I was hoping to be able to start by telling you that Mike and I have dipped ____ amount of shingles over the past week to use as siding for the garden shed (which is being planned to match the house).  I can’t do that because I have no clue how many shingles we have dipped… there were too many to count.  I also can not say that this has happened over the past week, because apparently we move in slow motion and this took us THREE weeks.  I also have to complain because when we bought cedar shingles it was recommended to us by everyone that we dip them before putting them up to protect them from the weather.  When we decided to start “dipping” shingles we were not aware that “dipping” shingles is actually just painting shingles. I don’t know why there is this dipping myth out there, because we most certainly painted shingles… and it was not as fun as I think dipping an insanely large amount of shingles may have been.

First we built some contraptions made of hundreds of nails, plywood and treated lumber that resemble medieval torture devices so each shingle can stand up while it dries.  Each shingle had to be painted, then dry standing up for 24 hours.  That takes love and commitment people.

We were on a much faster roll.  Then I contracted hand foot and mouth disease.  Just one of the many bonuses of  a career in early childhood.  It is very icky and I felt icky.  While this put a slight bend in our plan to conquer the tower of cedar in less than a week, we took that cedar by storm once I was recoverd and we have the most lovely cedar shingles I have ever seen.  I do not have any pictures because I lost the camera charger, sort of.  It is in the trailer we acquired through the property purchase (a different topic for a different day) that has a mouse in it so I am too scared to go get it.  I can’t send Mike to go get it because he is more of a wimp about mice than I am.  Instead of taking pictures we are occupying our leftover time watching you tube videos about putting cedar shingles up as siding.  I know… we are practically pros.

Here is a picture of what the combination of cedar shake, and white trim is probably going to look like on our garden shed.

I am sure that our garden shed will not look this nice, but it does give us something to aspire to!

Ever since I was teeny tiny I have loved everything having to do with a farm.  My first outside of babysitting job came from wandering down to a horse stable trying to find someone to pay me something for doing something there.  It worked out well.   I loved the smell and the openness of it.  I still do.  Recently for work we went to a county fair.  While walking through the aisles of 4H cows, most of my co-workers tried to hold their breath.  It never registered with me that the smells and the sounds weren’t just right.   I am constantly dreaming of everything barn and farm.  Thankfully while Mike may not share my intense enthusiasm, we still hold a common ground in this.

Now I am fully aware that I am not going to be living on a farm… at least not anytime soon.  I am also fully aware that Mike and I are not farmers.  That does not mean we can’t find ways of bringing that same feeling into our life in our own way.   We can still make our corner of the world ours.

We are starting to put pieces together of our house design.  Slowly but surely.   The small pieces of it all are starting to fit into a big picture that we can almost see.

We are seeing exposed ceilings, farmhouse sinks, and lots and lots of windows.

 We are seeing rough floors, open shelves, and a little bit of industrial.

We are seeing simple and clean. Color and comfort.

Food from the yard… and animals everywhere.

We can almost see it all.

Mike and I have taken on a few “responsibilities” that have had a major impact on our life choices.  Meet responsibility numero uno.  Chief.

About six weeks before we got married, I brought Chief home to our newly rented beach cottage in Bellingham.  I took two days of personal leave to stay home and stare  into those big brown eyes.  Chief is obviously a yellow labrador retriever.  Besides that he is the first thing Mike and I ever really shared.  Chief does not only come with normal labrador traits, he also comes with a side of separation anxiety, a bit of a rough past, and a heavy dose of epilepsy.  Chief took a lot of time and patience, but he has adjusted to his new life quite well.  Chief has turned into our ultra mellow companion, down for any adventure where he can find a person to play with his fur.

Chief has most recently become a fantastic construction buddy.  He can curl up with some sun, some dirt, and make a day out of it.  When it rains, he makes himself cozy in the back of the car until we are ready to call it quits.  Doesn’t he look like such a natural among construction tools?  Yes we count Coors Light as a construction tool.

