Patience is a virtue...

I may be virtue-less. Our plans have been out for six weeks and we are still waiting on that one bid. Naturally, it's the bid from the contractor we loved the most. Their work was beautiful, they were a precious husband / wife team, the older gentleman contractor of Ryan's dreams. The heavens may as well have opened up and sang when we toured some of their recent homes with them back in late February. Anyway, we are staying busy with some new house construction of our own, it's of the aves type, but I know our chickens will love their cozy new abode. Just as I am sure that I will love not cleaning chicken poop out of the garage every day. #theyarepropoopers We let EK pick out the color for their nesting boxes, and "let" her paint them, too. I'm plannin on staining the outside posts and hanging up a few flower or herb baskets on the front. Then, we have several climbing roses for the side that will face the road. I think we may have the prettiest coop in Cass county.

EK and I also made a trip to Canton Trade Days last week. It's a good thing Ryan was out of town so that he didn't notice the amazing vintage junk I added to my collection. It is getting to be impressive. I may need to rent a storage building soon.  I've also had so much time on my hands, that I've gotten the idea to have green cabinets in my laundry room. Green makes my heart go pitter patter. Ice watched this episode of Fixer Upper maybe five times, I just can't get enough of the green. 

This bid had better come in before we have a rainbow house and my husband refers me to that show where people have so much crap. 

 

   

The Floorplan

Here it is. The house plan! The "McHouse", as I lovingly refer to it. This plan was a challenge, mostly because Ryan and I could see in our heads what we wanted, but couldn't find a single plan online that came close to being the vision. There were a few things that made finding a stock plan nearly impossible, including the safe room and my need for a decent home office. Also, I am super weird about garage placement and wouldn't stand for a garage door on the front of my home. Garage placement isn't the only thing I'm super weird or picky about, but I digress. Ryan also requested that you wouldn't be able to see straight into the master from the living room.  Anyway, one day I drank a few beers, printed out a bunch of plans, cut them to shreds,  and glued them back together to get this. I present to you this masterpiece!

Our current house is a metal shop/ condo barndominium thing. Ryan drew the plans on a torn piece of graphing paper. The builder built the house right off that sheet of paper. If only this were so simple. We contacted an architect and met with her back in October of 2015. We had concepts about a month later, but there were problems. We asked for a maximum square footage of around 2700. Three of the concepts were just all wrong. There were hallways coming right into the middle of the living room. EK's bedroom was on the complete opposite side of the house. The perfect layout, shown below, was quite a bit over our maximum square footage. Ouch. 

Plan Copyright Ginger Patterson Designs, 2016

  We were fairly discouraged at that point, but Ryan had a few ideas to move a hallway and absorb a bit of office space. We picked up our finalized plans in mid-February 2016 and got them to one contractor for bidding the same day. We actually got a bid back a day or so ago, but that's another story for another day. Here is what we ended up with. We were able to accommodate all of our needs as in the initial concepts, and somehow ended up with what I think is an even more awesome master closet. The safe room shrunk considerably, but the practicality of a big, rarely used concrete room was just not there. There is also a detached carport that will extend from the porch on the back left of the home, but it wouldn't fit on the same screen as the main house.

Plan copyright Ginger Patterson Designs 2016

 As you can see, it was necessary to work with a designer on this process. She had great ideas for best utilizing the space to meet our family's needs, and I loved emailing back and forth with her as we thought of ideas. I told Ryan the other day how strange it feels to not talk or email with her everyday! She was a sanity saver. We ended up with a much larger home than anticipated, but there were was just no other way to reduce the monster without losing some of the features we wanted most. We totally could have rearranged the fireplace placement, but once I show the exterior sketches of the house it will make sense why I was set on having it there.  The biggest advice that I can give when designing a custom house plan is HAVE PHOTOS OF YOUR IDEAS. It was so hard for me to attempt to articulate design ideas, but when I could send a photo of something, the communication felt solid.    I am planning to make a checklist of things to be aware of before meeting with contractors, and I look forward to sharing that soon! I'd also love to chat about the design process, feel free to email me!   

Here We Go

Hi! I wanted to start a blog to follow our progress as we build our very own house on the hill. My husband and I have been dreaming about this home since we got married 8 years ago. I can't wait to share the details as we navigate the building process, but first I thought it would be fun to show a few of our inspirations for designing the plan and feel of our home.   I have mad love for the ranch and farm style homes, you could just move us into The Pioneer Woman's lodge and I could kick up my feet and call it home. That would involve living in Oklahoma,though, and I'm partial to Texas. So, I did my best to pull out a few rustic lodge/ ranch details and stick them into our plans. This fireplace has a big place in the layout of our plan, as do vaulted ceilings. 

The rock. The flooring. THE COWHIDES.

  Then, of course, I wouldn't be a good TX woman in 2016 if I didn't rely on Joanna Gaines to hold my virtual hand as I thought out the kitchen design and color palette. She speaks my language, the languange of #shiplap. We were shiplap back in 2010, before shiplap was cool. Our current house is 100% cedar planked wall. I am a little lot sick of it, to be honest, so we are going for light and airy, oh so predictable Sheetrock. Did you know that you have to dust shiplap? It's true. I have plans for a little shiplap love in our master bathroom, so no worries.   

  One of the features that I am most excited about is the vaulted master bed/bath/closet.  The closet vault was a last minute addition to the plan, and honestly at that point I felt like I was just throwing dollar bills into the air like I didn't care. We only get to do this deal once, so why not?

I am SO excited to share this project!