour companies that offer to pick you up at your hotel at 2:00 in the morning and take you there. We passed on that option (though might do it on our next trip to Maui), and instead chose to bike down the volcano after the sun was already up with the guys from Maui Easy Riders.

The waves on this side of the island were much, much bigger than the south side (where our hotel was), and we saw several people out surfing.

We were picked up along with another couple from San Diego, and took a ride in a van for 40 minutes or so up the mountain. I don’t think the volcano is technically a mountain, but everyone seems to refer to it as one, so I will too.

The road to the summit is narrow, extremely winding, and (obviously) uphill. Though our tour guides, appropriately named Billy and Billy, were really fun and engaging (and from Indianapolis!), I wasn’t feeling so hot by the time we reached the top. Right before we were let out of the van, we were handed a laminated sheet of paper with rules and guidelines for the tour. I stared out the window, pressing my nausea pressure points, and wondered if they were laminated because people had thrown up on them like I was about to do.

Fortunately, I was let out of the van just in time, and I puked off the cliff directly behind me in this photo. Thanks, Don, for capturing that memory AFTER it happened, and not during.

I felt quite a bit better after that and was ready to get on a bike. It’s a Maui County law that you have to wear a full-face helmet on these tours, so we put on our fancy motorcycle helmets and headed out.

It was COLD at the top of the mountain, and I immediately regretted my wardrobe selection. It was probably in the 40s, but the further we got down the mountain, the warmer it got and I took back my regret pretty quickly.

95% of the bike ride was downhill, and we almost never had to pedal. We coasted along, making hairpin turns that had me completely convinced I’d fall off my bike (I didn’t). Around every curve, we were hit with another breathtaking view. I muttered to myself the entire time about how amazing this experience was, and how I was so glad I wasn’t sitting by the pool instead.

Because we were going downhill, we were going pretty fast. The Billys told us that we’d average about 25 miles per hour, but hit 35 mph at one point. It certainly felt that fast and my heart was pumping hard the entire time. It felt like a 3-hour roller coaster ride. Clearly we weren’t allowed to take pictures while we were riding, but we did stop every 7 miles or so and the Billys were happy to take some photos for us.

I hate that you can’t tell how big my smile is in these photos. Enormous.

It took us about 4 hours to ride those 25 miles down Haleakala, back to the beach park where we’d left our Jeep. It was terrifying, exhilarating, and absolutely worth puking on a volcano. That morning ranks right up there on the list of favorite life experiences. I kept telling Don how very, very lucky I felt that we got to experience it.

Knowing we wouldn’t be able to top the awesome morning we’d had, we took it easy that afternoon and ordered fruity drinks by the pool, reading and dozing. We watched another sunset from the hot tub at the Serenity Pool.

That night, we asked the concierge for a pizza recommendation and landed at Matteo’s – an excellent choice. We ate leisurely, basked in the amazing day we’d had, appreciating Maui, and went to bed happy that night.

Maui: Day Two

2012-01-11T15:27:00.000-05:00

This is a continuation of this post.

We woke up that Thursday morning (extremely early thanks to a 5-hour time difference) and got to experience the Four Seasons in the daylight. I sat on our lanai with my coffee, mapping out our day. We had some ‘business’ to do and I was anxious to get it all done so we could really start vacationing.

We had no idea that the night before, as we sat eating a late dinner, THIS is the view we were missing in the darkness:

The Four Seasons is no joke. The grounds and views are absolutely breathtaking. Pictures come nowhere close to doing it justice.

We wandered up to the Serenity Pool where we grabbed a couple of chairs and I rattled off a chorus of “I’m never leaving this place,” “take a picture. Did you get a picture?” and “I couldn’t love this any more if I tried.”

Eventually, Don pulled me away and dragged me back to the reality that we had things to do. First, we ventured out to find Silver Stitch in Kihei, the company that I’d pre-arranged to have steam my wedding dress and Don’s wedding shirt, since they’d been stuffed into a suitcase.

Kihei is a funky little beach town with lots of fun restaurants and shops, as well as your typical fast food options and grocery stores. Just like Indiana, except there are surfers across the street.

After dropping off our clothes, we drove over to a very nice woman’s house to sign our marriage license and get that taken care of. It was a pretty simple process, and she apparently has a nice little business going because there were four other couples there doing the exact same thing that Thursday morning.

We came across a tiny storefront called Cinnamon Roll Fair on our way back. We bailed on the lunch reservations I’d made and split a giant cinnamon roll instead. Delicious.

Once we got back to the hotel, it took me all of 30 seconds to put on a swimsuit and head out to the pool.

Later that afternoon, we decided to walk over to the resort next door, The Grand Wailea. We’d considered staying here, but I ultimately decided against it when I read that it was often overrun with small children. I wish I’d taken some photos of the grounds there, though – it really is beautiful. That resort is adjacent to high-end shopping center, and we wandered around there until we decided we were hungry. We ate at Cheeseburger Island Style, where the burger (and service) were mediocre at best.

