The Journal - Ryan and Leah's New House

4:57 p.m. — August 2, 2004
This morning, we received a call from the township with a question about our plumbing permit application. So YAY, they're actually looking at our application! It's been almost two weeks since we submitted the plans to the building department, and we're hoping it's all moving along steadily. This phone call was a good sign.

The crazy summer rain has done wonders for our grass and for my vegetable garden (if I call it MY vegetable garden, I suppose I should also call it RYAN'S grass). Remember how my little garden looked at the end of June? Well, take a look at it now:

(Everything that's NOT labelled is tomatoes.)

Yes, everything is HUGE. And yes, planting the tomatoes too close together has made it very difficult to see what's growing in the middle of the mess. The pepper plant is very tall and strong, with a few peppers on the way, and I was very surprised that the rhubarb not only survived, but is thriving and ready for pie.

Brick Removal

The 2nd great dig of the year has begun, this time in the center of our backyard. We're digging out the patio that we weren't sure we were removing until Opa pulled out many of the bricks while attempting to free the stump grinder from our soggy yard a few months ago.

Can you spot my birthday present in the photo...? A hammock! I won't tell you how many months late this present was in coming, but we DID get a great end-of-season deal on it at the Home Depot this weekend, so that's OK with me.

4:31 p.m. — August 4, 2004
The Big Debate

So lately, the big debate has been about house color. More specifically, our house color...in vinyl. Now before you get all huffy about how un-authentic and unattractive vinyl siding is, let it be known that we are A.) not rich, and B.) not too fond of excessive recurring house maintenance, especially with a whole unfishined interior looming in the distance. In a perfect world, we would be painstakingly restoring original clapboard discovered under our lovely asbestos shingle siding, but alas, that is not a possibility in our current situation.

The vinyl color swatches in the book from our contractor were limited, to say the least. We were hoping for a sage green similar to this house, but apparently, that is a color more prone to fading and therefore more expensive to make and to buy. So we've been deciding between two colors from the swatch book: pale yellow and dark grayish/brown. With either option, we'll have a red front door and heavy white trim (no shutters).

We worry that light yellow — Ryan doesn't like darker yellows — will not have enough contrast against white trim with no shutters, and the lone red door won't give the house enough pop. That's where the dark grayish/brown comes in. It provides plenty of contrast against white shutters with a red door. Plus, we're very fond of earthy, homey colors, like the sage green.

But no matter how much I convince myself that the earthy, dark grayish/brown is the way to go, I am having a hard time reconciling myself to the fact that our house could be the color of DIRT. Or file cabinets.

So, enough talk...how about a visual representation of my rant? Here are two yellow, shutterless houses that are very, very similar to the shape our house will be, which we photographed during our wintertime research trip to Boston with Nancy and Lefavour:

I think the two yellows in these photos are darker than the yellow Ryan was envisioning for the house, actually. But they both look good to me.

Here's a photo of a house that is not similar to the shape ours will be, but that has been painted BOTH of the colors I'm describing, so it's easy to compare:

(Click on either photo to enlarge...they're both from here.)

I'd be eager to get some feedback on this debate. It's not like our house color will be easy to change once it's in place, seeing as it's vinyl, so you can see why we're agonizing over this decision so much now. So let me know what you think...

8:20 p.m. — Saturday, August 21, 2004
It's Been 4 Weeks... so GIVE US OUR PERMITS!

This past Wednesday marked 4 weeks since submitting our plans to the building dept, which was the minimum amount of time in which they said they could get us our permits. It's both scary and exciting knowing that any day, we could get a call from the township telling us to come pick up our permits and get started with construction.

During all this WAITING, I've been thinking a lot about how we're going to arrange the rooms upstairs, since I've already figured out how I basically want the downstairs to look. (Sorry there's still no blueprint posted of the upstairs.) Sure, I know it will be months before we're anywhere near ready to decorate, but it's fun to dream...

(Click on any image below to expand.)

For now, I'm going with option #1 for our bedroom. I like the bed being a little less visible from the hallway (the door on the right).

Our master bath (which connects to our bedroom from the top right door) is right next to the guest bathroom. Lori actually came up with the idea of the bathrooms stealing space from each other to get everything to fit (i.e. a large shower with seat AND a whirlpool tub in our bathrom). Ryan was very happy to have no windows in showers, unlike now, and I was very happy to have the toilet in the guest bathroom well hidden from the hallway.

The setup of this room depends on how many extra guest beds we think we need around. I am leaning towards option #2 because having a bed in my office would probably just be too inviting.

Plus, the bookshelves look more studious ;)

We are getting my old black iron bunkbeds from my parents once this room is finished, so the question becomes, "Do we push them together or keep them separate?" I'm thinking most of our guests will be couples, so keeping the beds together seems to make more sense.

Of course, most of these layouts will change once we have kids some day. I would rather go with master bedroom #2 then, because it's more inviting for little kids to come running into and jump on the bed early in the morning. Priorities ;) Bedroom 3 will have just one bed or separate beds, and bedroom 2 will most likely not be an office anymore. We'll have to cram the office into the back of the living room until the room over the garage is built...the under-the-eaves office of my dreams.

9:39 p.m. — Sunday, August 22, 2004

It's normal to mow the lawn in your leather jacket, gloves, jeans, and sneakers in the middle of summer, right...?

Or is that only when yellow jackets are chasing you down...?

7:29 p.m. — Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Denied...

I am not in the best of moods right now so I won't go into detail, but today we found out that the township denied our plans. We're both a little frustrated and irritated, to say the least. I've had a huge knot in my stomach all day that doesn't appear to be going away. Once we hit the five week mark, we thought for sure that if the township was going to turn us down, it would have already. Thanks for wasting our time.

More to come...

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