The Lichte's New Farmhouse......Week 26

Here we are.... Week 26.

Lots of stuff has been happening even though from the photos you really can't tell... This week I promise not to bore you with picture of light switches and plumbing pipes. I am sure the past couple of weeks have been a snoozefest....

But back to Week 26... Finished rough in part of plumbing and electrical and I think maybe Heating and cooling. I am always so excited when we get done with things, then I realize an invoice follows the completion and that quickly takes that excitement away.

Building a house is expensive. I was completely naive to that. If my older brother (the one who built a house right before me) is reading this post then I can guarantee that he is laughing his a*# off... He tried to tell me.  But me, being a tad stubborn and hard headed didn't for a second believe him. I am sure that everyone does their "budget" differently. I obsess over it and have my own little spreadsheet that every bill is entered - I wouldn't necessarily suggest doing that.

Each person and family has their own lists of things that are important to them when building a home. You just have to find what those things are to you. In 10 to 15 years things go out of style and you want to change things anyways. (To my farmer who is reading this - I promise I won't do that - HA!)

Now enough doom and gloom of the house building process (back to the fun stuff).... Because I promise that MOST of it is very fun.

Week 26...

We got a new water line this week. 

Hopefully this next week we will get our garage doors. I am so excited to see them!

I have been re finishing our old table and chairs in the garage. I sanded the seats down but will have our painters to paint them all black. 

I am in the process of staining the top a cherry color and although I planned to stain the legs as well I am considering painting them black since I think it would be more of a nightmare to strip that paint. 

This is a better picture of the top it is a little bit darker than it appears in the photo... bad lighting... 

Black legs.. Thoughts? 

Maybe - just maybe - it will somewhat resemble this... 

The head of my table will be two Queen Anne chairs that will be recovered in this black buffalo check fabric.

This is the outdoor lighting that we got this afternoon at Home Depot. One will go on each side of our front door.

We also made the purchase of our kitchen sink... Also from Home Depot we got this apron front farmhouse style sink.  I really contemplated on getting just the one single basin - but for practicality purposes i opted for the two bowls.










I guess that's it for this week.  Besides a chilly day today we are still blessed with great weather for January. I think that this next week is supposed to be beautiful too, but it makes me nervous for what's to come in February. For now - I will enjoy it.

Have a great week....

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The Lichte's New Farmhouse.... Week 25

Week 24.... It's the middle of January and we are going on out 4th or 5th straight day of beautiful weather. It has me very ready for Spring (which means my house will be done) but I am afraid that we still have quite a bit of winter left. AND the 12 year old kid in me is desperately wanting at least one good day of being snowed in. 

Anyways - back to the house.... This is our Week 25 picture. 

Just for fun lets take a picture at our week 1 photo... You know - back when i made my farmer mow down record yielding corn... We still talk about that from time to time.

Back to Week 25 - we got a couple of new power poles. 

AND a pretty green electrical box close to our barn. I plan to hopefully hide it with some ornamental grass. But maybe with the green grass, green crops and green tractors it will all blend in.

Lots and lots of exterior lighting.... Excited to see how it will someday look at night. (See the little circles on each corner of the "eyebrow" those will be my lights. 

More lights.... 

Our rough in plumbing was finished over the weekend.

Double checking the placement of all of my heat/ac registers. 

In the upstairs bathroom we got our bathtub. Pretty basic - nothing fancy, but instead of a tub wall we will tile around the whole thing. Probably a white subway tile...

Or something similar to this... 

Outside faucets - can't have enough of these. I currently have one and trying to water everything from the plants to trees to the garden and 100 feet of garden hoses later those chores are finished. 

Things also got started on our HVAC this week as well. I say this week after week (maybe to convince myself) but I really feel like things are starting to come together. 

My farmer and I also spent much of Friday afternoon searching for counter tops. We are still waiting on price quotes, but as soon as I get those this next week I will share with you. 

And, as I was enjoying the sunshine and snapping pictures of our farmhouse, I glanced up at the sunset. This is my view from my front porch. I am feeling pretty blessed tonight.... Not for the house or even for the sunset, but just for the dirt it sits on.

I hope that you all have a great week - I sure plan on it...

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The Lichte's New Farmhouse..... Week 24

It's now an end to a very lazy weekend with my farmer. We have spent a lot of time on the couch, under blankets watching movies and today of course football. It's been the perfect way after a tough and very cold week. 

... I can not believe we have been at the is building a home thing for almost 6 months. Just last year at this time we just started to get serious about building a home. We would search endless hours on the Internet at house plans, that was such a fun part. (You know - before reality).... It's funny how we came up on this particular plan. My farmer and I found a one story house plan that we both really loved. I was ready to give up on my two story house dream when I scrolled upon this beauty.... Sure we made a lot of changes on the inside and some that affected the outside as well, but I could not imagine building anything different. It's our house... It's our farmhouse... 

We met with the siding guy today as well. We are doing white vinyl siding so there isn't a lot to decide there. I know vinyl is sort of a thing of the past to a lot of people. Concrete board siding that is painted is really popular, but for us having a white house, I like the crisp, clean look that vinyl siding offers.  Even though it is technically white now, I can't wait to see the outside with the siding, black architectural shutters and big white columns. 

But for now - back to week 24. Take a look... 

And we have a pretty sheet of plywood boarded up over where my front door is apposed to be. Hopefully that comes in soon. 

Also this is the door that we went with for the entrance to our garage. It is also what out interior doors will be.  The backing is a breadboard type look and just seems pretty country to me.