Walking back, we stopped for a photo op in front of a waterfall at The Grand Wailea (and because my flipflop was giving me a blister and I wanted a break).

It was just about time for sunset, and we decided to watch it from the edge of the infinity pool. Beautiful.

Somehow, all of that sunset-watching made me hungry again, and we found ourselves at Ferraro’s for dinner. Ferraro’s is one of those ritzy oceanfront restaurants at the resort that everyone said we needed to try, and to keep an eye out for celebrities while we were there.

The atmosphere was really nice and the food was okay, but we weren’t impressed enough to go back for dinner another night (or enough to take any photos, apparently).

After dinner, we made our way to the hot tub where I went on and on about how much I loved Maui and how I was never going back home. I’m pretty sure that was a constant theme for the next ten days.

Maui: Day One

2012-01-05T14:11:00.000-05:00

It could very well be that no one really cares to read a day-by-day account of the 11 days we spent in Maui last month. But the sake of posterity, and because I’ve been lazy and haven’t documented our trip anywhere else, that’s what I’m embarking on here today, which happens to be the one-month anniversary of our Hawaiian wedding.

Day One: Wednesday

We had an early morning flight, which we usually try to avoid, but when you’re flying 4300 miles in one day it’s necessary. I had crammed my wedding dress into a carry-on suitcase the night before, so we packed Don’s carry-on with in-flight essentials like Pringles, Sour Patch Kids, pretzels and iPads. This proved to be a wise decision. We’re used to flying on Southwest where the in-flight snacks are robust and FREE. Not so on American Airlines. Sure, they filed for bankruptcy days before our flight, but we weren’t offered so much as a bag of peanuts. To be fair, they did offer to sell us a bag of chips for $4.

After a short layover in Dallas and a not-so-short 8-hour flight to Kahului, we picked up our rental Jeep and navigated our way to the south side of the island. We got to Maui around 4:30, so we were treated to our first Hawaiian sunset during our drive.

When we arrived to the Four Seasons, they immediately gave us a taste of what we’d come to appreciate for the rest of our stay. We were greeted with a warm “Aloha!” and flower leis. As we checked in, we were offered washcloths and fresh pineapple skewers.

We were escorted to our room by John, one of the valets that we came to love during our stay. He gave us recommendations for running shoes while he unloaded our bags. Our room was nice – large enough with a private lanai overlooking the croquet courtyard. There was a coffee cake waiting for us (which I immediately dove into) along with a sweet welcome card from the resort manager.

It was dark by the time we got settled and we were exhausted from traveling all day, but we wandered around the resort for a bit, completely unaware of the views we were missing out on in the darkness. We got something to eat in the open-air lobby lounge. There was live music each night there, and we thoroughly enjoyed the fresh sushi and truffled macaroni and cheese. After dinner we ventured down to one of the hot tubs where we desperately tried to hold our eyes open and planned out our agenda for the next day.

Another 2011 Recap

2012-01-02T10:37:00.000-05:00

I know I already did a 2011 recap, but I came across this and thought I’d play along. Every year, Sundry does this great year-end post and invites everyone to do the same.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

2011 was a big year of firsts. A short list: got married, built a house, lived in a hotel, went to Hawaii, zip-lined through a eucalyptus forest.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? 

I didn’t really make any resolutions last year, but did attempt to be more positive than I had been and I think I succeeded at that. 2011 was pretty great, and I’m planning to carry over the positive vibes rule into 2012.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? 

Yes! We gained a nephew (Reid) in November, and a niece (CJ) in December. A few friends had babies, too.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

NO.

5. What countries did you visit?

None, but Hawaii kind of felt like a foreign country until we went into the Wal-Mart.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

Window treatments. And a job that fulfills me. Probably not in that order.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Our wedding day, the day Don proposed, the day I bought my wedding dress. The day we closed on the house.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? 

I’m not so sure ‘achievement’ is the right word, but marrying Don was pretty momentous.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Losing touch with some friends. Big failure.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Actually, no. Just the usual stuff this year. I’m sure I can credit that to being diligent about taking my multi-vitamin, right?

11. What was the best thing you bought?

A house. My husband’s wedding band.

12. Where did most of your money go?

Mortgages, and to the fine folks at the Four Seasons Maui.

13. What did you get really excited about?

So much! Finally living in our house, finally marrying Don, Hawaii in general, Mindy moving in, finally ditching my BlackBerry for an iPhone.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?

A shout-out to my nephew, Jensen, here: Light, Light

15. Compared to this time last year, are you: 
– happier or sadder? Happier. Way, way happier.
– thinner or fatter? The same, thankfully.
– richer or poorer? Richer, but not necessarily wealthier.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of? 

Reading. Taking pictures. Writing.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of? 

Drinking coffee. I’m full-on addicted now.

18. How did you spend Christmas?

For the first time EVER, we didn’t travel on Christmas Day. We stayed home in PJs and enjoyed spending our first married Christmas in our house, just the two of us. It was fabulous.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

True Blood. Modern Family. Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

Maui Revisited. Place of Yes. I know there were others I read on vacation and loved, but I can’t recall a single one of them right now, and Goodreads.com is apparently down.

