Fresh Home Friday: One day when I have a real house...

So guess what....I'm still living in the basement. *Sigh*. The city said it was "no probs fool" that our house was a foot too close to the property line. It was a 15 minute meeting of, "Will someone move to begin the meeting?" "I do." "Will someone second that motion." BAHH! It was so ridiculous.

So now we are just waiting for our engineer to clear up his schedule and sign a little paper that says our solid concrete structure is sturdy enough to build on. I dream someday that I'll have a real house but now I just wallow in my dungeon and slowly get paler and paler.

Okay, I'm not that pathetic. But one time I did climb up on to my roof (as if it's a feat) and closed my eyes and pretended I was in my kitchen looking out the window into my backyard. Ok...I am pathetic.

So until my house is built I just dream of how I'll decorate it. Today's Fresh Home Friday is some of my favorite decorating ideas that maybe someday I'll get to use.

After writing about so many cute, rustic weddings on The Red Dirt Bride I saw so many cute things that I wanted to re-do my own wedding. But since I don't plan on getting remarried, I figured I could use the same shabby chic/rustic decor in decorating my house.

I love this eclectic decorating style. I could replicate something like this on a bookshelf or side table. Photo Credit.

This would be so cute in place of a headboard or in Evie's room. Photo Credit.

I'm loving this vintage-y teapot as a kitchen table centerpiece. Photo credit.

How cute would this look hanging in my kitchen?! Photo credit.

I love this old door turned into a shelf. Photo credit.

This is such a great night stand! Photo credit.

I have a bunch of old windows like this that I've been trying to decide what to do with. Photo credit

I love this craft organization. I'm so excited for a craft room!! Photo credit.

And for the garden..photo credit.

I guess since I'm not busy decorating a house right now I could just create an inspiration board and really solidify how I'm going to decorate so that when that day appears I'll be ready. 

Or I could just pout in my bunker.

Home Remodel Update-- City Setbacks

So the plan was that when I went to Georgia, Christopher's dad would come and help him build the house so it would be mostly done by the time I got back. That way we wouldn't have to find somewhere to stay and I wouldn't be bugging Christopher to spend time with me because I was lonely while he was doing something more important....like building our house. (And the sad part is I would do that.)

So we (read Chris and his dad) worked really hard to get all the plans ready to turn into the city so we could get our building permits. We turned them in, in what would have been plenty of time and then we got a call. 

Apparently out existing bunker home is slightly too close to the property line. Like barely.

 (Well good thing it was built on wheels and we can just push it over. 'Really you built it on wheels, well that was convenient. 'No I didn't build it on wheels I'd have to tear it down and rebuild it!' Name that Gilmore Girl reference)

So obviously there is NOTHING that we can do about that but protocol is protocol so we have to meet with some committee so they can approve that our house is where it is...

Except the committee only meets every other week. And the day they called us, THE COMMITTEE HAD JUST FINISHED MEETING!!! Yeah because calling the day before would be way too much work. But then it turns out you have to turn in an application to be apart of the meeting 3 weeks in advance. So it wouldn't have mattered anyways.

So now Chris can't even meet with them until the day after I get back from Georgia. So that sucks.

Cross your fingers that a meteor lands on that particular city building not killing anyone but rendering them incapable of being jerks and signed building permits go floating into the air where we, in the cheering crowd, can grab one and skip off gleefully into the sunset. 

Home Remodel Stage 2: Flourish

So one might think that when renovating a home, the yard comes dead last in terms of importance. Not so in our case.

You may remember from my first home remodel post that Flourish (landscaping) was supposed to be stage four. The original plan was to wait until the house was finished before we started landscaping but since the weather has been a tad warmer and the house won't be done until the end of summer, we decided to do the yard now so we can enjoy it during the warm months.

Our huge grassy yard

Turns out my husband is a landscaping genius. I look at our backyard and see a huge grassy area with no idea where to start. He looks back there and sees all kinds of potential. So a few weekends ago he measured everything and then started mapping out what the backyard will look like.

Our yard layout. The yard is at the top, house at the bottom.

The basic idea is to have a deck attached to the house and then a big open grassy area up to the trees. Behind the trees will be a fire pit and a bunch of planters and then to the other side we'll put in a vegetable garden. There will be a brick path that goes along side where the existing garage is (that will end up just being a concrete pad to park an unused car, or a boat if we had one.) and winds through the yard to the fire pit. And if all goes as planned will do an in ground trampoline in between the vegetable garden and the concrete pad.


So to start off we figured out where we wanted the path to go and Chris started digging out the fire pit.

Chris picked up some brick for free from some lady who was moving but we still need more to finish the whole pathway. We have about a third of what we need.

It's all different colors and it's used which is gonna give it the rustic look we're going for.

This is how far Chris got in one day:

Home Remodel Stage 1: De-Uglify Part Two

We finally finished Evelyn's room and I have to say, I am loving that this room is functional now. It makes the house seem so much bigger. The room is a bit eclectic in terms of color scheme. But it works for her temporary nursery until we finish upstairs. Then I'll decorate it in a put together, planned sort of fashion, but for now this works.

It may seem a little crowded but that's because it's also serving as a guest/craft room.

Take a look at the before and afters:

Before: 

During:

After:

Home Remodel Stage 1: De-Uglify

I've never really lived my life by the book. In other words, nothing in my life is ever done normally as evidenced by our new house. You know, the basement.

In case your curious here's the rough plan of our remodel:

Stage 1: De-Uglify- Make the current basement situation livable. You'll read more about this in this post.
Stage 2: Expansion- Where little basement house becomes a real house with a top floor and everything. Expected completion Summer 2014.
Stage 3: Beautify- Make our brand new house beautiful with new decor and furniture.
Stage 4: Flourish- Do some gorgeous landscaping.
Stage 5: Gut the Butt- Gut and completely re-do the basement with dry wall and other things that real houses have.

Here's stage one in action!