So, big news. We are breaking ground in 2015! I haven’t really said much about the fact that my hubby and I are going to be custom building our dream home next year — simply because I do not want to jinx it. We still have a long way to go before we get to the “shovel in the dirt” phase, so I have kept my home-dreams and pinterest boards to a minimum.
I highly recommend that if you want to grow your marriage leaps and bounds, build and design a house together within the first 12 months of tying the knot. I quickly learned that both of us want very different things. Wait, I take that back. We both want the same things, but we prioritize them very differently.
While he is dreaming of the owning the most efficient house in the neighborhood, I am dreaming of a home that looks like it could fall out of a Southern Living Magazine. I want that southern charm and elegance, but I also want the home to be functional and “us.” We have finally settled and tweaked our house plan, now we have to start finding little details we both like.
Last week my mother and I went up to the Eastern Shore of Virginia {through three tunnels and a few bridges} to look for my dream mantel. I have severe mantel envy. My mom has the prettiest mantel you will ever see. I will have to do a blog post on that guy one of these days. My dad said his guys could build us a mantel but I knew I wanted something with a history as well as some details. So we went straight to the Eastern Shore where estate homes are being abandoned and “picked” weekly.
If you are not familiar with the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel {and it’s tiny railings} all you need to know is this: in order to get from mainland Virginia to the Eastern Shore you have to go across the Chesapeake Bay. While it isn’t as big as, say, the Atlantic Ocean, it’s still a pretty big body of water to drive across. So big that it requires three bridges and two tunnels, all in one 4ish mile span, making it the world’s largest continuous steel structure. {Thank you wiki!} Oh, and let’s not forget about the one-way toll of $18 {$13 if we hadn’t been towing a trailor.}
The Bay Bridge was half the adventure. The other half was finding the antique store my mom had stopped by months prior. It was the third antique store we drove past, and there sat “my mantel,” broken and sideway, collecting dust and webs, on the front porch. They drove a hard bargain and generously offered us the mantel for a whole $50. It took three of us to load the double decker mantel into our trailer, and then another lady showed up. She proclaimed she had a few more mantels in her barn somewhere off a dirt road about ten minutes further down the road… but there were no mantel returns.
So we followed her. To a barn. In the middle of nowhere.
She took us to THE COOLEST barn. I am beyond obsessed with the grey color and teal door. Pretty positive that will be the exterior color scheme of our new home.
They had a barn full of doors and mantels and amazing odds and ends… I was like a kid in a candy store! So don’t be surprised when you read that I walked out with a second mantel, for a mere $50 more… #whoopsie!
My mom basically had to pry a couple antique doors from my fingers before we headed home with TWO mantels for $100. You know what this means right? I just have to adapt my house plan and add another fireplace… somewhere.
If you were building a house, what is the one {or two} things you MUST HAVE in your plan? Would you have multiple mantels and fireplaces in your home?
Link up with J from Bless Her Heart Y’all and I today for our second Celebrate Southern Linkup! You can use a new post or an old post… it just has to encompass “something” southern! {Think fashion, crafts, home decor, food, or a great southern town!} Join the fun and linkup here: