Going with what you love...

When I made the decision to go with Carrara marble countertops everyone tried to talk me out of it. The kitchen designer, the countertop installer, even my mom.   I have had my heart set on these countertops for years.   Yes, I know marble stains, etches, and shows wear.  I'm okay with all of that because that's what I love about it.  It's hard working and takes a beating, but all those imperfections mellow out into a beautiful patina.  Rather like people do ;)

at the stone yard- Master Tile Colours in Houston...

our honed Carrara marble slab...

Just to give a bit of perspective of how far we've come, here are the before shots of our tiny tudor kitchen.  The room, yes- it's a R O O M, is 9x12 with one doorway in and out...

I knew the soffits had to go.  The ceilings are only 8 feet, so we needed more vertical space.  Once those were out we had our electrician come in and add four canned lights on a dimmer switch.  Drywall was next, and then just last Saturday our cabinets arrived.  The original cabinetry was a good quality and in 1969 had been custom built in the kitchen.  However, the layout of it was a bit wonky what with a recessed pantry to the right of the sink and a wall oven on the other side of the room.  So we had to gut it completely.   I went with Kraftmaid cabinets in Mushroom (no glaze or distressing).  I wanted a very clean look to this kitchen and chose Shaker style on the cabinets.  I also made the decision to not have any upper cabinets.  There will be open shelving on the wall to the left of the sink as well as the L shaped wall to the right of the sink.

 My finger was channeling "where's Waldo" in these shots...

Looking into the kitchen from the doorway.  Notice the ripped out trim- the only solution to getting the oversized corner cabinet into the tiny room!

Corner near stove...

pantry wall...

sink wall...

Marble is being fabricated this week and will be installed by Monday.  The wood floors and stairway are being finished up today and tomorrow.  I am also having the house professionally cleaned to get all of the construction dirt out of there before we move in.  PODS arrive Tuesday and Wednesday.  It will be interesting to see what fits and what will go.  I love the idea of purging and keeping only what we need and what we love.  Living intentionally, simply and with less clutter.

This entire summer we have worked so hard to create a home that reflects the life we want to lead.  Now it's time to make that dream our reality.

Bring it.

Moooving...

The first POD arrived this week...

We will be packing it up tonight after Travis gets off work, then the second one arrives tomorrow.  By Sunday we will be out of the cottage, and Monday we will be cleaning it and saying goodbye.  I will post some pictures of the place once it's all empty and shiny clean.

Unbelievable...

We got an email today asking us to write a letter to the lender justifying our decision to downsize.

Justifying.

Um, I didn't think I needed a reason to obtain a smaller loan and move to a smaller place.  Apparently the mortgage lender thinks otherwise.  The irony in this is that if we had wanted a larger place with a higher mortgage they would have given it to us without blinking or asking questions.    I think it's a sad reflection on our society that we question someone's wanting to scale down and own less.

So I wrote the following letter:

To Whom it May Concern,

   We are choosing to downsize for the following reasons:

• Our oldest daughter has Down Syndrome and is aging out of the school system this year.  We would like to be able to continue her education and provide opportunities for travel.
• Our youngest son is home schooled, along with our oldest daughter, and we would like to provide him with opportunities to learn that can only come from traveling. 
• With two children out of the nest, we no longer need a four bedroom home.
• It is financially SMART to live in a space that only requires ONE paycheck to cover ALL living expenses. 
• We would like to put more money into savings.
• We are looking to live smarter, smaller, and 100% debt free.

Sincerely,

The Goins

I find it sad that despite a perfect credit score and near to no debt, I am having to justify what in my opinion, looks like a common sense decision.

Less is more.

Moving limbo...

I hate the waiting game.  I am more of a "let's get this thing going!" kinda gal, but this is the moving limbo period.

My professor, a nun, at St.Mary's used to say, "Shite or get off the pot".  I loved that a nun would say that.  She was authentic as a person, and a hoot to have as an instructor.  The subject?  Philosophy.

