Fixer Uppers and New Builds Part 3

by | Feb 28, 2020 | Building

So, I promised I would share a few tiny tips and tricks we used in our building process. One of these was before the walls were closed up, we went in and put extra pieces of wood blocking behind the areas we would be hanging heavy items like towel bars, tv’s, open shelving, etc. It makes a big difference and can give you some peace of mind when you know you will have very heavy items sitting on them like dishes for instance. Relying on wall anchors doesn’t always give me that warm fuzzy feeling.

Another thing I did was really focused in on our design choices on the interior. Yes, I do have a background in interior design and this part can seem daunting to most, but I promise it’s not. You can try this same process I did to get the basics down in your house. Then if it’s too much you can hire a professional. Hint Hint: Me! LOL! The woman who taught me interior design always said it’s about divide, conquer, and layer. With that being said, I broke the rooms up and planned on making a design board for each room. There are two ways you can do this. One is the old fashion way of taking magazine clippings or product images from a sales catalog and gluing them to a board. Or, I used a program by a company called Morpholio. I would save images from Pinterest and internet catalogs and crop and clip them to fit on a virtual board. Here are some examples below from our current house.

This way of designing a room really helps you see everything in one spot so you can quickly add or subtract items. Then I made a list of how much each item cost so I could make sure we were staying in our budget.
Here are some pics of the exterior of our house too. We finally moved in by May 2019. So, six months total for the build. We would have been in sooner but the big snowstorm we had in February delayed us a few weeks. No big deal it all worked out though.
What I learned…You really have to take some big risks in life to get what you want. Sure, I worried (a lot by the way, I definitely have an OCD worrying tendency) and thought we were going to fall flat on our faces, but I have started to realize that these crazy adventures Brian and I take on eventually work out. My key takeaway is all the hiccups that will happen in the building process will seem like minor details when you get to the end goal. You’ve got this!

Stay tuned because my next blog is going to be about the adventures of building a chicken coop. That’s right, I am headed into the realm of crazy chicken lady! Lol!