21. What was your favorite music from this year? 

I got nothin’.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

Crazy Stupid Love, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 30, and we were in Las Vegas. It was fantastic.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

I loved this year, honestly. But while my job has some great perks, I haven’t loved it this year. So I guess a different job is my answer.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

It’s hardly a ‘concept’ but I wore a lot more running shorts, sports bras, and leggings than I ever have before. Otherwise, business casual.

26. What kept you sane?

My now-husband. My friend Tracy’s emails. Mindless games on my iPad.

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011. 

Everyone will have an opinion on how you should live your life, but go with your gut and love every minute.

Happy New Year!

New Year, New Blog

2012-01-01T21:24:00.000-05:00

NEW YEAR, NEW BLOG

Well, it's really the same blog. Just with new content. Exciting, right? I'm not even convinced that anyone checks here anymore, but that's okay.

2011 was a pretty monumental year, and a lot of it is worth recapping even if only for my own benefit. The highlights, of course, were sealing the deal with Don and marrying him on the beaches of Maui, and moving into the house we worked so hard to have.

While those are pretty big (okay, HUGE) events, we have even more reasons to say 2011 was one of our best years yet.

A rundown:

January - Admittedly, January was kind of a low-key month for us. We'd already broken ground on the house, but the weather was awful for most of the month so there wasn't a ton of progress. We did go to the Home Show, though, where we won a free garage door opener and some carpet cleaning. That just may have been the highlight.

February - Things moved along with the house in February, despite some major errors. We celebrated my nephew's second birthday over french toast. I went nuts subscribing to home decor and DIY blogs.

March - In March, I moved the rest of my belongings out of my house so that my renter could move in. I'd been in that house for five years, but I didn't really have any emotional attachment to it. It was actually kind of a relief to move out of it. Meanwhile, we were furiously trying to sell Don's house because we were sure we'd be moving into our new house in just a few weeks. Instead, we learned that our house might not be finished at all.

April - We kicked off April by celebrating my 30th birthday in Las Vegas. I had a conference there for work, and the timing worked out perfectly so that we could stay an extra few days to ring in my fourth decade of life. I had my first experience making drobi.

May - Things really moved along at the house. Don's house still hadn't sold. My cousin, Mindy, came for a visit to see if living in Indianapolis was something she'd like to do (spoiler: she's still here!). My mom visited and taught me how to properly re-pot house plants.

June - Don's house sold! Thus began my frenzy of selling tons of furniture on Craigslist, and the dance of figuring out where we were going to live until our house was ready. We ultimately moved into a hotel room, which was actually pretty great. I learned to appreciate the continental breakfast and rather enjoyed throwing my bath towels on the floor, knowing someone else would pick them up by the time I got 'home' from work!

July - After a big Fourth of July celebration with Don's family, I took off for a week on the beach with my family. While I was there, Don closed on our house and moved our stuff in. I quickly determined that the best way to buy a house was from another state.

August - Just a couple of weeks after moving into our new house, Mindy moved in with us. We had (and continue to have) a blast showing her around town, taking her to the State Fair, a Colts game, and to some of our favorite spots around town. And we inherited a piano! We capped off August with a visit to Evansville to see our friends Kara and Mike and their adorable family.

September - The highlight of September was spending a week in Hilton Head with my dad and brothers. It was a great way to say goodbye to summer and unwind after a few hectic months of moving in and getting settled.

October - On October 6th, Don asked me to marry him. That day is right up there on the list of my favorite days ever. A few days later, I bought a wedding dress and we booked flights to Hawaii. That kicked off our eight-week engagement, most of which was spent with my head in the clouds, so very excited to be married to my best friend.

November - The blissfulness continued in November with a fun night out with some of my favorite people, welcoming our newest nephew, Reid, into the world, and celebrating Don's birthday all within a few days. We hosted a great Thanksgiving for my family, and took off for Maui on November 30.

December - I intend to do a whole series of posts about our wedding and Hawaiian honeymoon, but it was absolutely the trip of a lifetime and we can't wait to go back to Maui. Those eleven days could not have been more perfect.

photo credit: Anna Kim Photography

We came back and shared our first married Christmas with our families in Ohio and across Indiana, and still managed to wake up in our own home on Christmas morning and enjoyed spending the entire day in our pajamas by the fire. It was fitting that we wrapped up 2011 with a champagne toast at midnight with good friends.

We can't wait to see what 2012 brings!

Happy New Year!

Blogging is Harder Than I Thought

2011-08-15T15:41:00.000-04:00

It's true. Posting to the blog on a regular basis is far more difficult than I anticipated. I have PLENTY of content floating around in my head, but getting those posts on to this website has been a challenge (obviously). I have a newfound respect for the nearly 150 bloggers who I have listed in my Google Reader who do a fabulous job of posting regularly. Then again, maybe I'd have more time to devote to my own blog if I didn't read so many others. There's just so much good stuff out there.

