our marathon day of getting ideas

it has been a few days since we've updated you last. we went to cynthiana for the weekend and stopped by on sunday when we returned. we couldn't tell if anything had been done, but on tuesday when we stopped by, we noticed several piles of gravel had been delivered. yesterday we thought we could check out the lot and found that all the gravel had been dumped into the basement hole and filled in between the footers. kurt believes they will start doing the rebar next in preparation for the basement walls to be pored! below are pictures of the basement so far.

monday, jack went to ma ma and pa pa's house for the day so that kurt and i could get some things done.  we started off at the place where we will get the stone.  we met with the stone designer to talk about the look we are wanting to achieve in the house. he suggested that we pick the color of the house and go from there. after we left the stone place, we went to get samples of the shakes and roof. we have some major homework to do to pick out the color of the house. there are several colors we like so we will need to narrow it down. this i think by far, is going to be the toughest decision to make. once we pick out the color, then we will go back to the stone company and pick that out.

after we picked up samples, we ate lunch at losta pasta....yummy! our next stop was the tile shop. our builder told us that you can really blow your tile allowance if you don't watch out. we basically went in there unaware of how much tile and stone actually costs. wow! we know picking out tile won't be for a while, but it was good to pop in there and get ideas.

after the tile shop,we ran to benjamin moore to look at paint for interior and exterior. once we chose the color of the shakes, we will take the color to benjamin moore to match the color and that is what the exterior walls of the house will be painted. the exterior of our house will be lap board, you can find it here www.certainteed.com  it is cement fiber siding (not vinyl siding) and will come primed and then we will have it painted.  it is the same as the house that i pictured in the previous post as our "vision" home. 

our next stop was lowe's. there we talked to someone about kitchen sinks, garbage disposals (we need to replace ours in our current home) and hot water heaters.  we looked at their kitchen cabinets, hardwood floor stain and lighting to get ideas. 

after that, we needed a beer and to see our little buddy! we went over to tom and joan's to eat supper and got home finally around 7. it was a long day, but well worth it. we know we have a lot of homework, but thank goodness for the website houzz. you can check it out here, www.houzz.com