Meet responsibility numero dos, tres and quattro.   Otherwise known as Martha, Clark and Eloise.  This is what they looked like the day I brought them home and “surprised” Mike.  He wasn’t that mad.  Mostly because they looked like this.

Our Khaki Campbell ducks were purchased just weeks before Mike was asked to move to Atlanta for his job.  We had a feeling this was coming and I brought them home to help remind us what we really want in a home.  That is my retrospective thought.  Really I just brought them home because this cute  high school farm store kid asked me if I wanted to hold a three-day old duck.  Anyone who knows me knows there is no other way this could have ended. These three are still with us.  They (or maybe more the idea of them) have helped us stay in touch with what makes us feel at home.  It is not so much that we need duck friendly places,  but the kind of lifestyle where we can house fowl and canine is really what we want.  We kept the feathers in mind while we house hunted, and I do think it helped us get to the right place.  They also lay the best eggs you have ever had.  Seriously.  We did backyard chickens for a while, and these eggs totally beat chicken eggs.  Here is a more recent picture of the crew.  This is from last spring when they were still only three months old.  Winter duck care does not inspire you to take many pictures.  They are very feathered out and pretty now… but you get the idea.

The ducks and dog have been informed about our life plans, and they are just as stoked for their new digs as we are.

Progress!  Look at this beauty. For first timers, I think we did pretty well. Windows, doors, fully sheathed walls.  I love it.  I love it so much that I suggested to Mike that we move into the garden shed. I actually looked at some tiny house sites and explained to him how we could pull of living in 200 square feet. If you ever break your foot and you think you have exhausted the world-wide web, look at tiny houses.  Then suggest that you live in one and watch a look of genuine concern spread over your husbands face.  I find the whole idea sort of fascinating. It is kind of how I picture fairies or something like that living. Anyway, we aren’t going to move in because Mike convinced me that it is illegal for us to make a garden shed our home, and the county most certainly will not be giving us permits to build our home if they catch us tiny housing it.  Touche.

Here you can see the angle from when you pull up.  We still have a lot of work to do, but that doesn’t make us any less excited about our progress so far!

This is the door that we fretted spending the money on for quite a while.  We love it now that it is in!

We stand by our work proudly .

When we started this garden shed project I was sure that this would take no longer than one weekend.  One night my dad and I actually scrambled to get to Home Depot before it closed so we could buy a door to install the next day.  That was back in December. The natural need to hibernate like us Washingtonians tend to do was very much our reality this year.  We still worked quite a bit, but not long days and we took more weekends off than on. The latest days of sun gave us a kick in the pants to start moving forward with moving forward.  I am slowly recovering still from my broken foot.  I am down one cast, up one air cast, and able to take steps on the “bad foot” with the support of crutches.  In light of coming out of hibernation and into sunshine, as well as being able to get up and off the ground as of very recently, I gardened the one gardenable spot at the moment.  This rock and the whole area around it in the picture was covered in about a five-inch thick layer of moss, and you could barely see it.  Back in December I cleared that off, and I have been  waiting to see what comes up on its own.  So far we have hostas and daffodils. A little weeding and a few flowers this weekend really cheered it up!

The uncovered rock.

Happy Spring!

One of the more surprisingly difficult parts to this home building process has been finding a house we want to build.  We see houses just about everyday that would be great to live in.  It is a whole different kind of thing though when you have to start thinking, “what do I want to live in?”   I am not  really sure how we figured this out, but I guess I could give most of the credit to time and the world wide web.

We began by trying to find a house style.  We literally searched the term house styles to even figure out what house styles exist.  Yes we know that little about home building.  Then we would find one that sounded ok.  Then we would search for images under that style that were either an obvious yes or no.  At some point we began saving images.  We began making must haves, ideals and couldn’t handle lists.  We had narrowed down our style to northwest, coastal, and barn inspired.  I don’t really know what it means to use the word inspired in a home design description… but it seems to work for us.  House style played a major role, but what became more important was the idea of a casual and comfortable house that would compliment our lifestyle and the setting.  Surprisingly there are not a ton of designers publishing generic internet plans to fit this weird and self-contained niche that we had placed ourselves in. Designing plans from scratch was far out of our budget.

