More Building Pics

This time the stucco is going up on the front of the house!

Here's the staircase that we feature in lots of pictures before it was finished!

The drywall is starting to go up in our sitting room in the master bedroom suite!

Here's where the kitchen is going to be!

More to come soon!

Pics from the Build

I've finally found some of the old pics from when we built the house. Gosh, Phoebe was so little in some of these pics. It's amazing how time has gone by. Here is the outside while they were still building:

Here is what is now our living room:

Here's Phoebe standing in what will be her shower/tub. She doesn't use it. She uses ours. When I take pics of the boys in the bathtub today, this is it from the beginning.

Here's Phoebe dancing in what is now "the boys' room". She had this as her playroom until I got pregnant.

If you've seen all the pics on my other blog of Phoebe's first days of school, this is her first shot in front of the house. My goodness, she was so little!!!

Here's a pic of us at the old house during the same timeframe. I miss my mums at the old house. I want mums that are that awesome and bushy here. It hasn't happened yet. Something about having twins now and shuttling Phoebe all over has made it hard to find the time.

How It All Began

I know this blog is getting off to a slow start, but it'll be good, I promise. Keep checking for updates.

I thought before we went right into pictures on the building and such of this house we're making a home, I'd explain how it all started, as that's interesting in itself. It all started on a beautiful spring Sunday drive. We had no place to go, just driving around, thinking about going to the winery in Avondale we love so much. We saw little signs for a model home and the builder was Wilkinson. DH mentions that he was reading good things about their houses in Delaware Today magazine. We like going to visit model homes for fun, so we started following the signs off onto some country roads. On the way there, we found ourselves crossing the border into PA. Woo hoo! I'm a PA girl and was very excited to see a PA model home.

We found the house and it was breathtaking. Usually when DH and I walk through a model home, we find about 10 things we would change in that house. We didn't see any thing we would change - other than the blue and white color scheme throughout the decor of the house. A curved staircase in the foyer, a back staircase from the family room, a quiet closed off home office, sunroom off the kitchen, optional conservatory, high ceilings in the basement, a master bedroom suite with it's own sitting room, a guest room with it's own bathroom and two other bedrooms with a jack-n-jill bathroom. It was exactly what we wanted.

We took all the information and left, pondering over the perfection of the house and the lots that were left, and how close it was to the friends we have in the area. Two weeks later, we put a hold on the lot across the street from the model home.

A New Home Decor Blog Is Born!

I've been wanting to do this for quite some time. We built a house in southern PA starting in August 2005 and finished and moved in February 2006. When we built this house my DH was in graduate school getting his eMBA from Villanova. Needless to say this took a lot of time away from fully moving in and decorating the new home. Please don't ask why we were building a house, selling a house and having DH in a full-time graduate program while he was working full-time too. We don't do anything small in our house!

DH graduated in May 2007, so now the home decor begins in earnest. He has most of the ideas for how things should look and I'm just the second opinion and sweatshop. I sew all our curtains, quilts and such.

Since this is our second house, we came into it with lots of ideas on how we wanted things to be. We learned a lot first time around and are putting that knowledge to work. Our first house was three years old when we bought it and we spent a lot of effort taking a new construction house and making it look like an old fashioned home. Our concept is pretty much the same with this one, except we like the floor layout and spaciousness in the new house.

As I start this blog, we've just finished painting the conservatory, dining room and study. I'm also about to begin curtains for the dining room. Just bought the fabric this past weekend in Philadelphia. I'll post some pics and info on these as soon as I catch things up from the beginning to present.

The next few posts will be on the construction of our house to familiarize you with the layout and the builder. We love our builder! Hope you all enjoy!