So this is the entrance to Arbutus Rock. There is this short drive and then we turn left and pass around a bend to get to our house at the end of the street.

The rock was chosen at K-2 Stone, a local company. Apparently it was quite arduous to get this rock to stand upright and to lower it into the block of concrete. It went way above budget and was quite labour intensive. The letters are a type of resin so that they won't fade or rust. Just FYI.

Eventually I guess we will see the front of people's houses at the end of this little drive. So far only 5 homes have been built out of the 23 lots.

There are deer everywhere here. Most people have wrapped their bushes actually, I guess they can be pests. I suppose we'll find out when we've moved in. Until then we still love to see them and show them to Will who is very intrigued!

This is our lot. It is at the end of the cul-de-sac. It is hard to believe that soon there will be a house here. We love the view. Once the trees are cleared it will be an unobstructed view of the Georgia Strait and mainland. We can see Vancouver's skyscrapers in the distance and watch the ferries as they come and go from the island. It is so quiet up here and looking out at the water is so calming. It feels like a little piece of heaven.

This is looking back down the street towards the entrance.

This is what the view will look like from inside the house and this is the view from in between our neighbours' houses. Nice!

My First DIY

Isn't she a beauty? This chair is destined for our master ensuite and I can't wait to see it beside the tub!

I like the idea of having a chair in a bathroom. I think bathrooms are sometimes seen as utility rooms, designed for usefulness alone. Why not create a bathroom that is another room in the house to enjoy, relax in, and to spend time in. I think adding a chair is not only practical but contributes to making the bathroom feel like a room in it's own right. I think a small chair with limited upholstery works best, so when I saw this chair I knew it was perfect. I was inspired by Sarah who takes the old and makes them new again. She always chooses pieces with good "bones" and can see the potential they have to be real show stoppers. Clearly, it is amazing what a coat of paint and new fabric can do!

I would like to say that I found this chair at a garage sale or thrift store and got it for $25 but the truth is I've scoured all the local shops and antique stores and the pickings are slim here in Nanaimo. Sourcing things online has become a pastime of mine (partly due to necessity) and I found this particular chair on Ebay. I loved the lines immediately and knew I could do something really special with it. I paid a few hundred dollars for it and it was in really good shape.

I found this linen fabric at a fabric store in Beacon Hill in Boston. I loved the geometric pattern, and the colour will be perfect for our grey and white all-carrara all-the-time ensuite. I took it to my local upholstery guy and we chose the polished chrome nail head and shade of white. They stripped, sprayed and upholstered it and voila!

Ok, so technically it wasn't a DIY project....but I'm proud of it nonetheless! The finish of the sprayed paint is so flawless if anyone can get a better finish by painting themselves you've got a better hand than me! Sarah and Tommy once tried to paint dining chairs and ended up taking them to be sprayed, so not even they could get the finish looking great. Lesson learned-it's worth the marginal cost to have things sprayed and this is going to be the way to go for my future projects.

Stay tuned to see how I take this chair for Will's nursery from Ikea to Elte. (Ok, maybe not Elte but Pottery Barn Kids for sure.)

The Lower Floor

This is the basement layout so far. To me the basement is an afterthought, I gave Aaron free reign to do as he wished down here. It will be his project as it seems to be man-centred. Rec room and gym? It just reeks of sports watching, pool playing, working out-ish business.
Perhaps it's a bit short-sighted of me though since we do have a young burgeoning sports enthusiast and possible serial animated movie watcher (from what I've heard). So I may be spending more time down there than I think...hmmm, better make a claim for design approval here too.
We also tucked the nanny room downstairs. We thought it was important for hers and our own privacy. Her room will have an attached, yet shared, cheater bathroom. Later this can be a guest room or room for an older child.
This level will have a walk-out to the backyard
and will likely have something of a view although not as much as the upper levels of course.
We are going to push the furnace room in further and bump the landing wall back to the gym to capture more usable space down here. We could then have the space for a games table or just more space for stuff.
The rest of the area down here is designated as crawl space, and you know what that means...storage!! Welcome home Christmas decorations!! Have a nice stay corporate taxes!! See you next winter snowboard and ice skates!!
Finally, my car will see the inside of a garage!!