One fine Friday night I was tweeking out on house plans with a glass of wine.  After looking at probably over one thousand house plans just that night my head and eyes felt twitchy and off balance.  Then just like that, on page two hundred and something of a major house plan distributor was our northwest coastal home with barn  inspired elements.  It was perfect.  It is perfect (for us).  It comes from Stella Carossa at The Perfect Little House Company.  Truthfully I don’t actually have the slightest clue if this house fits any of the styles we thought we wanted, but it was the first house that made me want to climb in my computer screen and cozy up by a fire.  Sounds like home to me.  We still have a lot of checks to write, e-mails to send, and adjustments to make to the plans until we have a set of blue prints laid down in front of us… but this is it.  It isn’t very big or elaborate, but we can’t wait to live in it!

Just right.

Our lengthy countertop discussion began while attending the Seattle Home Show last summer.  We perused row after row of granite, marble, fake granite, fake marble, tile, etc.  We never saw something that made either of us want to look twice.  We realized quickly that shiny and polished was not what we were going for.  This “helped” us to rule out most countertop options available, and at the same time left us with not much direction.   After some time we found some natural stone countertops, with a price tag of $75.00 a square foot.  That was short lived. We wanted something natural looking, with the cost effectiveness of cheap linoleum.

Enter concrete!  While concrete is often thought of as “modern,” we could totally visualize how this would work in the more rustic and natural style we have been looking for.  Did you know that concrete countertops from a professional are more expensive than granite, and can be just as expensive as natural stone?  It is a strange thing that “natural and rustic” seems to come with a high price tag.

Fortunately for us there have been brave home owners out there who have not let much hold them back.  When you google DIY concrete countertops you will find an overwhelming amount of guides, videos and personal accounts of people pouring their own concrete countertops.

Jessie and her husband at Imperfectly Polished  made these countertops right at home.  They have great tutorials on their site that I am sure we will be referencing.  To do their entire kitchen cost them only $582.00, including the cost of some countertops that had to be poured twice!

Beautiful! Photo from imperfectlypolished.com

DIY success. Photo from imperfectlypolished.com

While continuing our search we were lucky enough to come across Kelly from Kelly Moore.  Kelly waslooking for an industrial look in her concrete countertops.  Their approach in their tutorial was exactly what we were hoping to find.  I love looking at these pictures.  You can access her tutorial here.  This whole project cost only $300.00!

I think they nailed it. Photos from kellymoorebag.com

Dreamy. Photo from kellymoorebag.com

We spent more than a few hours familiarizing ourselves with the concept, and then decided that this project is something we can pull off.   We want to do a practice run so we get a feel for the process prior to diving into kitchen countertops.  We are thinking that we are going to make a bathroom vanity for the master bath with a concrete countertop to start with, and see where that takes us.  The photo below is what we are hoping to recreate.

Photo from Victoria Pearson via housebeautiful.com

We will be sure to post our results and steps when that day finally comes!

I received my first Barefoot Contessa cookbook by Ina Garten as a bridal shower gift from the host.   After a few years, a few not so suddle hints and a perfectly timed Costco cookbook sale, I now own all of her cookbooks, and I consider them my go to for any meal.  Sometimes I try and branch out when I am especially excited about an upcoming meal.  I will surround myself with cookbooks and my favorite online recipe sites.  I often end up back at my dog eared and dirty Barefoot Contessa recipes.  Many of her recipes are the kind that you can manage to bust out for a late week night meal, and at the same time are so eye and taste pleasing that they can become the cook to impress kind of meal.

Obviously I am not doing any cooking at all right now.  I am doing a lot of thinking and wishing about cooking while I sit at home and wait for someone to come and feed me.  Lately I find myself wishing for easily accessible food that does not come from the middle aisles of the grocery store.  This way once the person comes home to feed me, I don’t have to wait another hour to eat.  Yes I have spent a lot of time thinking this is probably similar to how dogs view their mealtime.  In normal life I often make hummus and this dressing when I am wishing for such things.  You can make one, rinse the food processor, and make the second all in about fifteen minutes.  They are the perfect combination of flavors on a platter fulll of veggies.

