new house

OMG!!!!!!! We closed on our house on Friday!!!!!!

I am so excited and yet do drained from the whole process.

Typical me was more excited about some bushes getting put in than signing for the house, but I just process things in weird ways.

Now that it’s been a few days and the dust has begun to settle I can enjoy it. We have been busting our butts moving our stuff in from my dad’s house to the new house. Thankfully we had awesome help from family while they were on vacation and from friends, who we then got to share our first meal in the house with (pizza!).

So I am just going to do a photo dump of the house that we moved into now, and then I will be sharing updates along the way once we have decorated and moved in.

Let’s begin….

We selected the ‘Monroe’ model from Ashton Woods (builder) with Elevation ‘C’. We made selections to customize it, like adding in the 3rd car garage option.

We also selected the 3rd option for the lanai (relates to the length of it), added in a slider (in lieu of a swing door and adjacent window) in the breakfast nook, and a 12′ slider (in lieu of 3 windows) in the family room.

As for the inside, let’s head in there.

On the first floor of the house you have the dining room, family room, breakfast area, kitchen, flex space (aka office), and powder room. There also is a walk in pantry off the kitchen, closet off the flex space, and closet under the stairs to the second floor.

You walk right into the Dining Room when you enter the house. It’s full of light from the orientation of the house and the pair of windows.

From there you walk towards the back of the house to the Family Room. You have a view of the 12′ widow slider right upon entry into the house.

The family room is straight ahead, and the open breakfast area and the kitchen are directly opposite that. The room is large- 18′ – 0″ x 18′ – 0″ which will work out for the furniture that we want to put in there. We don’t have large pieces or much but we want the space to feel airy and open.

The Breakfast Area is the ‘every day’ eating area as it’s right off the kitchen and in the midst of the Family Room. We are putting in the small dining set that we had in Boston here and the larger newer set that we just purchased is in the dining room so that will be used for entertaining, when we don’t want to eat outside.

Off the breakfast Area is the Flex Space, which will be set up at an office area in the future.
We will add a counter in here in in the future for a worksurface. There is a closet in there for some storage too.

You enter the Powder Room by passing through the Flex Space. It’s basic now so we need to jazz it up with some linens and accessories. (I had a mirror for this space but now I don’t think it will work so that might go in the guest bedroom upstairs)

 

The kitchen is the heart of the home. At much as ‘open concept plans’ are so trendy now, they work for us as we spend so much of our time in the kitchen making meals and just hanging out, so it feels great for this space to be so open and integrated with the rest of the first floor.

We selected a lot of options for the kitchen, which I’ll get into detail about in a kitchen focus post. It was important for us to spend our money on those upgrades for this space since it’s so visible to the rest of the house and how much time we spend in kitchens.

I can’t wait to start cooking in here!

Across from the garage door entry, is the walk in Pantry that serves the kitchen. We had them remove all of the standard shelving so that we could put in our own shelving (I hate wire shelving!) so this is a big work in process now as we need to get up all new shelving.

An open flight of Stairs lead you to the second floor…

Our stairs are nice and open allowing a lot of light to come in from the window that is at the landing of the staircase. This was a design change made during construction. There was some drama related to it, but all worth it for this outcome.

The first thing you see when you walk up the stairs is the laundry room so we will have to remember to keep the door closed  or deal with some visible messiess. We do plan on adding in some shelving and color to make it ‘pop’ since it is the first thing you see going up the stairs.

Originally the Family Room on the first floor was a 2 story space but we filled it in (an option) to make this large Bonus Room. This is to function as the kids’ place room and our general lounge around room. We have a projector in Boston that we are going to install here so it will be great for movie watching. But we figure it will mainly be used by kids so (hopefully) their toys and mess will stay up here.

The Fourth Bedroom (an option we selected in lieu of an open loft space) is the closest to the stairs, and is directly opposite the bonus room. We are going to use that as a guest bedroom as we didn’t want kids rooms that close to stairs. We already have a bed (queen sized) and side table here, but need to get a dresser (hopefully, I can find something cool off Craigslist) for the niche next to the closet. Eventually we think we will add a small TV on/over the dresser so that people visiting can escape the kids and enjoy some of their normal routine, like getting to watch some news in peace.

Beyond the bonus room is our bedroom. YAY!!!!!

 

We already have most of the elements for this room with the exception of bedding and some wedding pictures that we never had printed and framed. We purchased a new bed (king sized!) and are reusing a dresser (for Price). Some other elements that are getting re-purposed are some ottomans and a long side table. I just bought some window treatments that will get blended with some we already had so things are well under way for our bedroom.

Besides the kitchen, we put some money towards our Master Bathroom Upgrades. So worth it to us. We layered a few options together to get a great bathroom. We each have our own sinks, a large shower, and a gorgeous free standing tub. I don’t love the color of the millwork in the bathroom (eww!) but it was hard to justify even more money towards a finish change in the bathroom that already had so many big and little changes. We can totally live with the ‘nutmeg’ finish, but I have a feeling I might paint them in the future. At least we have a great bathroom I can escape to for some R&R… ha, hardly!

We have an amazing large walk in closet off our bathroom that we will outfit with come custom shelving (ALGOT from Ikea!). I am not going to have a dressing in our bedroom so it stays nice and open (plus we will have a playard that the baby will sleep in for a while so that will just clutter things up too). I am going to store all of my stuff in the closet so I will be getting my shelving and stuff done rather quickly (hopefully).

Opposite our bedroom are the 2 kids bedrooms, full bathroom, and linen closet.

A linen closet is rather basic, no? Again, we didn’t want the standard wire shelving so we will install shelving in there.

The bathroom is going to be used by the kids and guests so it will have a neutral feel to it. Right now we are going to recycle a lot of what we had for accessories and linens in Boston so it will have the sail cloth shower curtain (already owned) and nautical accessories that I have picked up over the past few years. Anchor all the things!!!!

Autumn’s room (Bedroom 3 on the plan) is the larger of the kids rooms. There was no real reason to give her this room as opposed to the other room we are using for kids rooms, but that just worked well for her room. It has a walk in closet, which is overkill for her needs but I think I am going to make a little play nook in there. Her room is a mix of new and old things with a new bed and an old dresser.

 

Lastly, is the baby’s room (Bedroom 2 on the plan) that is next to Autumn’s room. We already have most of the furniture for this room- either already opened it or already purchased. We just need to accessorize it with some artwork and get some drapes, but we have time since it’s weeks before the baby arrives and we had Autumn in our room for 6 months, so no real rush anyway.

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I will have updates in the upcoming weeks with process that we have made on the house!

Stay tuned!!!