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october updates…framing!

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We are anticipating that framing will be wrapped up by the end of this week/early next at latest! These first couple shots are from our builder at the start of the month.

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And this one of me and the babe was taken last weekend. That’s the future breakfast area I’m standing in. Woot!

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It was so helpful to see an album from our builder of another build in a town nearby, with a floor plan very similar to ours. Yes, the finishes will of course all be different, and a few things are moved around, but the nuts and bolts of the overall flow are quite similar. It’s hard to gauge scale and size when you can see right through the walls, so comparing some “before and after” pics has been fun.

If you were to look at the above shot of the breakfast area, and then pan to the right, eventually the kitchen will be there, looking similar in layout to this:

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The front “flex room”…

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…will eventually look a lot like this.

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And our master…

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…will look something like this:

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The latest we’ve heard is to “hope for Christmas, plan for January” as far as our close/move-in time frame. Not far from what we’ve been planning on all along so we’re locking down a month to month agreement in our apartment (at a rate that will make our house payment look like a walk in the park — GULP!)  … and just hoping our little guy wants to stay nice and cozy in his current digs until we are in ours!

 

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a whole lotta hack jobs

DIY is in full swing as we plan for the new house! Inspired by the too-many-to-count IKEA hacks out there in the blogosphere, we found a few we wanted to try so we could get our custom look, and for a lot less than going top drawer (pun intended!).

Since selling our original bedroom furniture, we have quite literally been living out of laundry baskets as we shopped around for some larger nightstands that could double as a little clothing storage, with lots of drawer space. We found a couple we liked, but didn’t love, and for the prices we were finding, we just couldn’t pull the trigger.

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 Source

Enter the solid pine, unfinished RAST dresser from Ikea. There are a million hacks of this bad boy, but our favorite is the one pictured above. We love the addition of metal hardware, contrasting top surface color, and the bulked-up trim around the bottom to make it more substantial. We’re changing a few details, but after picking up two of these this week, we’re excited to beef them up and trick them out for our master bedroom.

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 Source

Page didn’t even know this next project was on my to-do list, so when he pointed out this stool in the store, I was extra excited that he, too, was a fan. The Bekvam step stool is a steal at $15, and I’m already torn between color options to give this piece some personality for use in our kitchen and pantry to reach high-up items (and eventually, help our little guy assist with cooking and baking – aww!).

 

meg & the martin men

 

If we had stayed in our first home longer than we did, this project would have likely happened sooner than later in our master bedroom. As it turns out, it’s still happening… in our new digs!

We are SO ready to make a little more organizational sense for the way we like to store our clothing (a.k.a. lots of storage for folded items, at eye level versus digging through floor-level black holes of t-shirts) and this meant opting out of traditional dressers for built-in wardrobes next go-round. We were inspired by this post and a handful of others, who have taken some basic Ikea Pax wardrobe units and tricked them out with real wood doors, trim, and built them into bedroom walls, for extra structural soundness.

with TV

 

We love that we can get our storage needs met, as well as have a place to set our bedroom TV, like this one from Houzz, and leave a lot of wide open space rather than fill it with lots of furniture.

The beauty of building a home is that you can move into something move-in ready…assuming you want to pay for it all. 🙂 A master wardrobe wall was one of the items we had on our “wish list” for the builder, but we just couldn’t get okay with the price. Not that it was totally unreasonable, but we felt it was a manageable-sized project and one we’d rather take on personally to save ourselves a few grand in the long-run (or put toward something else we COULDN’T do ourselves elsewhere in the house).

So after a marathon session in the wardrobe corner of IKEA, we came home with any and all of the components that would fit in our car, and an online order in hand, for the rest of it. With the basic assembly of two 39″ wide wardrobes (his and hers) in place, Page will build a center section to house the TV and some open decorative shelving, and trim it all out to match the trim in the room. I’m SO excited to see the finished product, and to finally have a place (OTHER than a laundry basket or two!) to house everything from yoga pants to evening bags, and everything in between. You guys. I’ll have a divided drawer JUST for belts. It doesn’t get any better.

Bring on the DIY!

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construction update!

foundation

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For all the delays we encountered getting this build STARTED, things are looking up as we’ve progressed through these first two weeks. The weather has cooperated, and the crews have been lightning fast as the lot was excavated, footings put in, and foundation poured!

I’m out of town this week for work, but Page grabbed some pics on his phone tonight — here’s a shot of our future basement living area!

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Next up, the foundation has to fully cure for a few days, then FRAMING can commence! Woo hoo, we are so beyond excited to finally be seeing this dream we’ve been planning for months, actually start to happen.

