exterior finalized and framing the house!

i know it has been a couple of weeks since our last update. kurt and i were out of town last week in NOLA! we had a great time, but come sunday morning, we were ready to see two things. of course our #1 was to see jack!! he stayed with kurt's parents while mom, dad, charlie, nichole, kurt and i were gone from tuesday-sunday. our #2 thing to see was the progress of the house!

before we left, they were starting to put the floor in for the first floor. we couldn't believe the changes when we got home! they were framing and you could really see the outline of the house and rooms inside. so exciting!! 

today, kurt and i met with our builder and the stone/brick guy. we have made some changes from our original exterior plans and we feel really good about the changes.  i think in the long run, our changes will be way less expensive and low maintenance.  we originally were going to put cement board & batten siding all around the house and use stone along the base.  well, we didn't want to be "that house" that stands out amoung all the rest of the brick houses in our neighbood. so we decided that we will go brick on the base of the house in front and brick all around the house. we will still use the shake and fiber cement siding in the front and in some areas around the peeks and in the back, but for the most part, it will be a brick craftsman style house. the picture of the house below is very similar in color of the shake/fiber siding and the brick.

now, we know this is a lot different than our vision house that i posted a while back, but we are very happy with our new vision house.  we will be using a tan/ivory color windows instead of the dark ones in the picture above. the  picture below is the actual brick, the mortar color is the darker of the two and the color of the fiber siding and shake is the color swatch, natural clay. 

so now, i'm sure you are wanting to see pictures of the actual house. i had the opportunity to "walk" through our house on tuesday after work. it is really coming up! curtis, our builder, said that he will have it framed by end of next week. he also told us that we need to get our current home up for sale by mid-march. and he said plan on being ready to close on our new house mid-june!! omg!!!!! 

this picture was taken on sunday when we got home.

and these two were taken today!