House Shopping

Last week, Rich and I spent Friday off from work "shopping" for things for the new house.  Its really insane how many different choices there are.  Who would have thought something as simple as a toilet had so many options (color, tank type, bowl shape, height, style...)!

It was a very busy day, but I think we made some pretty good progress.  While the choices aren't FINAL yet, we were able to make some decisions on:

• toilets
• bathroom faucets (for all baths)
• kitchen faucet
• kitchen sink
• hardwood floors
• molding
• kitchen countertop
• kitchen hardware (for cabinets)

So we did pretty well.  For the bathroom faucets, our primary choice right now are these:

They are the same faucet, just different finishes.  Depending upon the final counter-top choice for the different bathrooms, we'll pick either the stainless (1st picture) or the oiled bronze.

Its exciting to be making the choices now and to see the picture in our minds starting to come true.  :-)

Goals - Week 10

I didn't get nearly as much done last week as I thought I would.  It was a hectic week with showings at the house and trying to determine if we were going to get an offer and whether we should stay with our current agent or not.  Here's the progress from last week:

Goals for Week 9:
- Finish quilting "Tumbler" quilt --  This is about 1/2 quilted at this point.  I've been playing around with my own pantograph design, so its taking a little longer to get it quilted.  Plus, the woman who pieced this top did a pretty poor job and there are ripples everywhere and the top is SO not flat.
- Sew "Starry Night" needlepoint -- I was able to sew a bit on this.  Its kind of my "go-to" project when I don't have a ton of time to do something.  I can pick it up for 15 minutes or 1/2 hour and make some steady progress and it takes a whole of 2 minutes to put away.
- Wash and prep backing for "Shine on Bayou Cane" -- didn't do this at all, but I have the backing! ;-)
- Finish quilting "Purple Squared" --  didn't touch this one at all either

So what do I plan on doing this week???

Goals for Week 10:
- Finish quilting "Tumbler" quilt --
- Make 16 log cabin blocks for quilt class --
- Sew "Starry Night" needlepoint and photograph --
- Wash and prep backing for "Shine on Bayou Cane" --

I'm leaving "Purple Squared" off the list for now since I can quilt that on my regular sewing machine...which I will always have available.

House -- So on the house front, we did get an offer from a couple.  Their initial offer was a complete low-ball offer of 20% less than our asking price.  Considering the asking price is under $250k, that's a lot to take off the price of the house.  We countered with dropping the price by $1,000.  We've been going back and forth the past two days and we almost have them up to the price we want.  Right now there's a $2000 difference between the prices.  We really want to get them up to $240k, especially considering we put $2000 of custom wood blinds in the house that are staying with the house.

If we do accept the offer, we're going to end up having to rent somewhere, which is why I am pushing to get things onto the quilting frame and quilted.  We're not sure where we will rent yet, but it may not have room for the frame to be setup.  If not, then I won't be able to quilt anything (easily) until we move into the new house, which will be in the October/November time-frame.  So I'm really pushing to try and get some things done so that I can keep the frame up as long as possible.

House Choices

If you've read my blog over the past few months, you'll know that last summer Rich and I bought a piece of land about 10 miles from our current house location.  We spent most of the summer/fall clearing trees and prepping the land for building a house.  We're still trying to sell our current house, but we're slowing making some of the choices of what to put inside our home.

The biggest items we've looked at so far are the kitchen cabinets and the fireplace.  We've picked out the style of the cabinets, but we just need to narrow down on the color of the wood.  The front of the cabinets will be a cherry wood because we love the grain of the wood.  We're debating between two medium brown colors where one is more of a brown and the other has more yellow tones in it.  Either way...they will look nice.

The other item we've looked at is the fireplace.  Below is the picture from the manufacturer's website.  The fireplace can be used with either the doors closed (as shown in the picture) or you can open the doors and there's a decorative wire grill that fits into the opening.  The fireplace is incredible to see in person.  The kind of "cool" thing about the fireplace is that with the doors closed it is one of the most efficient fireplaces available.  It burns so hotly that it burns not only the wood, but also all the gases and ash that gets near the top of the fireplace.  That's why in the picture you see the orange flames much higher in the fireplace than normal fireplaces.

We saw the fireplace in action at the local dealer and its wonderful.  Very warm and easy to use and the flames are absolutely spectacular.

Now we just have to get the current house to sell so that we can move forward with building the new house.