We closed on our house a month ago today, and it's been a busy, busy month. We've gotten a lot done, but still have a lot do. In the midst of it, we're both working full-time, have had a steady stream of houseguests (which we love!), and we're desperately trying to enjoy every moment of summer before we sink into our winter hibernation. So, there hasn't been a lot of time for posting blogs.

Still, we've been productive and there's lots to share.

Perhaps most importantly, we've got a new roommate. My cousin, Mindy, has taken up residence and we're absolutely thrilled about it. She's so fun to have around (except for those times she guilts me into doing Turbo Jam workout DVDs with her in the living room - just kidding Mindy!). We're trying to show her all the awesome things about being a Hoosier, like taking her to the state fair for turkey legs and frozen bananas:

She's also been a huge help in unpacking and organizing. The baked goods that are regularly appearing on the counter don't hurt either. That's what Turbo Jam is for, right?

I'm hopeful that things calm down a little bit this week and I can take some updated pictures of things we've accomplished (and still hope to accomplish), and then get those posted here soon!

Now Taking Requests

2011-08-01T16:45:00.000-04:00

Last week, we got a very special delivery to the house. It arrived in a old red pickup truck and a trailer.

Within minutes, this beauty was set up in what might normally be a formal dining room. Don and I are not exactly formal dining room people. If we're going to do formal dining, I'd prefer it be in a restaurant. But we knew when we designed the floorplan for this house that we'd need space for a piano, and this room was perfect with all of its natural light and open space.

The piano is a 1921 Kimball, and it was a gift from Don's parents. A very generous one, at that. They'd had it for years, and it went largely untouched for most of those years. While it's not in perfect condition and will need a little bit of love, it's absolutely playable.

In fact, I had a fabulous time going through my piles of music on Saturday and working my way through them. I'm rusty, that's for sure. But I'm so excited to have something to play on again!

Sorry for the crappy cell phone picture with bad lighting. But thanks to Don for taking it!

This room is right at the bottom of the stairs, and it's been so fun to come downstairs in the morning and see the piano there. Even though Don doesn't play, we both really, really love having the piano in our home. And after giving an impromptu concert to the cats over the weekend, I'm almost motivated to take some lessons again. Almost.

Weekend Projects

2011-07-31T21:29:00.000-04:00

We took a break from unpacking and organizing after work on Friday and went to see Crazy, Stupid Love (which is fantastic, by the way) and get some dinner. But Saturday morning we were right back at it with a full list of projects to tackle.

After a quick trip to the farmer's market - we have a fridge now, we needed produce! - we made what has become our daily trip to Lowe's and rushed home to get started.

First up, a ceiling fan for the master bedroom.

That picture is a pretty good indication of how we've been living the past two weeks.

1) The ever-present cat. She refuses to allow us to get anything done without her being right in the middle of the action.
2) That's my still-packed suitcase from my vacation three weeks ago on the floor.
3) Unmade bed. Mismatched sheets.
4) Apparently this is Don's standard uniform for house projects. Black shorts, black dress socks, no shirt.
5) Wall hangings sitting on the ground, all throughout the house. We haven't hung a thing.

But look! He's using the instructions! And they worked beautifully. Here's the end result:

Here's what else we accomplished this weekend:

We installed knobs on the bathroom cabinets ...

We (okay, Don) got the new water softener hooked up ...

We hung up the shower curtain in one of the guest bathrooms, once I finally located it (the curtain, not the bathroom, ha) ...

And we stocked the other guest bathroom with trial-size everything. We're ready for guests! Come visit!

And, of course, we watered the lawn incessantly. The front yard is sod, and the back is seeded. We really don't want to re-sod or re-seed next spring, so we're doing everything in our power to get it take root now and not die off in the hot and rainless summer we're having. We're starting to see a little bit of success in the back, thankfully!

There were two other projects that happened over the weekend, but they'll warrant their own posts later this week. They're that exciting!

We've Fallen In Love with a Fridge

2011-07-28T11:30:00.001-04:00

Last summer, we were asked to choose our kitchen appliances from a list that our builder gave us. While we were fine with the oven and microwave options, we knew the refrigerator, dishwasher, and gas cooktop options weren't what we ultimately wanted. They gave us a credit for those appliances and we started researching decibel levels on dishwashers and debated refrigerator door styles.

We made a quick (and wise, I've decided) decision on the cooktop so that it could be installed in our granite, but we waited to order a refrigerator and dishwasher, mostly because we had nowhere to store it. We lived in a hotel for almost three weeks, and while the Residence Inn was good to us, I'm not so sure they would've been okay with us having a fridge delivered to the front desk. Still, we'd decided months ago that this beauty would be coming to live with us:

So, we waited until after we closed on the house to place the order. And after some extensive research, we figured out that we could save about $700 if we ordered it from an online wholesaler, WDC Appliances, rather than buy it locally. We knew $700 was nothing to scoff at, so we went for it even though it meant living in our new house for ten entire days with no refrigerator. A gracious neighbor kept all of our frozen food for us, and we managed with a cooler and some ice for the rest. But mostly we went out to eat for every meal (which wasn't that much of a stretch from our usual routine anyhow).