Food processor magic.

Ina Garten makes this for a salad.  In our house we have a family viniagrette recipe that goes on just about every salad, so we use her recipe for a veggie dip instead. You have to trust Ina and make it as is.  One ingredient I shyed away from was the anchovy paste.   I hate everything about anchovies, and I was horrified the first time I heard that anchovies are often used in salad dressings.  I will say though that this dressing is balanced in just the right way with this daunting ingredient.  I always have it on hand now.

I actually hid the anchovy paste in this picture... but it is in there!

This recipe is as easy as it sounds.  If you make it once, I can guarentee you will make it twice.

The kind of platter that makes me linger.

Basil Green Goddess Dressing

Adapted from Barefoot Contessa at Home by Ina Garten

Ingredients

1 cup good mayonaise

1 cup chopped scallions, white and green parts (6 to 7 scallions)

1 cup fresh basil leaves

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (2 lemons)

2 teaspoons chopped garlic (2 cloves)

2 teaspoons anchovy paste

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 cup sour cream

Directions

Place the mayonnaise, scallions, basil, lemon juice, garlic, anchovy paste, salt and pepper in a blender and blend until smooth.

Add the sour cream and process just until blended. Refigerate until ready to serve.  Serve with sliced fresh veggies for dipping.

I don’t think that Mike and I fall under the description of your “average” home builder.  We have never been home owners.  We lack any kind of professional experience that lends itself to building a house.  We are hoping to achieve the look and design of our dream home, without that “mad scrilla,” if you will, that most dream home builders have.

I have mentioned before that we are going for a “barn inspired northwest style” home.  Hello beautifully and naturally rugged barn wood floors! Your perfectly aged yet finished look will compliment my home in just the right way.

Hello nine dollars a square foot, even when we install them ourselves.  This is the moment where we get off the “ideal” track and get back on the “reality” track.  We looked at linoleum, bamboo, etc.  All in all we decided that we don’t want to spend money putting any kind of wood alternative down.  We would spend every moment looking at our new floors and thinking about when we can rip them out.  No thank you.

Early on our builder suggested that we could just seal the plywood subfloor.  Here is one example I found showing this idea exactly.

Sealed plywood floors. Photo from www.livemodern.com

While I think that a sealed plywood floor could have a rustic feel in the right setting, the geometric pattern sort of screams modern to me. We began researching other plywood floor options.  Shannon and her husband from Quarry Orchard wrote a fantastic tutorial that you can access here on plywood planked floors.  The picture below is the final product of their labor of love.

I still can not get over that these are made from plywood! Photo from www.quarryorchard.blogspot.com

While searching Pinterest like a crazy woman again, I found this great painted plywood flooring tutorial from Lori at Frugal Farmhouse Design.  Kind of amazing that plywood and some Benjamin Moore paint can produce something as nice as this.

Lovely. Photo from www.frugalfarmhousedesign.blogspot.com

Further research led to finding another fantastic blog.  Life in a Little Red Farmhouse  has many inspiring ideas for new home builders and I would imagine home owners as well!  When building their home, Kim and her family used  pine tongue and groove paneling… the kind you normally would see on a ceiling for their floor.  This kind of lumber is dramatically cheaper than the kind you might normally see on a floor, but almost identical.   This idea is so amazing I can hardly stand it. You can click here to go to their site and read about their flooring choice. Here is a photo of their wood floors.

It is hard for me to describe how excited this idea makes me! Photo From redfarmhouse.blogspot.com

Also from Life in a Little Red Farmhouse  we saw ANOTHER brilliant flooring idea.  This concrete floor would work perfectly in the basement.  This is an unpolished concrete floor that has been sealed. You can see their description of their concrete floor choice here, and a picture below.  It sounds so feasible and is exactly “that look” we are going for.

