Congratulations! There is lovely movement and the blue and the BS tile are perfect together. Igloo cool is just fine with me :)

Your granite & tile choices are absolutley stunning. I can't wait to see pictures of your kitchen

Congrats!

Soooo pretty!!! Can't wait to see it installed!

They are going to be beautiful!

LOVE it!!!

Wow! Just beautiful. Your granite is stunning and the tiles you chose are perfect with the granite. Good luck and please post pics along the way.

Sigh, how beautiful is that!

Ditto--beautiful!!!!! :)

Wow, that's going to look fantastic!

Warm and cool colors. I love it. The tile it perfect with the granite.. We are building in the spring. Just hired a new architect. Will you share a little more about your house?

thank you everyone. i can't wait to see it installed either!!

redlover - i'm happy to share details about our house. it's our whole family's favorite topic. haha

if i'm not sharing what you were interested in, please feel free to ask away of even shoot me an email.

we're actually building 2 homes - our main house and what we've dubbed the "guest house" but really it's an inlaw home for my parents as my mom watches the kids full time now. before we relocated we lived next door to one another as well so that's not a new experiment for us - we're close!

both homes are 1-story which IS new for us, and we're on 1 acre in a gated community somewhat in the country now but the area is starting to boom, and we're in the greater DFW area in texas.

our house is completely custom --imagined in my head (or on my computer screen) and then put onto paper. i'm not an architect or in the trade, but i messed and messed and messed with it for about a year until we got it where i wanted it. i handed it over to our builder, and his design firm just took my rough plans and converted them to blue prints! now it's absolutely amazing to see our vision being constructed in 3D around us. our home is 4 bed, 4 bath (each kid has their own bathroom which was a major point of debate, but if it makes us any less obnoxious, their bathrooms are tiny). our builder dubbed the style "French Eclectic" for the exterior elevation, which needed a description for the HOA, and that made me laugh and we stuck with it. interior, i told my builder NOT to assume any one particular style. so architectural purists will hate our home! that's ok.

we built our last house, and we were young and inexperienced in terms of home ownership in general. the house was beautiful, but it looked very much out of a catalog, which is nice in a way, but it never felt cozy. it was too precise or calculated or something. i'm SO really striving for that loved, lived-in feeling in this house. i'm incorporating a lot of upcycled furniture and antiques and trying to blend my love for cool colors with the coziness of an old home that could have been lived in for a hundred years. i love the industrial style, rustic, coastal cottage, hollywood glitz and everything in between and there'll probably be touches of all of it. we're also trying to blend our love of space with our appreciation for coziness.

from the small front entry you walk into the open concept main living area with living room, kitchen, dining. (no formal rooms anywhere in our house). the two main features as you enter are the floor to ceiling stone fireplace flanked by windows and the big window above our kitchen sink. we're actually shipping in fieldstone from boston for our fireplace as we love the look and love that it'll look like home. we're doing a coffered ceiling with white beams in that entire space. from the kitchen there's a door to a covered patio with a vaulted ceiling and an outdoor fireplace.

There are 2 hallways leading off opposite sides of that "great room". one leads to the bedroom side of the house. The laundry room is centralized with the bedrooms where the laundry happens. there's also a built-in homework nook in the hallway for the kids as they get older. a quiet place away from the tv, but not so private that i can't keep an eye on them without looking neurotic. :)

The other hallway leads to the "dirty" area of the house. the dirty area has tile flooring instead of hardwood! my hobby room (which has a 12x6 storage room off of it for large storage since we're used to basements back in the northeast and don't have that luxury in texas!)... the mudroom off the garage, the back door to the future pool, a play room for the kids... all on the dirty side of the house. also the guest bedroom and guest bathroom are off that hallway [not that i expect the guests to be messy! :) - we've just found it's nice to have the guest room separate from the rest of the bedrooms for more privacy]

also off the great room is a home office with french doors. hubby and i both work from home.

here are a couple exterior shots of what our builder calls "French eclectic" but i call "happy french gnome"... in this first one you can see my parents house to the back right of our house.

closer shot of ours - i'd apologize for all the trucks in the shot, but i'm thrilled they're always there working!!

you can see all our progress on my blog if you're interested in the trials and tribulations. haha link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Blog - A Nugget and a Doodle

Loved reading about your house and looking at your blog. Very nice. Great sense of humor which you need building a home. Do you post at the Building Forum? If not, you should. They are very helpful..

I built 8 years ago while using that forum. It was invaluable.

I will watch your progress with interest. Good luck!