Yesterday, the Samsung RF4287HARS finally became ours, but it wasn't without a fight. One of the sacrifices we made to save that $700 was that the delivery company only brought it as far as the driveway.

We had already determined that it would be easier to go through the front door than through the garage, where there would be more turns and doorways. Getting it to the front door wasn't too bad, and the two of us even managed to get up the two steps without too much issue.

Then it hit us that the box was too wide to fit through the frame. We took the box apart, hoping it would give us enough room to get through the door.

Close enough. Lucky for us (er, me), Don's brother showed up at the perfect time and helped him maneuver it through the door and onto the dolly. Nice socks, Don!

Thankfully, it didn't take long at all for Don to get the water line hooked up and everything in place. And now, it looks like the refrigerator was made just for our kitchen. We couldn't be happier!

Once we've had a chance to use it for a while, I'll be sure to post how it's working out for us. But for now, we're completely smitten.

(And by the way, WDC Appliances was great to work with from start to finish. We'd absolutely use them again!)

Welcome to Our Home!

2011-07-27T21:41:00.000-04:00

I've been debating how best to go about doing a virtual tour of the house, and outlining projects that we've already tackled, or plan to tackle someday. I still don't really have a good plan, so I'll just start at the start: the front entry.

The main foyer is a pretty big area (that rug is bigger than 5' by 7'), and it has a cool little arched nook off to one side that is just screaming for some big artwork or some kind. Right now, we have this sofa table that we found at Target a few years ago set up there, but I think it might be a little too small for the space.

The lamp was a recent find on the Lowe's clearance rack. The candlesticks are from Red Envelope, and the rest is just stuff I found in boxes that needed a quick home, so they ended up here for now. The vase on the floor was put there in an attempt to hide the lamp cord, but I realize it's pretty ridiculous there and needs a new home.

I'd really like to find a big, round rug for this area (I love this one and this one), but that's pretty far down on the lengthy list of things we need/want to purchase. So for now, we're using this old floral thing which is serving its purpose just fine.

Off to the right of that picture (or to the left as you come in the front door) is what will eventually be my home office. At least, I hope it is. There's still some debate among my Board of Directors over my work-from-home status. We'll see.

Back to the foyer ... this is the light fixture that the builder installed in that area.

It's your basic boob fixture (you can't tell me it doesn't look like a boob). I think the 10-foot ceiling and large area call for a larger fixture, and I'm considering bringing in the fixture from the home office, instead.

It doesn't exactly scream 'foyer' either, but I think it's better than the boob. I have a different fixture that I eventually want to hang in my office, so this fixture will come down either way.

What do you think this space needs? A decorative coat rack, maybe? Should I scrap the console table and find some cool accent chairs instead?

Where We Live

2011-07-25T13:44:00.000-04:00

It's been a solid two months since I posted anything, and almost three months since I posted anything worthwhile, but I'm happy to report that we now LIVE here:

It's a real house, with a real yard and everything. And we love every inch of it.

There are a number of reasons I quit posting house updates, not the least of which was that every time I posted a positive update, we took two steps back. The building process really wasn't an enjoyable one for us. There were days when we thought it wouldn't happen, and all of our time and energy was for nothing. We honestly wondered if we wanted this house TOO much.

We didn't close on the house until July 15, far later than we'd anticipated. In hindsight, the delays may have been a good thing. Don's house sold, which meant we wouldn't have to carry three mortgages between the two of us, we were able to save more money to put down initially, and it made moving in that much sweeter. All of our headaches were worth it. Even the three weeks we spent living in a hotel were worth it.

Would we do it again? Well, no. Probably not.

Now that we're living in the house, I'm finally okay with getting back to this blog. There's no longer that risk of chronicling a process that didn't have a happy ending. And now that the HOUSE is built, we can start building the HOME.

So, the two people who haven't deleted me from their Google Reader can look forward to more posts soon!

2780

2011-05-18T14:51:00.000-04:00

No Longer A Pile of Toothpicks

2011-05-09T22:08:00.000-04:00

The drywall is one of the steps that I thought would take a long time. It looks like a lot of work.

My back hurts just looking at those guys. It makes me grateful for my office job.

It actually only took about two days to do the entire house. Well, the first step of it, anyhow. It was pretty amazing to walk through the house for the first time without it looking like this:

The rooms seem so much smaller now that you can't see through the walls!

It's also a lot brighter in there, which is kind of nice.

We thought we might see some brick up by now, especially since the pallets of bricks have been sitting on site for several days. Instead, we got garage doors!

I'm excited to take my mom over to the new house later this week when she's here for a visit. Hopefully she's as enthralled with garage doors and sheet rock as I have been!

Vegas!

2011-05-04T06:30:00.000-04:00

About a month ago, Don and I took off for a few days and escaped to Las Vegas. I had a conference for work there, and my company is gracious enough to allow Don to travel with me. We extended the trip for a couple of days and were able to catch a show ('O' at the Bellagio - highly recommended) and enjoy some downtime.