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baby smith’s room.

mobile

It started with a mobile, which Page was obsessed with even before we knew if this baby was a boy or girl. We were in Pottery Barn Kids one night, checking out cribs, and he was all about this. I loved the colors. Win-win.

paint swatches

So next up are some paint chips, to get an idea of color scheme. The room won’t be overly large, so I don’t want to dwarf it with dark wall colors. I had thought about asking the nursery be painted a light aqua/mint color, regardless of boy or girl, and using it as my base for either palette. Page thinks it’s girly and a lot of what he keeps calling “baby blue”. We’ll see how that all shakes out. 🙂 Meanwhile, we’ve picked out a dresser

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and a crib

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…and our glider..

img46o…and some odds and ends to bring splashes of color into the room…83729e767f6c3c82894f8f0216f2ecc2 b48e737eed77925118fa4e85aede62c8 d06da549ca758a1d70f057198272d295  (Bins from Land of Nod, pillow from West Elm)

There’s no room to stash much right now, but that somehow has not stopped me from beginning to collect things — a cool navy sailboat blueprint canvas, a striped blue/navy/white bin to hold wipes and diapers on a changing table, and of course adding some fun decor pieces to our registry!

Switching gears, I’m trying to lump some baby info together in fewer posts so it doesn’t TAKE OVER the blog. For anyone following along and posting their own versions, here is my monthly rundown of pregnancy stats (and a plea for someone to clean that dirty bathroom mirror!) 🙂

17.5 weeks

How far along: 17.5 weeks
Gender: BOY!!!
Weight gain:   None – Eating more now, but still down about 3-4 pounds from where I started
Maternity clothes: Some under-belly cropped leggings, but otherwise just stretchy waistband pants/skirts, and lots of dresses
Stretch marks: No – but I’ve started the cocoa butter bedtime routine!
Belly button in or out: in
Sleep: falling asleep quickly but waking up to pee at least once a night
Best moment:  sharing our 16 week u/s with the grandparents, learning we have a SON on the way
Worst moment: having our build pushed back yet another week, this time because of city permitting (sigh)
Miss anything: red wine
Movement: not yet – anxious to feel these “flutters” I keep hearing about
Cravings: any and all dairy – milk, chocolate milk, yogurt, cottage cheese
Queasy or sick:  400% better than during the first twelve weeks – and more energy all day long!
Looking forward to: 20-week ultrasound, shopping in Chicago later this month! 🙂

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Our first home…

We had a blast making our first house a home and learning along the way. Below you can see photos and links related to each finished space in house 1.0.

our home

 

Our first home, built in 2011.

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Front entry – the quote here was one of my favorite things in this house.

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 Kitchen

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Living Room

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Main Level Deck

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Master Bedroom

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Master Bath

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Bedroom 2 / Page’s Office

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Bedroom 3 / Liz’s Office

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Bedroom 4 / Guest Room

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Laundry Room

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Basement Wet Bar – Read about how we built this here

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Basement Living Area

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Basement Bath
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Lower Patio

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the decision to build. again.

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We’ve decided to build!

You can ask our realtor — we’ve come a LONG way from where we began this second home search. We started out headed for Kansas and ended up in California. Or for Spain and went to Switzerland. Whatever the phrase is.

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Laughing at the lockbox hooked to an “extra” door knob for no reason?

We first walked through an existing home back in February “just to see” if we even thought it was the right time to move. We were on the fence, and many more things seem to factor into the decision this time around, but when we saw that first house, we actually loved it more than we expected to and it whet our appetites to relocate. But then it was pulled off the market… we took it as a sign to keep looking around.

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I was in love with this tile…but that was about it.

We started out asking specifically to NOT see new construction, but quickly saw just how little was for sale, even after we seriously widened our price range at both ends and expanded into other areas around Des Moines (we even took a drive out to Adel, which for us, was a stretch). We saw the same handful of listings in our favorite areas, that met our criteria, again and again, but none of them felt even remotely right. Our conversations evolved, perspectives changed, and you guessed it, we started looking at builders.

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pretty arches!

Don’t get me wrong, we saw some beautiful homes and met with talented builders. But I felt “meh” about all of it. We were in love with the idea of a 1.5 story plan, but no one was currently building one or had ever done one before to reference, so we rather quickly pushed it out of our minds and focused on something in general more open and sprawling with higher ceilings – which led us to ranch plans. Give or take a few details we loved, we saw the same three floor plans, over and over and OVER again, from a variety of builders. (I think we met with at least a half dozen in person and toured many more). You can only do so much with a ranch floor plan, and we saw it all…and loved…none of it. We actually came close to signing on the dotted line with a builder who was the best of what we saw, but thankfully in a bit of Divine Intervention, the plan fell through.

