Cara texted this past weekend and wants to meet to show us the concept plan for the landscaping at Mar Azul this coming weekend.
YEAH! That will be super fun and something exciting.
In the meantime, I took pix of the exterior and the lot so she can see how things are progressing and look at them against her concepts before we meet. Can’t wait to see what she’s put together and if we can do it ?
I’ve written this post 3x now and every time I mess up adding the pix and I lose the post. I’m all out of witty comments because I’ve forgotten what I originally wrote ???
Every step of the way of building a house from scratch has sure been interesting. I don’t think Craig or I were prepared for how SMALL it would seem while we are building it. Sure hope it all works out once its all finished. Craig did make a good point though, at least we won’t have to buy tons of things to furnish a gigantic house!
I’ve learned on this project (even moreso than all the house + condo renovations we’ve done in the past) that finding simple, modern things to put into a new home is amazingly difficult.
Finding large format, matte, white tile for the house was crazy to locate even a few that could work!
The cabinets however have proven to be another challenge I didn’t expect. To find something modern, sleek, European style — they are all thermofoil or laminate. Lots of research has gone into us understanding what that means and if that’s something we want + will do OK in Florida, next to the ocean.
From day one, this kind of look was the inspiration for the house. White Quartz. Mix of Glossy White + High Contrast Wood Cabinets. White Large Format Tile.
Now to find this look its either crazy expensive….or seems to be crazy cheap. All wood would be awesome, except to track down the Zebrawood or Macassar Ebony that we LOVE, well that’s not super reasonable and fitting in the budget either.
A few places have them, but its still pretty spendy. So the hunt continues for the perfect cabinets that have that right look + the right price!
Saturday I met with a cabinet company in Daytona who sells Wellborn Cabinets. They do an all wood box ? + they have a new (1 year old) line called Aspire that offers frameless, European style cabinets. They are laminate (no Thermofoil), so we think that’s probably the right choice, but who knows.
With words like “Aspire” and “Luxe” — super budget friendly doesn’t seem in the cards. The cabinet guy promises me the pricing is mid-tier and not going to make me cry when I see the estimate. We’ll see! In the meantime, I’m just waiting on the samples of the doors we like to come in, so we can get a good real-life look at them vs. a catalog. ???
They also offer some super cool textured laminates that look like wood with a bit of a bumpy texture to them and they are super neat too. Hoping he will order some samples of those too!
Friday we did our usual drive by the lot after the school bus comes and this week it was FUNNNNNNY. Normally nobody working says anything to us. We pull up and take a pix and go on our way. But on Friday one of the guys walked over to the car window and stared at me.
I rolled down the window and he said “Can I help you?”
I let him know I was the owner and just driving by to see what was happening.
He proceeded to tell me a hysterical story about him and his guys building the keystone wall and how he built it wrong and Jack yelled at him, so he had to fix it all that morning, but that it was OK because it was really his fault and Jack just called him out. He promised he would have it all complete by end of day. No biggie to me, I have no idea what the schedule is, or who this guy is, or what he’s supposed to be doing. But it sure was funny how worked up he was + kept on talking!!!
The girls were all bored out, so we cruised on home.
Then we came back Saturday late afternoon so we could take a quick walk around and look at the wall up close + walk more around the house and see all the block going up. Its finally resembling a house!! The backyard still looks a little sketchy like there’s too much dirt and we’re going to have a mudslide if it rains. The side with the keystone wall looks awesome, except we stare straight into our neighbors back yard and house — SORRY REGGIE + MELISSA!!
Super curious how this will all look when its finished and ready to move in. Only about 12 more months to go. ?
Hmmm….so all this gray block sure does make our new house look a little like a prison. Craig is concerned it will be dark and gloomy inside and we don’t have enough windows. I’m keeping my fingers crossed?that we are good to go and it won’t be a dungeon.
Getting SO excited to see the 2nd story built up in block too!