The conference that I attended puts on a nice event, and it gave us the opportunity to experience some of the nightclubs and pool venues that we'd normally never pay to experience. After dinner with my boss and his wife at Valentino, we went to a cocktail party at Blush, inside the Wynn casino.

The next night, we went to Surrender, the poolside nightclub at the Encore casino. This place was s.w.a.n.k.y. The photos are all from the professional photographer that the wandered around taking photos throughout the entire conference.

We had a great trip, won a little bit of money, ate some fantastic food, and wish we could've stayed another couple days!

The Deck is Up!

2011-05-03T06:30:00.001-04:00

It's been up for a couple of weeks now, but I'm just getting around to sharing pictures of the deck on the new house. Since we have a walk-out basement lot, the deck is actually on the second story on the rear of the house, off of the kitchen.

Our original home design called for a 12' by 12' deck. When we started thinking about our deck furniture, grill, my lounge chair, and everything else that seems to end up on the deck, we determined that 144 square feet was simply not big enough. And building a second-story deck on our own just didn't seem practical. So, we shelled out a little extra money to have it enlarged to 12' by 24' and moved the steps to the side of the deck. Now that's it's up, we're glad that we made the changes.

These pictures were taken over the course of three days.

From the kitchen door

From the basement door

We're still deciding on a stain color, and if that's something we want to tackle ourselves. Something about staining all those spindles from a second story doesn't appeal to me, but we'll see.

Drobi Day

2011-05-02T17:45:00.000-04:00

As much as we'd like to just sit around and daydream about life in our new house, we've been occupying our time with other things lately. A few weekends ago, we spent a Saturday at Don's parents' house making drobi (pronounced drubby).

The closest thing I've been able to find online is this recipe, which is a little different (and spelled differently) than what we made. Either way, it's a Slovak recipe that has been a tradition in Don's family for a long time.

We spent the first part of the morning peeling potatoes. I don't remember how many pounds we peeled exactly, but it was at least 50.

That's the very first potato of the day. I'm not sure why I thought that needed to be documented.

This is just one bowl of many. It was a lot of potatoes. And then we added some onions.

At that point, we moved out to the garage where there two grinders ready and waiting.

Then, little by little, Don and his brother put the potatoes, onions, bacon and ground beef through the grinders.

This next photo exists to prove that I was there, and that I helped.

Also, that's my purse hanging up in the background. It came home with a coating of drobi. Lesson learned.

Once everything was put through the grinders, we ended up with several containers of this:

A secret mixture of herbs and spices was added to each bowl, and then they brought out the casings.

The casings were too much for me to handle, and I went to the kitchen where I stood at my post at the stove for the rest of the day.

The potato/onion/bacon/beef mixture was put back through the grinder again, and fed into the casing.

That's Don demonstrating the well-stuffed casing.

Each one was tied off, and then brought in to be boiled.

Each pot was to boil for 15 minutes. It was my job to watch the pots and make sure nothing went wrong. I didn't do very well. Almost every time, at the 8 or 9-minute mark the sausages exploded. We adjusted the temperature. We left more room for expansion. And they still exploded. So, I fished out the sausage innards with a slotted spoon, and took it back out to the garage to be put through the grinders again and into a new casing.

I'd really like to end this post with a great shot of the perfectly-formed sausages, or of Don's family enjoying the final product. Unfortunately, I have neither (though they did enjoy the final product the next day at our Easter meal). Some of them did turn out great, and the others were deemed acceptable as single-serving sizes. And now there are multiple freezers stocked with delicious drobi, ready for future family gatherings!

I'm aware that this post is a mess, complete with multiple paragraph alignment styles and pictures rotated where they shouldn't be rotated. Sorry about that. My HTML skills are a little rusty, and Blogger is hardly cooperative.

I Gave Up the Blog for Lent

2011-05-02T11:54:00.000-04:00

Okay, I didn't really give up blogging for Lent. It just kind of worked out that way. My lack of posting doesn't mean there hasn't been progress - there absolutely has. Look at this!

Big progress! And that photo is from last week. It looks even more 'finished' now. Those photos are coming. I mean it this time.

We're also thrilled that we *think* we've worked out a compromise on the buy-out situation with Don's house that will be a win-win from both us and Estridge. There are still a few things that need to happen, but we're confident that we're on the right track now. Despite several weeks of bad news, Estridge has still been good to work with overall, and that's saying something.

While we'd hoped that the projected completion timeframe of mid-May would be accurate, that's not the case. We're now looking more at late June or early July. And that's okay. In the meantime, we're socking away every penny we can and looking forward to the day the house is ours.

Estridge Update

2011-03-29T07:00:00.001-04:00

Two weeks ago, we sat in a classroom in the corporate offices of Estridge with about 30 other people while the president of the company explained that there was no money, that our homes might get finished, and they would not be honoring the guaranteed buy-out agreement that we'd signed in September.

Essentially, the buy-out agreement says that Estridge will purchase Don's house at a set price if it doesn't sell by the time our new house is done. With the news that they weren't going to honor that, we knew that it changed the entire financial picture and could even mean that we wouldn't be able to close on the new house.