On the same night we were supposed to do a final meet with this builder to start talking plans and put together a purchase agreement, they cancelled the meeting to be out of town. Micole, our realtor, saw an opportunity to show us something she hadn’t given up looking for, for us, and had JUST found. I honestly was OVER meeting with builders at this point and was ready to pass (Page had to convince me to go!)…but then she mentioned the home she wanted us to tour was what now seemed to be an urban myth…a 1.5 story!

We oohed. We ahhed. We pretty much drooled. THIS was the builder, the right vibe, and more or less, the plan we had been looking for, and it could all happen in a price range we were comfortable with. (I don’t even have pics to share, I was too busy loving it!) We’ll change and move around several things, but more or less, the IDEA is totally spot-on. Open/high ceilings in the main area, master on the main level, bedrooms/office space for PageSmith Design upstairs, and a basement level in which we can eventually add an extra bedroom/bath, great room, workout space, and (halleluiah!) unfinished storage space. And it turns out we weren’t crazy…they shared with us that night that only ELEVEN 1.5 story homes were built in all of Des Moines in 2013. No wonder we weren’t finding any!

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Seal of approval!

I know this post is heavy on words and light on pictures of anything but us giving a bunch of thumbs up on an empty lot, but more are coming, I promise!

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Can’t wait to photograph in my own space!

And yes, we’re 99.9% sure this is the spot where the house will eventually stand. In fact that’s me standing more or less in a front “flex room” that will be able to go back and forth from a living area/office to small studio space for ClickSmith!

At this moment, we’re balancing the search for some temporary (and immediate!) housing, with keeping things rolling on casa 2.0. Back soon with updates on all of it.

All House

How we sold our home FSBO

My husband and I recently sold our first home ourselves, with great success. (Part of me wants to call this post, “How we sold our house in THREE WEEKS!” but I know the markets are different for everyone.) What I want to share today are tips and tricks we learned along the way, that we think contributed to our FSBO success.

Our main motivation was to save money from the sale of our house, that we could roll into our next one, a rationale we shared openly from the beginning with our buying agent for our next home with the original intention of giving the process 30 days or so on our own before re-evaluating. I know it’s not for everyone, but we would do it this way again in a minute!

1. Determine your price. In a market with little inventory in our price range/location, this was tricky for us. We did a lot of research on comparable sales in the surrounding areas in the past twelve months, and compared what our three-year-old house had to offer with new construction by similar builders and plans nearby. There were no exact comparisons, and some guesswork and averaging involved in the beginning. Additionally, we were working with outdated assessments of our home (new construction values are constantly evolving in the beginning), PLUS our finished basement numbers weren’t yet reflected anywhere. Our final hurdle was that our original purchase price doesn’t accurately reflect what we bought at the time — upgrades that our builder “threw in” weren’t included in the price, as well as the upgrade from daylight to walkout basement, for which we didn’t pay a cent (more on that unexpected free upgrade here).

Do as much research as you can to set the right price the first time, so you aren’t drastically dropping it thirty days later. It’s easy to question yourself the first time a buyer’s agent asks how you arrived at your price. But we took it as a sign that with so much traffic through our home, people had decided for themselves that the price was not an issue.

updated laundry | 29thanddelight.com

2. Stage your home. You know the drill here – declutter, clean like crazy, and stash as much personal stuff as you can. Set out only selective items that help buyers visualize themselves living there (fan out a couple magazines on the ottoman, place a stack of clean white towels on the dryer). You can read here about a few tricks we employed to keep things neat between showings. Clean and simple is best — I didn’t keep the table set, for example, I just placed a bowl of lemons in the center and moved on. Speaking of lemons, scent is your friend! You know that saying that you can’t smell your own home? I always worried that scents from the previous night’s cooking or something would linger and I wouldn’t be able to smell it. So, I used a clean lemon room spray in the main floor, and lavender upstairs in the bedrooms/laundry before every showing. Last minute things out the door included making sure all the toilet seats were down, emptying trash cans, turning on all the lights, and putting on quiet background music throughout the house on the speakers. Make your home as inviting and friendly as possible!

