So Much to Catch Up On!

Hi Friends!
Time for an update on life at those crazy Hayes.  I began to realize I was only posting on the new house updates and not really the rest of our family's going-on's.  Since these posts are far a few in between I will be updating more on our personal stuff outside of the build (but since a lot of our life revolves around that at the moment it will all kind of mesh together).  If you follow me on Instagram (khayes_83) I usually post a few things on my story when we visit the house site among our other daily shenangins.

So first the Family Update:
Pretty much anyone reading this knows me and is aware of my (Step) Mother In-Law's, Amy, current battle with Hodgkin Lymphoma.  Being Amara and Lily's teacher she has had to put schooling them on hold to focus on getting healthy.  We have registered them for a private school next year, but they are home for now.  Amara is getting continued tutoring for her dyslexia.  I'm very thankful that the weather has started turning and I'm able to start throwing them outside again.  The house feels immensely bigger when our yard is available. :)
As I mentioned before, now that there is actual work being done we visit the build site daily, so it's become a ritual of sorts.  The kids spent most of February and March climbing mountains of mud and icing themselves and all things surrounding them with it (the cars, the house, their parents...😜).  Let's just say our cars are now in desperate need of detailing and the porch needs some pressure washing.  I'm not even sure if the boots will survive for next year.  (Did I already mention how glad I am the sun is back?)
We've also started building our collection of kayaks and paddle boards to stock our lake with and of course I still need to get my giant floating island that I've always wanted to buy.  😏
             Everett turned 2 on May 15th and I'm determined to have him potty trained before we move.  (Which at this point is looking October-ish?)  I'm feeling bittersweet that my baby days are over!  😭  We celebrated in true Everett style with a Peppa Pig themed birthday party.  Complete with a "muddy puddle" (a shared favorite of Peppa and Everett).  I don't have pictures from that yet...(*hint hint,* Pop.)

Okay house update time:  The foundation was excavated and the foundation poured.  You guys are going to laugh once you see the video below, but to be honest we were kind of shocked at how small it looked at first.  You know how in your minds eye you envision things so strongly and then when you see things in real life it can take you aback?  Well, we were relieved to find out that is a normal reaction when home owners see their foundation poured.  Thank goodness we have a professional realty photographer in the family!  My brother, George, brought his drone out one Sunday afternoon between rain showers and gave us a birds eye view.  Like I said you're going to laugh that we were afraid it was too small! 😄  

After that was completed the framing started.  This is the stage we have been told where things start getting fun because you see huge changes in a short amount of time and we were not disappointed!  These guys move fast!
  We met the foreman, Ken, and we were pleasantly surprised to find our that like our contractor and architect he also works with the Street of Dreams!  This is especially exciting for me because I have grown up going to the Street of Dreams and never in my wildest dreams ever thought I would be getting to live in a SOD home.

We visit the site almost every day.  These rods sticking out every where were the stuff of a mother's nightmare.

Framing on the basement started.

Starting on the main level floor.  

My  mother taking in the view from our picture window.

Trusses installed.  This is when it started to actually look like a house to me. 

The stairway desgin was something the architect had to convince us of.  If was really hard to envision, but it really does look wonderful!

View of the lake and the back of our house,

This is what our home looks like currently:

A little drama ensued with the arch design of the front entry:

(In case you have not figured this out these videos are from my daily stories on Instagram.)

After 6 weeks the framing should be completed by the middle of next week.  Then our roofing will be installed.  I plan to do a walk through tour for the blog soon!

    

It's Finally Happening!