Our electrician (Fox Electric out of Warrensburg-super nice guy) braved some cold weather and put in some of our electrical this week. We have ALOT of can lighting. I've quickly noticed that light fixtures are mainly decorative. Sure they put out a little light, but for the most part they just set the look of the room. Don't get me wrong - that's pretty important too,  but I figured out early on we need a lot of can lights. 

I feel like these doors are the first thing installed in the house that I have picked out. Besides windows, but it was a little different. I was really excited about this door - so when it got installed this week I made my farmer text me a picture right away. 

Both of the windows and the doors have a transom window above. The space in between the door and the windows will really just be trim. SO when it's all done it will look more like one big unit as opposed to as separate as it looks here... 

Ahhh... if it wasn't already dark I would walk over to the house and just star at these doors. 

The inside of this door is wood but will be painted white (Dove White - to be exact) to match the rest of the trim. My favorite part of this door is the bottom panel. It's a 3/4 panel door so as you can see the glass doesn't go all the way to the bottom. 

And from the outside - they are white.... 

I am showing this side of the house to show you where our outdoor wall lights are going. 

It's a grainy picture but we have three of these lights for the East side of our house. One to the far left of the left garage door, one in the middle of the two garage doors and one above the garage entrance door - they will all be the same height. 

We are a ways off from figuring out our wood floors, BUT we are needing to order our banister this week. I will want our floors to be the same the of wood and stain as our banister. That look is not very grainy, very uniform and a beautiful dark, rich, cherry color... This below photo is exactly like what I am trying to get... It is a pre finished hardwood floor from Home Depot, but my farmer and I both want real hardwood floors. Hopefully after we talk with our hardwood floor people we have a better idea as to what the best kind of wood is to achieve this look. Wish us luck in this search.  

I don't always like the trendiest things... My grandmas house is one of my very favorite homes, I have liked toile since I was 12 years old, I would wallpaper every single room if I could afford it, I will more than likely paint most of my whole house a very light shade of grey, I feel a need to monogram everything (even my sheets)  I love floral curtains, and I collect butter dishes... None of that stuff makes me trendy - and that's okay....

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Christmas in the Country Gift Exchange

This year I participated in the "Christmas in the Country Gift Exchange." A fun gift exchange from other Ag/Farm/Ranch related blogs around the United States. Although this year my farmer and I really cut back on what we normally spend during Christmas time (hello new house), I am so glad that I decided to participate in this. It's been great to get connected from so many different women from across the country. Each and every person that I have read about (all of them) I secretly want to be my new best friend or a lovely wine sharing neighbor. 

I had so much fun finding the perfect gift for Lara Durben from the blog My Other More Exciting Self , check out my gift to her here. She wrote a great post about it. 

I was lucky enough to receive an amazing assortment of gifts from Stacy Walker, a blogger from The Backroad Life. (If you have time you must check out her blog and her sweet little family) 

The UPS and Fedex man are no strangers to my house (I buy a lot of stuff for out new house online) It was fun to actually get a gift in the mail that was made up just for me. And let me tell you, coffee, caramels, cow Christmas ornaments and a plaid (only my favorite print-ever) infinity scarf-it's obvious that it was most definitely made for me.  So Stacy - if you are reading this - thank you thank you thank you...

All of my goodies... Isn't that scarf just beautiful - she also sells them, you must check out her Instagram page (Stacyfarmsew) , I have my eye on a couple of other prints to add to my collection. 

I will not show you the inside of this tin.... It's possible that i ate all of the goodies (caramels and popcorn) before I was able to even take a photo.... They were so good.

I love and collect Christmas ornaments - so I can't wait to add these to my collection next year.

I am not normally a fan of flavored coffee, but this coffee is amazing... I actually had a cup on Christmas Morning. 

Last but not least the sweetest little note from Stacy. :)























Please check out my newest friends (Stacy and Lara) and their blogs and head over to Christmas in the Country to read about all 70 farm/country bloggers who participated this year.


Happy New Year

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The Lichte's New Farmhouse......... Week 23

Week 23 was a busy one. With another Holiday right in the middle of the week it sort of got us out of whack - I am ready for a little bit of normalcy in January. My farmer and I have  wedding to attend in Austin, Texas at the end of the month, so I am spending the rest of the month slowly boxing up our house.

Take a look at our Week 23 picture. Our roof is completely on. (We have snow....)

We have a large (unfinished) attic space above our garage that we are going to put our upstairs HVAC in as opposed to the basement. In doing this we needed to create access to that attic so we have some stairs.

We met with an electrician one morning this past week as well. To say that it was overwhelming was an understatement, but just as I have felt with every single sub contractor, he knew what he was doing and I trusted him and his ideas. 

We also have lots of new plumbing throughout the house.

Our fireplace should be in sometime this next week as well.

No big deal, just some snow in my bedroom.... 

Our front door should also be in sometime soon,  but in the meantime we have boarded up the hole to try to keep some wind out.

I've been buying a lot of stuff for the house this past week (to my farmer that's reading this, that's why our next credit card bill will be so high - I love you)

Master bathtub faucet

Hallway Bath faucet 

Built in under counter ice maker for our kitchen island 

And this light fixture for above our kitchen table. I have been wanting to order it for a while now but was waiting for it to go on sale. Turns out it never goes on sale.... I am excited for it to come in - I think I will other love it or hate it as soon as it comes in... I'll keep you posted (I am sure you are dying with anticipations. :)

And lastly this toilet (which i ordered for all three bathrooms)... I love the "trim" around the bottom of the base. Leave it to me to notice any kind of trim work on a toilet. 

That's all for us this week.... I hope everyone is having a great start to 2015. My farmer and I had a great 2014 but something tells me 2015 is going to be even better.

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