So we wait for a few more weeks before closing.  This weekend we will pack the last two rooms and start canceling/ordering the utilities.  The last week we will deep clean the house and get it looking shiny for the new owners.

Friday we are meeting with the kitchen designer to go over our 12 x 9 kitchen plans.  Every square inch of this kitchen is going to have to be purposeful- there is no room for empty space.  This kitchen will be absent of upper cabinets, light, bright and functional.  I'm sure the kitchen design pro will be amused by my amateur sketches on graph paper :)

I have a Pinterest board set up with some ideas for the townhouse.  It may look a lot like the pins I chose for the 1923 farmhouse, but that's my style!  I am a farmhouse style girl at heart, but I am thinking that this little townhouse will be farmhouse meets a European touch of glam.  I love a good mash up.

Travis and I looked at the budget/numbers once more and determined that we can pay for ALL of our expenses using only one pay check a month.  This is going to be so freeing in terms of being able to do more and travel more.  So excited :)

Hope y'all are having a lovely week!  I really appreciate all of your sweet comments and that you are cheering us on in this adventure.

Town house living...

Our bid was accepted for the town house- so there it is.  We close on May 15th, the same day we close on our current home.  Our plan is to jump right into the renovations and spend the summer working on the town house to be able to move into it in August.

This will include:  

• gutting the kitchen and rebuilding it
• tearing up tile/removing carpet to put wood floors in
• gutting and rebuilding two full baths and a half bath
• painting the interior

Once we move in we can focus on the minor tweaks to the exterior to make it our own.  

In the end the town home made more sense financially, and really the farmhouse yard was a bit more than I thought was healthy for Travis considering his work schedule and shift hours.  This way we are yard free and the weekends will not be consumed with yard work.  Just a few small beds in the front and an atrium in the back.  Does anyone remember the atrium in the movie Greencard?  I adored that atrium.  

via pinterest

Since I really don't want to think about all of the interior work, let's focus on some fun fluffy stuff for the front...

Here is the tiny tudor as she looks now:

I'm thinking of these colours for the exterior:

Sherwin Williams Pussywillow

 With SW White Flour trim.   And Iron Ore for the insets of the windows...

A front door like this...

via pinterest

A light like this....

Barnlight electric

And a mailbox like this...

via Amazon

and shutters like the ones Travis made for the three windows that are on the brick...

Yes, I think in the end it will be perfect- we can make it our own, and have time/money for travel.

Funny how it all works out in the end.

On second thought...

We had the inspection yesterday for the farmhouse.  I wasn't even fifteen minutes into it with the inspector when I text Travis:

*Run, Forrest, run...

I'm not going to go into the details, but it was so much more than what we wanted to fix up.  Our goal is to have more money to do more with, not have more money to sink into another house.  So we withdrew our bid.

Oddly enough, the town house is still available, which was the first house we were looking at.

So we are putting in a bid on it today.

This story has so many twists and turns.  I'm not sure who is still following me on this one.  All I know is we are weeks away from leaving this house with no where to go.  (well, that is not entirely true, we have my sweet parents house and will be staying there while we get the town house, or whatever house, ready to move into!)

This process is a bit exhausting.  Not complaining though- it's our choice and we are excited to see where we land :)

I'll keep you posted...

Choice...

I got a text late last night from our relator.  It seems that the first town home we were looking at came back on the market...

I text Travis at work just to let him know.  I knew I wasn't really interested, because my heart is at the 1923 farmhouse.

He text back with this...

"1923"

I love that is is as excited about this little house as I am!  I created a board on Pinterest to hold all of my ideas for the little farmhouse.  

Lovely...

I emailed Julia from Hooked on Houses back when we were listing our little cottage for sale.  I adore her blog, and it is one of my first reads of the day- every day.  Imagine my surprise when I clicked over this morning and saw my own cottage staring back at me!  Julia wrote a lovely feature, which you can see here.

Thank you, Julia, and to all of you who have left lovely comments encouraging and congratulating us.

We are so very excited to be starting this new adventure!

Precipice...

Have you ever had the experience of starting to fall asleep and then suddenly you feel as if you are falling?