It's been awhile since I have posted.  Not for lack of trying, but what was originally lack of progress. Here is a draft I had started on February 27:

I've been putting off updating because there is really no progress to report on the house since I posted a live video on Facebook a few weeks back.  I can't express just how exciting it was to see work finally started on our new home, especially after overcoming some unexpected hurdles with the permits and weather.  Days after my video post the Home Owners Association served our contractor a Cease and Desist letter stating that the geo-tech report done on the land was to old and we needed a new one before we could continue.  Although the report had been approved by the engineer it wasn't good enough for the board.  Our contractor was livid, especially since he has built many homes in this neighborhood, and has not had any issues like this before.  However, it has been about 8 years since a house has been built and the board members had turned over in that time and so this is something these particular members have not handled yet.  Well, we got a soil sample taken and a week later it came back A-OK.  Just when thought we could get back to work the association said they wanted to review everything and get the entire boards approval - only some were absent and we had to wait for them to return.
After two weeks of waiting we finally got the approval from the board to proceed - that was 5 days ago.  3 days ago the excavation started back up again only to have the machine break down!  We got word today that it was a faulty hose, but we really don't know when it will be fixed.  This is getting to be ridiculously comical.      

I ended up not posting as it was incomplete and the excavator was fixed and work had FINALLY recommenced.  Then I wasn't sure if I should still post what I had written or re-do the whole thing.  It got to a point of feeling so behind that I wasn't sure what to do until now when I decided I had to do something!  So now that you know what's been going on in my mind let's get to a much more fun update. :)

The glorious mounds of mud.  A beautiful messy start! 

Trenches dug out for pipes.

Many deep trenches and holes to play in.  A child's playland.  

Dancing on the mound.  The kids could easily move now and call it good. 

Paradise for Gabe, but for some reason he didn't want his hands touching the dirt that day.  

Lily and Amara had so much fun jumping into the trenches.

I'm so pleased to finally be reporting this progress!  And  the icing on the cake is that after two weeks of digging we found out yesterday that the foundation is ready to start pouring today!   

Looks Like A Cold, Cold Winter

A week ago today we got word that the permits were finally approved.  However, true to fashion we have another delay.  Winters here have been unseasonably warm the last few years.  This year it had returned fiercely to reclaim its rightful place.  Two days ago it snowed for the 5th time since December, and the week prior we dealt with below freezing temperatures.  You can probably see where I'm going with this.  Between the frozen solid ground and the snow covering everything the excavation has been delayed once again.  We were set to get started for tomorrow (Friday) and while I haven't been to the property since the most recent snowfall, considering there is still 6" outside our door I'm guessing that is not going to be happening.  Hopefully, we'll be able to see a little action started next week. :)

Today's High

6" deep.  I don't remember having this much snow since 2008.

Despite my disappointment in the delay I really do enjoy basking in the beauty of a this rare kind of snowfall. 

For a little fun, a few weeks ago my dad (whom I might add is rather incredible at landscape photography) approached me with an idea of taking a family picture on our new property before they start work on the land. After triple layering the kids we trekked out last week to brave the below freezing temperatures.  It may have been cold, but my goodness was it gorgeous!     

With walkie-talkies in hand he and my mom drove down to the other side of the lake to get a much better vantage point. 

I love the lighting on this one.

Closer up with a photo bomb from our forest dwelling neighbors on the right.

Future Home of the Hayes Family! 

To see even more ridiculously beautiful photography visit my dad's website 45th Parallel Photography:
http://www.45thphoto.com/

    

Evolution of Our House Design

Well, here we are 2 days left of 2016, almost 7 months since we first started seriously looking for a new home, 4 months since we signed our contracts, 8 weeks since permits have been submitted and our land still remains untouched.  Normally, it takes only 4-6 weeks to get them approved.  However, there were minor hiccups that the contractor and architect needed to redo thus causing a delay in approval from all departments.  We are told that everything should be finally approved by the end of this week and we can  get started as soon as they are completed.  

We did get a final rendering of what our home will look like that I wanted to share.  First, a little history on the process and how we ended up with the design we did. :) 

Where do you even start?  We have always loved the timeless charm of a Hamptons style home (which is one of the reasons we were attracted to the home we put the offer on), so we knew that we would begin there.  We searched through many, many, MANY floor plans looking for the right fit for us.  While we found a few homes as inspirations we couldn't make any of them work.  In July we spoke with our contractor who put us in touch with his favorite architect, Tom.

He was able to design it completely from scratch.  He has just been wonderful to work with and has been very patient as we tweaked and re-tweaked and we now have a perfect layout for our family.