Ahh the Main Floor...

We spent most of our creative juices planning this main floor. We know from experience that the kitchen/eating/living area is the heart of the home, the space we spend the vast majority of our waking hours in, so we planned accordingly. We knew that we wanted a great open space at the back of the house where we could enjoy the view and I could easily keep an eye on Will who is now walking and seems to be evolving into something of a human tornado.




Aaron's splurge in the kitchen will be the appliances, and mine the tile (carrara marble all the way), so I'm not sure where our commitment to melding "high" and "low" cost items will end up in this room? However, as they say, money is best spent in kitchens and bathrooms. How's that for justifying it to myself?

The sink will be moved to in front of the window, the range and range hood will be the focal point for the back wall and the fridge (or should I say Fresh Food Column) on the inside wall. The fridge will be quite an impressive size since I liken the fridge to my closet experience in that there never seems to be enough room. I am constantly cramming things in and we are a family of 2 and a half! Storage, storage, storage is a must for this house.

I love the T-shaped island where four counter stools can fit comfortably for casual eating. It seemed to be the ideal shape for the space that I needed to fill in the centre of this U-shaped kitchen. I also love that people can be seated around the island and there is room to easily walk behind without bumping into the stools or someone seated can back up without bumping into someone behind them.

We also made the controversial decision to omit upper cabinetry on the outside walls. We figured we had enough storage in the kitchen and pantry combined and will use the inside fridge wall for floor to ceiling-ish cabinets there and there alone. We want to ensure that we maximize the view and natural light throughout the home everywhere we can. You might think that having no upper cabinets is a crazy idea but I've actually seen many glossy pictures of kitchens with no uppers and it looks great. I also did a little research into it and it is said that upper cabinets will really close in a space and that visually the impact is even greater because these cabinets are mounted at eye level creating even more of a closed-in feel. I guess the moral of the story is avoid upper cabinets where you can. If you have a bigger space you can use more of the under the counter space for storage. And for those of you who are vertically challenged as I am, imagine never having to climb the kitchen counter to reach that high jar again.

Speaking of storage, I am thinking of incorporating window seats on either side of the fireplace with built-in space below for all of those stray toys and extras to make for easy cleanup. I had originally though I'd like the classic bookcases to flank the fireplace but it seemed like such a shame to waste this view wall.

There will be a rectangular dining table in the middle of the great room and kitchen. This table and chairs will be visible from the front door and the windows beyond will allow the view to be seen through the house from the front door. This was my inspiration photo:


Our lot is at the end of a cul-de-sac in a private neighbourhood so there literally should be no one walking by. Since privacy wasn't an issue for us, I'm ok with this open feel from front door.

We put the office and dining room at the front of the house where the view was not so important to us. The dining room will mainly be used at night when we can't enjoy the view anyways. I tucked the powder room in past the front closet so that it is private yet easily accessible.

One of my favourite things about the main floor is the butler's pantry. I love that you can walk right through to the dining room here and use it as a bar and prep area as well. It is such a great little space and small enough to really splurge. Sarah would say this is a great opportunity to do something over the top that you can't afford to do in an entire room, and I would like to do exactly that. This is my inspiration photo:


I know it's hard to tell from this photo but the back wall is tiled in carrara splurge tile, penny rounds, one of my favourites. Aaron is toying with the idea of some kind of exotic wood here. Normally, committing to anything off-neutral makes me break out in hives, but in this case I think it is the perfect place to do something risky and potentially trendy since if we hate the look in five years we can easily change it. It is such a small space and without committing to an entire room we can take on something dramatic without worrying about it's longevity too much.

The mudroom will also be a great little room filled with even more storage potential. We will likely enter the home through the garage and so I would like to have a bench flanked by shelving where everything has it's place. I've heard that one of the best things you can do to bring down the amount of dust and dirt that gets into the house is to leave your shoes at the door. I think we'll still be far from the point of never having to dust again, but everything helps!