3. Prepare the house for showings. This is different than staging. When listed with an agent, your agent’s job is to get in and out of the house and to make sure there’s information available to prospective buyers. When you’re selling FSBO, this is up to you. We spent about forty bucks on Amazon for a yard sign and a document holder to attach to it, and a combination box for our front door. We staked the sign and stocked it with copies of our flyer (keep count of how many you put out there — you can gauge interest by how quickly you run out!). The combination box allowed us to not be on call during showings. We changed the code on the lockbox regularly, and only hung it on the outside of the door during showings, keeping it inside the rest of the time. Page would simply text the combination to the buyers agent the day of the showing, we’d turn off our alarm system remotely, and we didn’t have to worry about being around. The only exception was one showing to people who didn’t have an agent of their own, for which we stuck around but out of the way so as not to crowd them.

Shoot low | FSBO photos

4. Take pictures of your home. If you don’t feel comfortable taking photographs or don’t have access to a camera (not your phone), this would be a step worth investing in, whether you rent equipment for a day or hire a photographer. Even though it drove me a little nuts as a buyer to see “larger than life” photos, I was coached to shoot real estate photos as wide angle as possible in every room – even if things appeared super distorted at times.

Shoot on a bright, sunny, day and of course only after your home is picked up and staged to show. I tend to squat a little when taking room pictures (see photo above) — just dropping the point of view down a few inches can make the photos feel more like you’re there IN the room looking at it, (and ceilings appear higher!). It sounds a little weird, but the difference is noticeable!

our FSBO flyer | 29thanddelight.com

5. Find your inner Don Draper. No one but you is working for your house when it’s FSBO. It’s tough to write marketing for your own home without it dripping with personal attachment. We worked hard to keep it to just the facts and not use “we” or “our”, while still injecting little tidbits about upgrades we’d done (so buyers knew the house was well cared for) and the neighbors being awesome (great location). Our fantastic buyers agent for our next house, Micole, helped us as well. Her tip: Even when character limits online are brief, spend them on a first sentence or two that really sets the stage and invites buyers to read on.

FSBO flyers and signage | 29thanddelight.com

We created a one page flyer (see above) available inside and outside the house, and some fast facts about our little Des Moines suburb (we quickly learned many showings were for out-of-towners not familiar with the area) displayed in a frame during showings. We picked up a clear document stand to keep copies of the flyers, the sellers disclosure agreement, a local city publication, and visiting agents’ cards all together.

6. Get your home on the MLS and Zillow. This work was KEY to our traffic (ten showings in the first two weeks). Page ran point on this, and after weighing a few options, he created our Zillow listing (costs nothing) and went through owners.com to create our MLS listing. You submit all the nitty gritty specs of your home, write a brief description, and you upload photos (and can pay for more than the standard amount of photos to display). The fees involved with this part were around $400, but verify based on the state in which you’re selling. We learned that in Iowa, in addition to these up front fees, a .5% of the purchase price went to an agent because Iowa has a minimum service requirement, meaning an agent has to be assigned for minimal assistance, even when you’re technically selling the home, yourself. This cost added up a bit, but was well worth it to show in every real estate and online search tool. Also, when it came time to navigate what to do with multiple offers, the assigned agent was very helpful and his attorney handled all of the purchase agreement paperwork for us.

Anyone else sell their home themselves? I’d love to add to this list of tips via your comments!

All House Parties + Holidays

Set the Table: Easter 2014

Easter 2014 Tablescape | 29thanddelight.com

I won’t be in town for Easter this year (girls trip!), but as I was packing things this weekend, I allowed myself a break to play house and create a fun tablescape as if I were going to be. 🙂

Easter 2014 Tablescape | 29thanddelight.com

I like to keep brunch from feeling too stuffy, but still pretty and a bit feminine for the spring season. Other than some jellybeans, I didn’t invest in anything new to bring this look together. (Although I later realized I had some coral colored glassware I meant to set out with this look – it was a MEGA sale score from Target last summer – drat! I’m sure I’ll use it again soon enough!)

Easter 2014 Tablescape | 29thanddelight.com

Easter 2014 Tablescape | 29thanddelight.com

Easter 2014 Tablescape | 29thanddelight.com

I don’t do much for Easter decor – it always seems a little cutesy to me. But I did pick some favorite Psalms and wrote one on a painted wooden tag (originally bought for the Oscar party, but never used!) and set one at each place setting. A shot glass of jellybeans at each plate was about as themed as I go for this holiday. 🙂

Easter 2014 Tablescape | 29thanddelight.com
Easter 2014 Tablescape | 29thanddelight.com

And now for the “pan right…” and you’ll see a peek at the moving chaos already in play!

Anyone else planning an Easter tablescape?? I’d love to see! 🙂