First Furniture Re-do!

 In the new house we are changin it up a bit and going for a more classy, contemporary style, with some vintage touches including a new color scheme of grey, blue, white, and some tan. This will be quite different from the cozy, rustic feel of our apartment, which means I have my work cut out for me. :) So, with all of this in mind I have been furiously collecting inspiration via Pinterest for how to decorate in our new place. That is how I came across this beauty...

 (originally from here: http://betterafter.blogspot.com/) I was in love and the legs on this baby kind of reminded me of the hubs' old dresser. I am planning to do all white bedding against grey walls and an upholstered headboard (DIY'ed of course, stay tuned for the details...) and touches of light blue in pillows, accessories and the damask stenciling I am planning for our ceiling. I know, I know, I must be crazy stenciling the ceiling, but I have not completely lost it people! Anyways, back to the dresser... it reminded me of this gorgeous, old dresser my husband had and always talked about refinishing. Sadly though... this is the only picture I could find of it...

 Pretty pathetic! It was from when we first moved into our apartment and shoved it in the closet, and since I am pretty terrible about taking, before or during pictures, this is it. However, I am doing better about taking pictures of our current project, although since it's taking F-O-R-E-V-E-R (yes that was an attempt at a Sandlot reference in a post about a dresser. I launched the idea to the hubs and he approved so two weekends ago when I came home from a little girl time at a jewelry party he had started sanding and staining the dresser. (I am also going to use this as an excuse for not having before or during pictures). So, after sanding and a coat of primer we were off to pick out a color and knobs. I really wanted some glass Pottery Barn knobs that will hopefully go on our kitchen cabinets, but ordering meant not completing the project for a while, so I settled for some knobs from Target. After a coat of paint, and knobs here is the finished product...

I absolutely love it! It doesn't match our room right now but there was no way it was going back in the closet! Hubs says it is a little girly for him, but I think he's crazy! Oh, and yes we did remove the trim piece on the time that you can very faintly see in the very sorry before picture. Just ignore the laptop cord on the floor.  I will have to get up a picture of it all accessorized, technology was not on my side tonight. :)

So this post truly pre-dates all of my other posts so far, but I guess I should go back and talk about how we chose our house... First of all, we were not even planning to buy for several more years, but would occasionally we would talk about how nice it would be to be able to afford a house, especially with the conditions of the market, low interest rates, and first time buyers incentives we were seeing advertised everywhere! We then decided that we would be ready to think about purchasing a home during the summer of 2012. However, we knew we needed more space than our current two bed one bath apartment had to offer, so we talked with our apartment complex about moving into a bigger floor plan. After talking with them we realized we would have to fork over $1400 a month for rent to get what we wanted (not happening). So we just decided to see if there was ANY chance of us affording a house. We looked online at some local builders and went to check out a neighborhood called Wyndham Hill. There were some spec homes open that day and we really liked one of them. It was reasonable priced and we just couldn't shake the what-ifs, so we found out what we could get pre-approved for. Then we went and talked with Omega Builders (the builder of the spec home we really liked). We met with our wonderful sales consultant and she took us to see some more spec homes based on what we wanted. We knew we wanted at least 3 bedrooms with a formal dining room we could use as a study or 4 bedrooms. 

Our lovely sales consultant then introduced us to the Maddox III! It was love at first sight! We had an instant connection with the house, and didn't want to leave. We knew we loved it before from the website but it was in no way within our budget. However, we did not know that there was a slightly smaller version the Maddox which was perfectly within our budget. (Jump for joy!!) The only real difference was that the Maddox III had a formal dining room, which the Maddox did not. Although, with the Maddox's four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, and loft we would never miss that formal dining room! We went home to talk about and found ourselves signing a contract very soon after! Wayne would like me to mention that he found the Maddox III online originally and thought it could be our dream home one day... he did a good job and that day is coming sooner than we would have ever expected!

So... here it is the elevation of the house...

 We love that the front elevation features stone, brick, and siding. It has tons of visual interest and we just love the front porch and windows around the door! I can't wait to get a cute welcome sign up and a wreath on that door!

 This shows the first floor, we LOVE the flow between the living room, kitchen, and dining room! I also can't help but love the corner windows above the kitchen sink and can't resist thinking about watching our future children play together in the backyard through those windows! There are so many things that make me just swoon over this house! I love that there is a half bath, a closet under the stairs, the two windows in the master bedroom, and that the laundry is not only close to our bedroom, but also connects to the garage true mud room style.

Upstairs, we love the loft area, we plan for it to be a playroom in the future. We love the large windows in the front room, which will be our office. I also love that the two other bedrooms have more than one window each and that the bathroom has a window. We aren't sure which of these other bedrooms will be a guest room for now, but we hope they will eventually both be children's rooms. The attic access from the loft will also be very convenient for storage!

We both feel so extremely blessed to be building this home! It is a dream come true and we feel like it is our forever home! We have so many projects planned for our home already! We are getting a jump start by doing what we can while we are still in our apartment. I can't wait to share our projects along the way, before and after we move in! Which, by the way, is scheduled for mid to late January! At least it should have cooled off by then! :) So that is a brief summary of our whirlwind decision to buy our first house, which we feel very lucky to also call our dream home!