Master Bed & Bath and Bonus Room

I'm going to be a dedicated blogger and just keep on going.

When we met with our builder we determined the floor plan that was in our budget was the same as our previous home.  I was determined to do as much as possible to change it up.

This is our view coming in from the garage door.  Since we added a bonus room and needed to add steps, this naturally changed.  It became more of a hallway instead of just opening up to the living room.  We have hooks for jackets on the left going down the hall before it opens to the living room. I love that it gives us a place to keep all our school stuff and shoes so that it's readily available before going out the door.

On the right hand side we have the laundry room entrance and then the steps to the bonus room.  Straight ahead we have the master bedroom and bath.

View from master bedroom.

We have switchback stairs that go up to the bonus room.  This turned out much bigger than I had anticipated. We also got a large closet that holds toys for right now.  Notice the lone Nerf gun dart I didn't get clean up?

It was a beautiful rainy day when I took these.  But one day, all construction will be done and this will be a fabulous place to sit and read.

One of the most overwhelming decision was our lighting.  We went quite a bit over budget and even made a second trip to the store after we changed our mind.  I am so thankful we did.  This is in stairwell as well as our foyer and it matches our dining room.  So glad we listening to our gut.

The entryway and bonus room are both painted in Sherwin Williams Ellie Gray.

Not much changed in our master bedroom.  It's' the same square feet as our old bedroom but the length and width were flipped.  This is the room that led me to change the cable outlet three times.  I just couldn't' figure out where I wanted our bed. Our superintendent has the same floor plan and finally convinced me it would go best between the windows.

Close up of our artwork. It all came from Etsy, picture came from the MyLydia store and lanterns from SnakSaks.

I'm waving hi to you looking into master bath.  The biggest change in here was getting rid of our whirlpool tub and upgrading to tiled shower.  Not disappointed in the least.

 Then comes this cute little door here...

Steve and I were talking through the house right after it was framed and noticed some storage under the stairs that wasn't accessible. I talked to Tyler and they re-framed it and build a door and now we have holiday storage.  Best $240 I will ever spend in my life.

We also added a linen closet which we did not have so now we have more room in our closet.  I always felt our closet was crammed having all our towels in there,  it just feels cleaner now.  Or that could be that we've only lived here for six weeks.

Master bedroom and bath were both painted in Sherwin Williams Mineral Deposit.

I'm gonna try and get the rest of the house done by early next week.  I'll also have the mini marathon to blog about. It looks like a rainy day again.

Why, Hello There!

Guess who is back?  Well, guess who is gonna try and be back?

Now that we are settled in to our own place again I thought I would try and pick up this blogging thing.  What better way to start than talking a little bit about our building process and sharing some photos. I'm gonna try and get inside pics this week but for now, you just get outside.

I know some people thought we had lost our mind when we decided to sell our perfectly good home and downsize.  I mean who on Earth with two young kids gets rid of a basement home for a non basement home. I can tell you couldn't have made a better decision. Yes, we lost some space, but we gained so much more.  Our previous home was built during a recession so we naturally got some upgrades that are now considered standard. Our lot is so much better, can't even put into words how important that is.  Our kids had no outside space.  Overall it just feels right.  When your home sells in 3 days, it has to be right.

After we met with a couple builders we decided to go with ASB.  They built our previous home and they made us feel so comfortable and was willing to work with us.  They had never done our floor plan with a bonus room, they listened to us and was willing to try it out and now are building even more.  

ASB has their own set of floor plans so you can't just go in there with some blueprints all on your own but you can customize and change some things. After going over our needs and wants and budget, they picked the floor plan that best met that and we went from there.  We sat down with their standard blueprints, marked them up and moved things and got rid of things and we just kept going back and forth until we all agreed.

They have a set of suppliers they would like for you to stick with which was not a problem at all.  We already had in mind colors and styles we wanted and we didn't run into any problems.  Tyler, who was our superintendent on the job was great to work with.  He never once gave us a hard time and almost always went above and beyond to get us what we wanted, even when I changed my mind 3 times on the location of our cable outlet in our master bedroom.  

The biggest hurdle was before we even broke ground.  Our original lot got sold by the developer to a different builder.  Our builder negotiated with us and took off $5k on our price and added back our covered patio which we had mark off since it was over budget.  It ended up being a total of $13k we got back and our new lot was bigger and more expensive.  The rest of the process was super easy.  They broke ground Thanksgiving week, started brick and drywall by the first of the year and before I knew it I was getting a text from Tyler saying we were about 6 weeks out and I could start our loan process.  We had a walk through when the house was complete to make sure it was all done to our satisfaction- he mentioned it had been 12 weeks from foundation to then.  We never had one single delay and a mild winter was definitely on our side.

I'm gonna share a few pics today and I'll blog more about the process as I post indoor pics.

Front of house.  The brick was one of the first things we picked out. I had no idea what to expect.  We went to to L Thorn in New Albany.  Most homes in our neighbhorhood have stone.  We wanted to save some expenses on other upgrades so we went with all brick.  We picked out a few homes we liked on a slideshow, but really depending on lighting, stone or no stone, mortar color, we had no idea how it would turn out.  Click here for some examples of houses that have our brick.  They all look different.  Our color is Hanson #557.  We chose this color because it was dimensional and not all one color.  

I was so nervous when we first drove by knowing they had started.  It's not like we could have fixed.  Thankfully we liked it.  Also since we didn't get stone, we did a mix of clay and bronze trim.  I would have loved to do our windows in bronze but it was was too much. I do wish I had gotten a bronze garage door, but oh well.    We also added bronze color shutters. 

Our front door is Rocky River by Sherwin Williams. I like that it adds something other than brown to the house.  Hoping to add some other color to it and get a fun wreath.

This is across the street from us.  We are the only completed house in our street.  I do believe most of this wooded area should stay.

View of the back from our backyard.  

Backyard and basketball goal.  The extra concrete was an upgrade through the builder but we got the goal on our own.

As you can see we have plenty of room for playing even off the goal.  It even goes back into a corner.  We went from one of the smallest to one of the largest lots in the neighborhood.

We also have this view, they should be completed in a couple months.

It's been an experience and although I have no desire to move again, I would do it again.  

Can't wait to share more with you.