Yeah.  I'm having that feeling ever since I laid eyes on the 1923 Farmhouse.  But it's a good, scary, excited, on the precipice of something incredible kind of feeling.  Because, y'all, look...

This house has been lovingly taken care of, but still has a long way to go to return to it's original vintage state.  We are so hoping to get this little house and fix it up in a style that is more in keeping with 1923.  I see a lot of penny tile, black and white, subway tile and marble.  I see brass sconces and a lovely galvanized light next to the front door.

I can see this amazing little house finished.  But I know that this house is not going to be finished quickly.  There is some serious sweat equity to be done here.  And that's the part that scares the shite out of me.

And the crazy part is, we may not even have our bid accepted!  This market is nuts and houses are getting multiple bids with prices going over the asking amount.  So I wrote the sellers a letter that I submitted with our bid.  I'm hoping that they will read it and know that we are serious about bringing this little house back to life.

I keep weighing the pros and cons about getting into this, but the bottom line is that we love projects, and there is no house we could just move into and be happy as is.  That's just us, and that's okay.  Like my husband said to me at dawn this morning, "It will be fun".  I wanted to document that, so that later on when he is scraping 90 years worth of paint off of old vintage windows I can remind him that he is having fun.

Because that is where we are sitting right now- waiting to see if we get the little farmhouse- on the precipice of fun.

Change of plans...

Over the past few weeks, since this whole let's list our house and move to who knows where thing began, we were really thinking moving to a town-home would be the perfect choice.  Then our dream was to purchase a small farmhouse in the hill country when we retire in twenty or so years...

Until we stumbled across this little gem last night:

It's a 1923 farmhouse located in the historic district near where we live now.  Oh my heavens to Betsy, the porches, the windows, the vintage goodness.  It's all there, and oddly enough it is smaller than the original town-home we were looking at.  This house comes in at 1400 square feet- and is UNDER the budget for what we were looking at spending on the town-home.

Kismet.

At least I hope so.  I am going to look at it this morning with our realtor and throw a bid in.  Fingers crossed that they will accept our bid and we can work out a smooth transition closing from this home to the next.

Because that happens, right?  ;)

Moving on...

Sorry for the absence of posting.  It's been a whirlwind week over here at the cottage.  The house sold in record time, which threw us into packing mode.  We don't play.  Our entire home is packed up except for the kids rooms and what we absolutely need to cook for the next four weeks.

We ordered one large pod to hold all of our furniture and boxes, and we rented a local storage room to hold our garage tools.  That way, when we do find a town house, we can jump in and begin the renovations.

Which leads me to the fact that there is NOTHING for sale in the town home category in the area we want.  We went ahead and did our pre-approval process where they tried to tell us that we qualified for DOUBLE the amount of our current home.  That was met with some explaining as to the fact that we are trying to cut our living expenses in half so that we can do more- travel more- LIVE more.  What is up with these mortgage companies trying to get you into the very top of your budget?  And then when you go to a price point that is under half of what you qualify for they look at you like you are nuts.  Maybe we are, but we are going to be traveling nuts!

I do have other things on my plate...

• This week is my last class at the university with my writing kiddos. We are having our celebration and then I am going to begin planning my next year of teaching in a new position.  I will be teaching Digital Literacy with a homeschool group grades 2-9.  Very excited about the possibilities this class will present and how quickly the "school" is growing.  

• Sara has prom coming up- the theme?  The Red Carpet.  We shopped yesterday and found the perfect "pink princess dress". She is going to look like Disney threw up on her, but that is exactly what she wants and I am happy to oblige since this is her very last prom.  

• I am also finishing up a large piece I transformed for Country Chic Paint- I am hoping to have that one wrapped up by the weekend.  Throw in some sign orders for The Happy Soul Project, as well as a few custom signs- and yes, I stay busy. 

• Hunter is half way through his 5th grade math program.  This year has been about getting him caught up on math and getting him to fall in love with learning again.  So far I'd say the year has been a success.  So much damage done to him by public schooling and lots of healing took place this year.  