A perfect example of that "farmhouse" concrete look we have been trying to describe. Photo from redfarmhouse.blogspot.com

All these options involve time, work and probably an inevitable amount of frustration as we muck through figuring out how to DIY this. BUT none of these flooring options came very far over a dollar a square foot.  It gives me butterflies just thinking about it.

I broke myself.  My right foot to be exact.  Today marks the two week anniversary of that unfortunate step.  I was walking, and I fell down two steps.  Mike argues that I actually only fell down one step because I was already stepping down the first one. Gracefulness is my forte’.  I will spare you the details, but I am bound to no weight bearing for two to four weeks, up to three months in a cast, with the possibility of surgery at the six week mark.  I should be back to normal by the time we start building. Although there is never a good time to become immobilized, I can appreciate that some times are worse than others.

I am focusing on harnessing exceptional bone fusion.  Mike is working on taking deep breaths with every request I make, which is inevitably followed by another request where Mike forgets to take a deep breath.  I am fortunate to have not only a gracious and patient husband, but a pretty spectacular network of family and friends!

I am trying to maintain my sanity by focusing on things like sink handles and cabinet hardware.  I am spending an unhealthy amount of time perusing pinterest, home blogs, and interior design blogs.  The result of this has been that I now  have made the full realization that I may not know anything about home design.  I am now terrified of every thought or idea of mine ruining our home.  I will now be sharing my ideas here so other people can tell me if they are horrible or not so horrible.  Soon I will stand up again and then I can take pictures of all the recipes I was hoping to share here.  Here is to better days and higher life productivity. Just not today.  Cheers.

I think we have entered the easiest and yet hardest part of building our first home.  We own the property, the designs are picked out, and our financing is ready to go.  On the way to house buiding there are many systems, steps, and what appear to me to be mazes that are a “must” prior to building a home in our county.    We are located outside city limits, so we are dealing exclusively with the county and state to navigate these mazes, and to get just the right nod and wink from the powers that be.

Just like any state, county, etc. there are excessive permits and regulations that must be followed, met and monitored if you are building a house.   I imagine if you get way the heck out there from civilization this may become an unnecessary step.  For many purposes including our sanity, civilization is kind of a must.  Hence our need to comply with all the permitting and other odds and ends that come along with building a house.

The next six months don’t actually involve much work for us.  Our builder is investing his time in submitting paperwork, sitting through meetings with the above mentioned powers that be, and getting us to a point where we can actually start building a house.  Our builder is a local guy who thankfully is very familiar with all the individuals and systems in place to getting us to where we want to be.  We literally are here because he has walked us through this all so far, and graciously continues to do so.

Shoot back to October 2011.   We are making a yes or no decision on the property.  Our builder informs us that it is “feasible” to build a house on the lot.  Whew.  Don’t breathe yet.  Feasible, but difficult.  The property line runs right through the middle of a salmon occupied river. Technically this lot is an unbuildable lot.  What?  Unbuildable really just means they might let you do it, but only if you do it their way.  You can mitigate the damages that putting a house on the property would do to the river through a variety of options, then you could actually build a house on the lot.  Oh… and you will have to pay out the wazzoo to the county and state.  One more thing.  It is possible that we won’t be able to begin building until September 2012.  Ugh.  Gut punch in the stomach.  Seriously?

Our final decision was that we loved the idea of having the river on our property.  We were getting stuck on the views and the sounds.  So stuck we remained.  And stuck we still remain. We are patiently/anxiously waiting for permits to go through, responses from mysterious unidentifiable county officials, and depending on a lot of government decision to go “our way.”  It feels just about as uneasy as it sounds.  In the same breath, that uneasiness gives us a certain motivation and excitement that comes with each baby step we make.   When some weekend in the future rolls around and we are stumbling our way through a flooring project with tight timelines and no money left, we will probably be wishing for these days of thumb twiddling.  For now… we look forward to and impatiently wait for those late night flooring projects.

We can see the light!