Working or Picture Windows

You may wonder why the title of my post is about windows but that was the major topic on our house this week. Men and women think completely different (like I mentioned in the last post). We had to decided where windows were placed for the framer this weekend. Every window I wanted to be functional, working window, Matthew wanted to be a picture window, and every window he wanted functional, I wanted picture. We both were very passionate about our reasonings for wanting what we wanted, of course and it seemed so practical for our reasons. The conclusion came after many drawings of windows and much discussion and the win, win solution was found. We had several other discussion, such as how far apart a window should be, how many windows, the size of the windows, and I am sure there were several others. And when you see our windows in the house, just know alot of thought and discussion went in to them.

An eventful week, for the house, I will try to remember all of the progress:

**We are officially in debt to the bank. I wrote the first check under our construction loan, almost a scary thing, when I called the loan officer to tell her, I wrote a check. We now owe the bank roughly $1,000, I wish that was where it was stopping!!

** We decided on a plumber!! Our drains were installed. As you can see in the picture below.

**The basement floor was poured. As you can see in the above picture of the drains.

**Lumber was delivered to our yard on Saturday!!

**Window placement is done.

** Today the framers arrived. And now the next few pictures will show you how quick our framers are. They show all the work they completed in one 8 hour day. Quite impressive because it took my parents framer a week to get this far, maybe longer!!
The whole backwall completed!!


Side walls complete!!


These little floor things done, upstairs, (floor joist, I hear is the proper name)

It is exciting to see all of the progress!!

My sister reminded me it was my birthday week!! Yay for me!! I am trying to decided if for my birthday, we should camp out in our house!! Doesn't that sound fun? I have not proposed it to Matthew yet, so we will see!! I was already shot down once. I asked for a smaller version of a Sex in the City closet for my Birthday and he told me that was not a Birthday present, and the house would not even be done for a couple of months. So hopefully he does not shoot me down.

A wedding picture time!!

In honor of 4th of July and my old Favorite summer job ever Fireworks, I will post fireworks pictures (I kinda miss that job)


Oh one more thing, I beat Matthew in Mini Golf this weekend!!

Summer days filled with Ice Cream

Summer is officially here and to kick it off, it was 98 degrees with so much humidty that the air was heavy. I am probably 1 out 1,000 that waits for days filled with warmth and heat. My favorite thing about it is that I can eat ice cream outside and not get cold. We eat a lot of ice cream here, in every form ice cream cups, ice cream bars, soft serve, it is probably in the top fifty reasons why I love my job. Matthew thinks I am crazy, even more crazy because I said I would trade the money in for the air conditioner to make an awesome closet or pretty cabinets.

Well the house is moving right along and hopefully framing will start next week. This last week they poured our garage and storage/mechanic room.
This is the garage, a little more backfilling work to be done but I think the garage looks huge.

This is the storage and mechanic room. Only half of the room will be usable the other half will not be tall enough because of the slope to use it.

We have always known but find out everyday that men and women communicate completely different and figuring out how to communicate so the other person is understanding is so very important!! We had said from the very beginning that when we finish the basement we will put a bedroom downstairs. To Matthew that ment that we would maybe put a bedroom downstairs if we found out we needed it. To Me that ment we need to start budgeting for the bed because when we have 2 babies that will be the perfect guestroom so our guest do not have to hear the babies at night. After drawing out the rooms with wood and discussing our needs. It was decided the bedroom was needed!! That we would put a bedroom, bathroom, and a little room for scrapbooking or office, and then the family room or as Matthew calls it the Man cave will only be 32x25 ft instead of 44x25 ft. So here is the basement after it is backfilled and ready for the floor to be poured.

The next picture is a picture of Matthew working on backfilling. Or actually just finished from the day.

We are still working on finding a plumber. We have gotten a few more bids but we are still checking to see if we can get a better bid.
They are pouring the concrete floors on Wednesday for the basement, garage, and mech/storage room. Then comes Framing!!
We are working on managing an extremely busy work life, as well as keeping up with building the house, building our relationship with each other, and growing in the Lord while we do all of it. I am also currently trying to teach Matthew that just because we are tired it does not mean that we quit cleaning. But after talking about it and him not understanding, I quit cleaning the bathroom and started using the guest bathroom. He began to quickly realize why we clean things up as he saw how dirty it gets :-)
A day always gets better when we stop and take a break and eat cold refreshing ice cream!!
Now for some wedding pictures.


Beautiful Ceremony

No stopping now!!

This last week has been a busy and productive week for the house and for life. We made it through the first week of youth camp. I picked up the marriage license and changed my name on my drivers license. I need to officially change it on my social security and Matthew is going to officially become a Missouri resident. We also closed on our construction loan, we are now officially in debt (well we we write a check to draw from the loan, we will be). But before I go any further in my blog, I found pictures of our lot completely untouched, before construction so I am going to post those pics.



This week with the house, they poured the basement walls. Then Matthew to save money painted this black paint that is suppose to help the basement not flood. It's paint that goes on the part that goes underground. Then the rain messed up the paint so he repainted the walls. I brought water to him to help in the process. The basement was ready to be backfilled. So, Matthew took on that task as well. It was going well until he hit a rock in the bobcat and got a flat tire but luckily he was almost done at that point. Today, was spent fixing the bobcat tire. The concrete crew started the footers on the garage. Here are pictures of the work started and completed.
Finished product of the basement walls!!

This is the beginning of the footers for the garage

See the black paint Matthew did.

This weekend, to take a rest and just have fun and enjoyed married life, we went on a double date with my sister and her husband. We enjoyed $.10 skee ball, batting cages, and a maze in bagnel dam, then we decided we were not done with the fun and played mini golf and ended the night with ice cream!! We did not let the fun end there but enjoyed some sun on the boat on sunday, as well as eating on the water, and finished with playing on the blob and the iceberg to let Matthew and Ryan enjoy camp and childhood memories of ours.

Goals for the happy couple are to start and get half way done on Thank You cards from the wedding. We really are thankful for everyone that came and supported us!! We definately felt loved and blessed. Cara is working on lien waivers for the construction loan and tons of paperwork and phone calls for work. Matthew is trying to find a good plumber for the house and to fix everything that breaks at camp!! Which he does a wonderful job. Hopefully, the garage will be poured this week for the house!!

I am going to close with a wedding picture or 2 from our professional pictures done by Andew Bowser since we got those back this weekend!!

The Beginning

The plans for a house began with the plans for a wedding. As I looked at table decorations and guest lists, asking Matthew to help with the details, his mind was consumed with details of building a house. Before the wedding was even here we chose a plan, got bids, got new bids (the first ones were outragious), and met with the bank for a construction loan. Choosing a plan that we both aggreed on was not an easy task. I cared about every detail and placement of rooms and he cared about the garage and outside of the house. After a long time talking and searching we agreed!!

The week of the wedding we closed on property!!!

2 Days after the wedding, when we were in Mexico, they began tearing down trees. (I am sad I never got the opportunity to take pictures before that.) We can home from Mexico to a very angry neighbor. Apparently the guys put all of our trees on someone elses lot and it didn't make for a happy person. Matthew had to go down and smooth things over.

Next, they dug the basement to pour concrete. Then they poured the footings.

As of Yesterday it looked like this:


They should pour the basement walls sometime soon!!! Hopefully it is happening today.

Matthew and I are both at a very busy season for work so sometimes it is very late before we get to the house!! But life is wonderful even in the craziest moments, as Matthew and I were talking about in a work day we can be taking care of a crisis such as a dryer catching on fire and right before that we could be praying with teenagers!!