Over the next several days, there were multiple news reports about the financial instability of the company, where it was headed, and what the impact would be to the 41 people who had homes already construction.

With so many unknowns and the very real possibility that we may never get to live in the home we've spent 13 months designing, saving for, and dreaming of, I alternated between panic and wallow. Fortunately, Don is far more level-headed and reasonable in these situations. He's stayed positive and reminded me over and over again that nothing was certain, and that we needed to this wait this out.

Meanwhile, our house progressed. We met with the electrician to mark where each outlet should go. HVAC systems were installed. Fire caulking was done. There have been no real delays in the building process.

Last night we met again with an Estridge VP. We came out of that meeting about 80% sure that they've worked out a resolution to our guaranteed buy-out concerns. We'll know more in the next 48 hours or so. So it's not quite time to celebrate yet, but it's definitely some of the best news we've gotten in the past couple of weeks!

A Change of Address

2011-03-28T21:49:00.000-04:00

On March 17, 2006, I closed on my first house. Exactly five years later, I got and accepted an offer from someone wanting to rent that house on a long-term lease. The house has been on the market since November, and while showings had been steady, there just isn't much moving on the real estate market here. We played with some numbers and determined that renting out my house could be a very good option for us. Within 24 hours of listing it as a rental property, four people were interested in seeing it.

The tenant wanted to move in very quickly, which meant I had to get my things out very quickly. Originally, we'd planned on having a POD delivered and then stored until we were ready to move it to the new house in a couple of months. With the uncertainty of whether we'd ever actually have that opportunity, we decided at the last minute to just rent a U-Haul and move my things into Don's basement. After all, I didn't have that much stuff.

As it turns out, I have a lot of stuff.

That's the second truckload. Don and our friend, John, had already unloaded the first truckload into Don's garage, living room, dining room, and den. This was after three carloads of stuff was dropped off at Goodwill. Don's mom, Candy, was a HUGE help throughout day - making those Goodwill runs, cleaning out the refrigerator, scrubbing the bathrooms, and steam cleaning the carpets. Her being there easily took hours off the time I would've been at the house. I'm so grateful for her help!

We were done before it was dark, and seeing the empty, clean house reminded me why I bought it in the first place. I'm so glad I have an excellent tenant moving in tomorrow. I have no doubt that it will be in good hands, and I'm optimistic that the rental scenario will be a positive thing. Here's to hoping it's the start of a string of good luck! We leave for Las Vegas in about 36 hours, so a little luck couldn't hurt!

Moving ...

2011-03-28T10:59:00.000-04:00

I'm several posts behind, I know. I still need to post about Estridge's news and how it's affecting us, updates at the house, and adventures in furniture refinishing. To put it mildly, we're busy. And overwhelmed.

This weekend, we moved my furniture and lots and lots of miscellany out of my house. While I've been living at Don's house for some time, I still had most of my stuff in my own home, 8 miles away. With an awesome, long-term tenant moving in this week (I need to post about that, too ... someday), I had to empty out that house pretty quickly.

There's more to come on why we chose to pile it up at Don's house rather than a storage unit, but for now, here's a sneak peek at what we're living with.

As badly as we need to sell Don's house, I'm crossing my fingers that we don't have any showing requests in the next 48 hours.

Likely Ceasing Operations - A Repost

2011-03-15T15:05:00.012-04:00

Update Monday, March 28: I originally posted this on Tuesday, March 15, before we knew much of anything. I removed it from the blog a few minutes later. If you read updates through a reader, you may have still seen it. The past two weeks have been very interesting. Tomorrow, I'll post an update.

Earlier today, 86 days after we broke ground on our home, we received an email from the President of Estridge, Paul Estridge Jr., summoning us to the corporate office for an urgent meeting this evening to update us on "where Estridge is headed in this banking climate and how that could impact you and your home going forward."

About an hour later, I saw this tweet from the Indianapolis Star:

This is the text of the article that it links to, and there is apparently a larger, more in-depth story in tomorrow's paper.

The Estridge Group said today that it likely will cease operations unless it is able to find private investors or a new line of credit.

The 43-year-old Carmel homebuilder said its “philosophy has always been to pay the banks first in order to maintain our lines of credit, and now it’s the banks that are killing us by killing the lines of credit.”

Estridge has 25 new homes that have been sold but it said it can’t build them because the banks won’t loan money.

“Unless we can find a private investor or a commercial bank to give us a line of credit, we will have to shut down,” the company said in a statement.

If that happens, another builder will be brought in to finish houses Estridge has under construction and the company will return deposits to those who have money down.

We are one of those 25 homes. This is to be continued, of course ...

Wet

2011-03-08T17:07:00.001-05:00

Typically by now, I'm so over winter that it could rain non-stop and I wouldn't complain just because it wasn't snowing. Unfortunately, that's about what it's been doing, so our back yard looks like this:

We have a moat! We were over at the house over the weekend and I snapped this picture of Don using the giant squeegee to push some water out of the basement.