Oh and the stairs. We really wanted the main stairs to be U-shaped for safety reasons. If there is a fall I think the damage would be much worse if there was a long, continuous stairway than these two smaller lengths. I wish we could have done both stairs like this but space didn't allow for it. I was also inspired by the first Sarah's House where they had a U-shaped stairway with a long vertical window on the outside wall. It seemed to open the space up so much more and to draw the eye up as well. It also brought so much natural light into a potentially dark and confined space.

We took the design of the stairs a step further and made an open space at the end of the landing which will continue up and down along the three levels of the house. There will be a railing at the end of the landings in front of the windows which will allow for one continuous vertical span of windows from top to bottom. This will let even more light into the stairway and I think will be so visually interesting by drawing the eye up and down along that back wall when climbing the stairs. Not to mention the water view from the stairwell...

Ok guys, so what do you think? It is not too late to make changes so let me know your thoughts! We have changed the plans dozens of times already, what's a few more?

Rebecca

The upper floor so far...

We managed to get 4 beds and 2 full baths up. We added the bonus room at the end of the hall in an effort to contain toy mountain in this new house. Since our current dining room is a playroom right now the bonus room was really important to us! The stairs from the bonus room down to the kitchen will help me keep an ear out for what's going on up there!
I'm going to change the layout of the second bath but we do need a tub/shower since this will be the bath we use for Will.
We also wanted the laundry up and so it is.
Another thing we're changing about the upper floor is the walk-in closet in the master. I feel like I have struggled my whole life with a lack of closet space and I am putting that to an end! We are actually going to expand the closet into the master 2 more feet and make it quite wide. Wide enough for an ottoman perhaps, sigh.
Sarah would say to think about how we're going to use the space. After much thought we decided that we are not really in need of a fireplace in the master. It is always a nice touch in a master but I just think that we would personally never use it (plus it would take up even more of my most valuable closet space since they are about 3 feet deep and would make a cabinet behind it impossible...) With the fireplace out we can centre the door to the closets and make true HIS and HERS closet spaces. The idea of never having to eek around Aaron and hurl myself into a dense mass of clothes to find that one shirt makes me about as happy as eating chocolate and peanut butter together. The idea of having a place for everything is pure bliss, dare I dream that there be enough space for a few EMPTY hangers or drawers??!

Floorplans in Progress...

These are the preliminary elevations the draftsman recently sent us. The pie-shaped lot dictates that the garage extend like this, perpendicular to the house. That is fine with us as I actually prefer to hide the garage doors from plain sight. However, I was not so pleased about the look of the left side. I don't know about you all but doesn't it seem like there is a glaring deficiency there?? Maybe it is my attraction to things symmetrical but it seems like there is such an imbalance to the front of the house. Although we were trying to make decisions in an attempt to keep the square footage down, in the end, and in keeping with all of our previous changes, the answer was MAKE IT BIGGER! So we added another bedroom upstairs to balance it out. Why not?? It's still play money at this point...

Welcome!

This is a blog about my experience during the building of our family home.
My husband, Aaron, and I originally bought our lot overlooking Georgia Strait in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada in the summer of 2009 when our son Will was only a few months old. We have been dreaming of ideas and loosely planning ever since. Last month we starting putting ideas to paper with a local draftsman and chose a builder to make our dreams come to life.
With the build just around the corner, HGTV gets its fair share of air time in our house and my design guru, Sarah Richardson, will influence many of my choices in our new home. I have loved watching Design Inc and Sarah's House over the years. Let's hope that I can take what she's taught us and use her wisdom for my own project. After all she had no formal training, goes with her gut, chooses things I would never think of, and when it all comes together it looks great! I'm going to do the same and be confident in my choices too. I look forward to feedback!
Lately my thoughts have centred on fabric choices and colour schemes while Aaron has been investigating appliances and flat screen TVs. I have heard that building a home together can test a marriage...I'm sure Aaron and I won't agree on EVERYTHING. There will be decisions to make daily when we're in the thick of it, but we'll make them and not look back!
I'm sure I will ask myself on many occasions "What would Sarah do?" Come along for the ride as we build Rebecca's House.