I am saving the floor plan for a future to post so I can give a more in-depth explanation.  For now I wanted to show the process of the exterior (which is more fun since its changes are more dramatic then the floor plan anyway ;) ).  I'll just be doing the highlights.  There were actually many more adjustments and emails back and forth, but the following 4 show the progression best.    

Version 1  

Before we had met our architect we had given our contractor a list of what we were thinking along with a couple of inspiration pictures.  This was what he brought back to us:   

Okay, we're on to something, but it it still not there.  

Version 2

Some shingles added, entryway peak adjusted, and we lost a window and a porthole. 

  

 At this point our contractor was still being a "middle man" between us and the architect.  David felt that we would probably make better progress if he met with him face to face. 

Version 3

 Much better!  After meeting with Tom he was able to get a clearer idea of what we were wanting.
  Lowered the roof line, fancied the entryway arch more and brought back my porthole window.  

Version 4

We decided that in order for the Hamptons look to truly work we needed the entire siding to be shingles.  We also lowered the roof line a little more and narrowed the second level of the entry to and extended the eaves.  We also extended the roof on the left wing of the house to give more interest.    

Now we wait to see what how close our final look will compare in 7 months!  

A Long and Overdue Update

It’s been a few years and (what seems like) a lifetime ago.  I have been meaning to dust off the ol’ blog for quite some time and with our latest adventure I wanted to be able to find a place to document everything. 

We’ve had quite a change of pace these past 5 years.  We now have 4 children: Amara (7), Lily (5) Gabriel (3) and Everett (18mo), a thriving business, a paid for home and a new season of life upon us.  We have been incredibly fortunate and blessed to have the opportunity to build our dream home in a lakefront neighborhood we have been wanting to live in since we got married.                                                                                                         

Ta-Daahh!  The lot is 2 acres and has nice flat areas and has great views of the surrounding forest.  Turns out there are about 20 miles worth a trails around the forested area – score!

    

A little over 10 years ago David had customers who lived in the development and was so enamored with the area he drove me through it  and, I too, was smitten.   Of course, being sensible I never thought there would be any likelihood of us being able to ever live here.  After all, we were a single income family with a profession that doesn't usually afford this sort of luxury.  Since then I’ve dreamed of living on a lake and David had always dreamed of building sailboats.  

In March 2015 we made our final house payment after 7 years of throwing every extra penny we could towards paying it off.  While we loved our little house (and loved not having a mortgage even more) it was starting to feel a bit tight with 3 children and a fourth on the way.   We weren’t too excited to leave our cute little house in favor of moving just for the sake of needing a bigger home.  Our plan was to make do and enjoy our financial freedom while storing money until we had enough to put towards much bigger and maybe nicer “dream” home.  Well, baby number 4 (Everett) arrived and while it was fine at the beginning once he started getting mobile things started feeling really tight.  I found myself on Zillow more and more “just checking” to see what was there, how our house compared to others in value, sending David the occasional home I would find…etc. 

This spring we decided to freshen up the house with new paint and décor.  While still in the middle of this I was doing my now daily skimming of Zillow and saw this house listed:  

It was waaaay out of our range, but so lovely that I sent it David anyway not really expecting much.

He wrote back:

We both agreed it was a pipe dream.

A week later David’s mother had come down for a visit and we were telling her about the house we had found.  She encouraged us to just take a look at it anyway.  We called the realtor and set up a showing and found a realtor to represent us.  It was beautiful – and nearly everything we could ever want.  Although it was out of the price range of what we thought we were going to pursue, we felt confident we could handle the payments and even have the ability to pay it off early as we did our other house.  We knew we wanted to put an offer on it and after another showing with the owners present we put in an offer for what we saw as a fair offer for the market.  They did not agree.  We had put all out cards on the table with that offer, so we did not counter.  Defeated, but not discouraged we knew it was truly time to move on from our current house.  (Truthfully, I had a total meltdown about facing another summer with 4 small children in our home.  The previous year had a record high summer and our house basically turns into an oven.  I had tiny children including a newborn that I had to take care of that it really took a toll.  I was so afraid of facing a repeat! #firstworldproblems)
We looked for other houses and land for sale in the same area and surrounding Oregon City/West Linn, but nothing seemed to work.  Then we decided to revisit a lot that was directly across from the house we had put the offer on.  A property we had quickly looked at but dismissed.

After walking the lot we really felt at home and got very excited!  We thought this might actually be an option after all.

·         

Then come to find out it was already pending a sale. :(  Well, long story short it was actually a contractor purchasing the land and willing to sell the land to us and build our dream home within the budget we had!  Bonus:  He builds homes with the Street of Dreams and he used his same design team from that to work on our house.   

So, not only do we get to be on our dream location we get to have a home tailor made for us by the top people in the field.  #firstworldscore

  

Obviously, this was a greatly condensed version of what our journey was to even get to this point.  There were many more ups, downs, backwards and forth and discussions and prayer that I could not fit into one blog post.  We are incredibly humbled to be receiving this and our main hope is to be able to use this land and home for the glory of the Lord.  Praise to Him!

We signed the contract with our builder 3 months ago.  At post time design plans have been finalized (more on that next time), permits are submitted and we should be meeting with our contractor in the next week to walk the lot and verify the exact placement of our home.  Once that is confirmed he will start excavating and getting the land ready for the foundation to be poured.  Then the real work begins.  Eek!   

One Month Left!

Today is August 3rd and leaving only 1 month left until my due date! To mark the occasion I decided it was time to take down the Newborn/0-3 months clothes and get them washed and put away. I knew I had a lot (I was generously given BOXES of clothes when I was pregnant with Amara), but I didn't remember having this much!

So, as far as clothing goes I think I'm covered. :)

Well, life has been crazy here lately and even though I had started the load in the morning I didn't get to folding them until the evening.

I'm glad to get this ready. It's always so exciting to see the itty-bitty clothes and try to imagine how anybody can squeeze into them.

Say Goodbye to the Crib

Many people have commented to me lately how Amara looks more like a toddler than a baby now. Well, today was one step closer to her leaving her babyhood forever.

While Amara spent her special "Grammy Mondays" with Amy I was running around getting her new bed ready.

You see, David and I had been planning on getting her a bed the the first week of August for awhile now, but couldn't find one in a reasonable price range that we liked that wasn't a mail order. We had some issues with mail ordering furniture in the past and so I'm a little jaded when it comes to the idea of that. However, I had resigned myself that this was most likely going to be the case and picked what I thought would be the best one in our price range on Babies R Us.

I woke up extra early this morning (due to my now never ending appetite) and could not go back to sleep. After fixing myself some food I eventually wandered onto Craigslist to give it one last look over before I placed the order for the bed. To my delighted surprise I found a Pottery Barn Kids toddler bed for $85! The lady only had it for a year, but they were moving and she wanted her son to get a bigger bed. I couldn't believe it! I had been looking on and off since I found out I was pregnant and had not seen a Pottery Barn one yet. These things retail for $220!

I quickly emailed her and hoped it had not been sold. I received a reply back a few hours later saying that it had not been sold, but 2 other people had expressed interest in it so it was going to be first come first serve.

So after Amara was dropped off with Amy I went directly to her house and snatched the bed right up. It had some scratches on it, but nothing a little touch up finish didn't fix. :)

Then I went to PB Kids to buy her the bedding we had picked out. I noticed that the quilt was advertised in 2 spots as being one price and it was marked on the price tag as $20 higher. I asked the manager about it and she gave me $25 off! I just love not paying retail! :)

Later that day David and I set up her new bed.

Amara loved it! She was so excited to have a new bed and loved putting her books and stuffed animals on it.

I had been thinking for months about how we were going to transition her from crib to bed, and I figured I would stay with her at least the first night until she fell asleep so she would feel comfortable. However, David thought we should just keep her routine the same and remind her to not get up. It worked! We only went in once to check on her and she was happily still lying in bed. About 45 min after putting her down we went to check on her again and found this:

I'd say Day 1 is a success so far. :)