With the back door not being installed yet (though I'm told it was installed earlier today), and the high winds we've had with all the rain, there was just no avoiding the water coming in.

Meanwhile, I'm less than excited to see this on the radar this afternoon:

At least it isn't snow.

Shower Sadness

2011-03-06T20:03:00.000-05:00

There has been some confusion and concern over the shower in the master bedroom for the past few weeks.

Namely, it's tiny.

When we were choosing a floorplan, we walked through every model home that Estridge has in the area, including some that weren't actually models, but someone's home. There were parts of many of them that we loved, but none of them were exactly what we wanted. We met with Mr. Estridge himself one afternoon and discussed what we had in mind. A few days later, his architects had completely redesigned the plan, especially on the second floor. This included a complete overhaul of the master bathroom to include the extended tub that we wanted, an enlarged closet, and less unfinished storage space. We loved it. It was exactly what we'd been picturing, and included a window seat and multiple showerheads. I was sold.

What we failed to notice, however, was that the bathroom resdesign meant a much smaller shower stall. It makes sense. We probably lost 18 inches by upgrading the tub, and those inches have to come from somewhere (the tub was on the opposite wall, under the window, in the original design). To compound our ignorance, our purchase agreement that lists all of our finishes - everything from carpet selections to what faucets we chose - lists a shower base measuring 34" by 48". Plenty big, and similar to what is in Don's house now.

As we watched the framing happen, we did question whether or not that area was big enough for that size pan. We were gently reminded that "everything looks smaller during the framing process." We accepted that and let it go. After all, our purchase agreement clearly showed the dimensions.

Fast forward to a few days ago. Through a series of emails, it was determined that our signed purchase agreement was wrong. That shower base would not possibly fit in the space. We considered not using a fiberglass base at all, and tiling the entire thing so we could extend it out further into the room. We learned that would add more than $3300 to the cost of the home. We passed (though we may do that on our own sometime later).

We're disappointed that our upgraded master bath won't be what we'd envisioned. We're disappointed that we didn't realize earlier that our signed purchase agreement was incorrect. And we're disappointed that no one at Estridge noticed the error sooner, or alerted us to it once they discovered it. It took us digging and pushing the issue, only to learn that we really had no reasonable options at this point.

So, this will be our shower.

It's itty-bitty, but at least we'll have a bench!

Laundry - with reader participation!

2011-03-04T16:16:00.000-05:00

Don and I have very different laundry habits. He'll do a load every other day, if not every day. I can go weeks before I'll run out of clean clothes to wear. Then I'll spend an entire day doing load after load to get caught up.

Don also prefers to use his laundry room as a closet and dressing room to avoid those exhausting trips up and down the stairs.

So, it should be no surprise that we have differing opinions on the laundry situation at the new house.

The floor plan calls for a lovely laundry room on the main floor, right off the of the mudroom. It will have lovely shelving, a separate lovely wash tub, and eventually a lovely counter and maybe some lovely cabinets.

See? Lovely.

However, Don is convinced that we'll ultimately wish we'd put the laundry room on the second floor near all of the bedrooms. I've taken several informal polls of friends and family, and the results are pretty mixed. So, we compromised. This house will have TWO laundry rooms. One for each of us, I suppose!

Fortunately, there was a perfect spot for a second level laundry room that didn't require changing any layouts or making any rooms smaller. It just meant adding some extra plumbing and electrical work. I'm sure it's far more complicated than that for the people installing it, but it seems pretty minor to me.

The dryer vent in that photo is in the wrong place, but it's been fixed since the photo was taken.

I've persuaded Don to put our washer and dryer in the main-floor laundry room to start. If we hate it, I'll agree to move it upstairs. In the meantime, the rough-in for the upstairs will be entirely concealed and we'll use that space for storage.

So, here's the question. Which laundry room would you use? I've created a little poll over to the right of the page. Voting is anonymous, so we won't know who chose which side!

At Least We'll Be Clean

2011-03-03T16:47:00.000-05:00

Over the past few days, we've seen the plumbing pipes and tubes go in. It's nice to see something other than two-by-four after two-by-four. Now we have red and blue tubes to break things up a little bit.

You can click on the pictures to see them bigger. It's kind of cool to see all the inner-workings going up, knowing that it's all going to be covered up very soon.

Then they started installing the bathtubs. I had no real reason for it, but somehow I figured these tub and shower stalls would come in much, much later in the process. Nevertheless, they're in.

That is one of the upstairs guest bathrooms, and I got the shower curtain for it for Christmas. It's already packed away, but I've considered going over and hanging it up. You know, just to liven things up over there.

That is the tub in the master bathroom. We splurged on an extra-long tub (we're tall!), but it's difficult to tell from this picture with no real frame of reference. The shower stall will be to the left of that - more on that in a separate post coming soon - and the toilet is in a little room off to the right of the tub.

It's not the greatest picture (all of these pictures were taken on Don's iPhone, actually), but that's the shower stall in the basement bathroom. I love the little seats.

Up next - laundry!