My Parents Deserve a Medal

We are in the process of building a house! It hasn't been nearly as stressful as I thought it would be. Luckily Joseph and I have very similar tastes, so it hasn't been a battle to pick things out. The housing market in Auburn is extremely slow right now, so the only thing we were worried about was if we would be able to sell our old house. It was a great little starter home that we had put a lot of work and sweat into, but there were many houses in and around our neighborhood also for sell. We knew that our new house was going to take at least 6 months to build, so we went ahead and listed our house with Ashley Smith Durham (the best realtor in the WORLD!!). Well, our sweet little house DID sell, and much quicker than we thought! The buyer wanted us out in 3 weeks! So my wonderful, amazing, generous parents let us move into their finished basement, and we've been here since the beginning of August! We're hoping to be into our new house by Christmas. Believe it or not, we're actually pretty content here. My parents have been incredible - available if we need them, but otherwise they give us our space. The dogs love it here. My parents live on a big pond, and Mac is down there swimming every chance he gets. They just do donuts around the house, running and rolling and having a great time! It's been wonderful having extra hands around to help out with Ford, and we've all gotten incredibly spoiled!

I'm posting some pictures of the new house. A few disclaimers...the brick is not going to be the color it looks; we're getting wash on it and it will be much lighter! It looks a little odd right now, but they assure me that's how it's done. We will have 4 bedrooms, and we're going to use the largest one as a playroom. Our yard backs up to the Kinnucan's yard, and apparently he's not too thrilled about having neighbors because he built a 10 foot fence! It's HUGE! But somehow his dogs are on our lot every time we are there! It's a brand new neighborhood with a lot of young couples with kids, so I think it will be a lot of fun for Ford. I'm sure we'll be posting more pictures as the house progresses!

Front of the house - I love the arched door!

There will be a covered porch running the length of the house with a deck coming off of the back. We got cable run to the outside and I have a feeling this will be Joseph's favorite spot!

We're the only house in the neighborhood with a wood-burning fireplace. Joseph insisted on this; apparently, the Martin men take great pride in their fire burning abilities, and who am I to stand in the way of this time-honored tradition?

Or maybe this will be his favorite spot...the walk-in crawl space, otherwise known as the man room! Joseph has all sorts of plans for this room - it will have a concrete floor, electricity, and store all of his tools. I think he would have had cable run down here, but I had to put my foot down! I think they're starting to sheetrock it early next week, so things are really moving along!