• Sara and I spoke to a group of college students yesterday morning about putting an end to using the "r" word.  Words matter, and yesterday I believe our words resonated with those young adults and made them think.  I love that Sara and I are embarking on this adventure together and doing something to change people's perceptions of Down Syndrome and people with intellectual disabilities.  

The cold blew back into Texas last night.  We awoke at 2:30 this morning to temps in the 40's and a blood red moon.  So cool to see and Hunter was excited that we woke him up to witness it.  Needless to say we all slept in and are still in our warm pjs for the duration...

I will keep y'all posted if anything new pops up in the next few weeks.  Until then it is going to be more packing and getting settled into my parent's house until a property opens up.  I am incredibly lucky that my parents are letting us stay with them, but time with my parents is a gift, and I am looking forward to all the things we can do together without being tethered to a house!

Pantry plans...

One of the areas that I would like to be more intentional in my purchases in our new place will be the pantry.  This house has a "super pantry" and is capable of holding quite a bit of stuff.  The only problem with that is that I tend to buy things, shove them toward the back (with every intention of using them) and then forget they are there.

Hello four year old bottle of pickled jalapenos!

But this next house is going to be different.  For one thing I already know the kitchen will be smaller and storage will be at a premium.  Also, I am trying to steer our eating to more "clean eating" or "slow food" methods of cooking.  That means lots of fresh ingredients- as in daily visits to the market.

Have I mentioned that the grocery store sends me into panic attacks?  I'm not even kidding- no windows or clocks, endless aisles and crowds?  They don't make enough Xanax to get me through that experience.

So I send my husband instead.  Which, if we are going to need to visit the market daily, or every other day is not going to be practical.  (or fair, the man works 12 hour shifts!)  I am going to have to suck it up like a buttercup and go to the market myself.

Gulp.

This is the lower half of our pantry.  It has slide out drawers which I divided up with chips/snacks on the top shelf, cereal and breakfast items on the second shelf, rice and pasta on the third shelf, and storage bags and paper products on the lower fourth shelf...

The upper half holds all of our canned goods and my baking items.  It's a huge pantry and I can get a lot into it, but I want to keep it more intentional and only have what we need on hand in the next pantry.  More streamlined...

via Remodelaholic- Faith, Trust, & Pixie Dust

I will keep the stock items on hand:  Olive oil, chicken stock, diced tomatoes, garlic and pastas.  I can make a lot out of those key ingredients.  I am also going to be better about freezing less.  I tend to put things in the freezer and forget about them.   Then months later I am trying to identify frost bitten items CSI style...

That's the fun in moving without another house on the horizon.  I have lots of time to plan and rethink how I am doing things now and how I would like to do them differently.

Simplify.  That is my mantra.

There's no place like home...

The cottage sold.  We close on May 15th, and since the town home we were looking at is now under contract- we will essentially be "without home" for an undetermined amount of time.

We will be staying with my parents (again) while we search for our new smaller home.  We know the area we want, it's just going to be a waiting game to see if any go on the market.  Do you think it would be weird of me to knock on some doors and ask the owners if they plan on moving?  Yeah, I envision that not going over very well.

So while we pack and move, sit and wait, hem and haw... I will be posting a series on how we plan to de-clutter, simplify and live smaller.  I started with my side of the closet, so now I just need to get hubby to let go of his 1990's Garth Brooks western shirts.  I wish I was joking, but I'm not.

The night I got engaged to Garth...

Yes, that very shirt from 15 years ago is still hanging in his closet.  Super heavy starched so it could stand on it's own volition.   Also, he irons his jeans.  But the hat, oh my heavens to Betsy- I adore a man in a black felt Stetson...he can keep that.

Back to our lack of home dilemma.   I am going to focus on lots of field trips with Hunter and wrapping up our math curriculum so that we can move on to the next level.  I will also post some sample boards of the types of kitchen cabinets, countertops, and flooring we are considering for the next abode.  The town homes are 40+ years old, so we know a complete renovation will happen.  Somewhere...some time...

Until then, I hope y'all are having a wonderful week :)