Amy Scott's Thoughts

Let’s jump right in with the house update. Our house has been completely sheet rocked and the process of taping and mudding has started. Technically, our heat isn’t on yet, so they weren’t supposed to start quite yet. Oops. I’m not going to be upset about getting ahead of schedule. We’ve been running the torpedo heaters to make up for the lack of heat. Now that the house is fully insulated and the sheet-rock is up, it’s amazing how it  actually holds heats.  I love seeing the walls closed in. It’s a dream come true. As with each step, once we conquer one thing, my heart moves on to dreaming about the next thing. My new dreams revolve around having heat and light. We often go up in the evening to visit so it’s very dark. We have to use work lights and flashlights. I would love to be able to turn the lights on. And I would love to walk into a warm house. A warm house seems so homey and less like a construction site.

On to the flooring fiasco.  The emotions that I have poured in our flooring situation are insane and unexpected. I seriously thought we were immune to situations like this. We picked our flooring choice in April and signed contract. Done. Until Shaw discontinued the floor we had chosen. We went up to the Adair showroom and picked a new flooring sample we liked. They had sent us a PDF with pictures of flooring we might like, but of course, we couldn’t pick our floor from a computer/phone screen. Too risky. Turns out all of the floor samples that Adair had in their showroom were going to be an upgrade and therefore a price increase. The one sample we decided we liked was going cost over $1000 out of pocket. The thing about the PDF they gave us was the choices in that file would be a straight price swap – no out of pocket for those. This sent us on a wild goose chase to find flooring samples we were told were so new that no one would have them. We got confused with how the PDF was set up and found one of the floors on the sheet in person and fell in love with a new option. We got all excited about the new option and the fact that it wouldn’t cost extra. Then we found out that the new floor we picked was also being discontinued. Bummer… After a great debate, we decided to go with the more expensive option because we could see it in person and we would know what it looked like compared to our choices. Spending the extra out of pocket was a hard decision for me. This led Jeremy to call Shaw directly to see if we could get a sample of their newest flooring. We didn’t want to delay our finish truck, but at the same time, we didn’t want to spend extra money without exhausting all our options first. The floor sample we were hoping for arrived on Wednesday. After a quick trip up to Adair to compare with our other colors, we settled on Quaint Hickory. Which will not cost us extra! Praise the Lord. I have now envisioned 4 different floors being THE floor and that is draining.  I’m glad to have that completed and finally 100% behind us! One of the best parts of this dramatic process was Thursday, my in-laws watched the boys so Jeremy and I could do flooring research. Date night! And then on Saturday, my parents took the boys to the train show in Puyallup, so we got another day to run around and look at flooring choices.  It’s always nice to get one-on-one time with my hubby. Especially when we’re trying to process a major element our house (and possibly major expense). Owen & Graham have the best grandparents!

Moving on to the last of the house updates. Our appliances were delivered to our storage unit yesterday. That is thrilling! Woo hoo! Our lender called to talk to us about the process of transitioning from a construction loan to a permanent mortgage.  He mentioned that this process starts when the house is about 45 days away from completion. That means we are a month and half away! Woo hoo! While I’m disappointed that our move date won’t be in February, I am happy to know that we are close and I continue to pray that things can move forward quickly. A lot still needs to happen and I can’t wait to watch it all unfold! I day dream of painting and flooring and cabinets and counter-tops, toilets (that flush) and of course, lights and heat . It will all come together with time and I’m really hoping the 45 day countdown is on.

Other then keeping close tabs on the house, we’ve been up to the usual. MOPS, play dates, book parties, reading, playing… I’ve finished two books in January. The first was Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown and the second was Chasing Slow by Erin Loechner.  Braving the Wilderness was about true belonging. I love that Brene Brown is a social researcher so she mixes both facts and relationships to share her findings. I had read her book Daring Greatly and I know a bunch of my favorite authors like her so I had high hopes for this book. It was a good book, but truthfully, it had a bit too much swearing it in for me. I don’t mind an occasional swear word in a book, but this one has more than I expected and it caught me off guard. The information and message she shared was good and I admire her work, I’m just not super into swearing. I purchased Chasing Slow with a birthday gift card from a dear friend. We watched a video by Erin at MOPS and I was intrigued by her. I love the tension she faces in this book of always chasing minimalism and letting go of excess and yet it seems to find her again and again. I can related to this flow of letting things go and wanting life to be simple and then the pace picks up or the stuff accumulates and you think “Didn’t I say I was going to stop doing this?”. We all have seasons where we have to re-prioritize and make sure we are living our lives in line with what we believe. Erin is a blogger and an interior designer so I loved her perspective on creativity. I am no interior designer, but our building process has given me a chance to wear that hat and ponder what kind of space I want to create for my family. It was a good read and left me thinking all sorts of things about prioritizes, seasons and design.

That’s all I have time for right now. I look forward to sharing more updates soon and hopefully heap loads of progress as our house becomes a home.

I call this my weird wall. I’m thinking of putting a bookshelf here with DVD storage… Hmm… 

Owen picked a whale theme for the boys’ bathroom. I’ve had fun pulling a few elements together. 

Graham learned what happens when you turn the mixer up too high after adding flour. 

Kid containment 

Graham & his buddies!

The final choices all together. 

A very zoomed in look of the flooring with the white trim and gray paint. 

Books of 2018 – I’m doing Jesus Calling as my devotional. It’s been a good read, but a little different then I expected. It is thought provoking and I appreciate that.

Shadows

Sitting on the floor pondering furniture placement in the living room.