I am still a little behind on these updates, but if I posted this 2 weeks ago, it would be 100% accurate!! Regardless, I want to take you on this whole journey with us, so hopefully I will get totally caught up in the next couple of weeks.

Well, first the framing happened in the blink of an eye, and then literally just one day after we got to get a great overhead drone shot of the whole floor plan, the trusses went on!  Just a couple of days later followed the roof for the wood and the start of the shingles, and after everyone who needed to vent out the roof got their work done, we are fully shingled now.  It is completely crazy how quickly it all happens, and how many tiny steps are involved in this process that I had no clue about!  It has definitely been a learning experience!

A lot of people have asked me about the experience overall and if it’s hard, completely overwhelming, fun, or something we would want to do again if we knew what we know now (though trust me when I say my Michael has made it very clear we will NEVER do it again…#foreverhome!).  There are a few things that I think play HUGELY into whether or not it is a successful experience that I will share in depth in a future post, but for now I will just say that that there are definitely really stressful parts to it, and really fun parts to it.  If you want to really make it custom and what you want, it takes a TON of work and time.  I think I have lost a work day a week (and for someone who only works 2.5 days a week, that’s a lot!) to this project since we broke ground, just going to stores, pricing things, picking things out, on and on.  If you have a limitless budget, all of it probably takes much less time because you can just go pick what you love and be done!  But when you are trying to find the best prices and options for your vision, it is just an enormous project.  I would also say that if you are building with your significant spouse/other, it would be super helpful for you to either have similar style, or for one person to be pretty indifferent.  This works out well for us because we DO align on a lot of areas, and the rest Michael just cares for function over form and as long as the function seems good, he is ok with what I want!  But I think it would be very difficult for a couple who had opposing and strong tastes to do this project!

On another front, our current house is OFFICIALLY on the market!  We love our house and will be sad to leave it for many reasons (the double sided fire place, 3 season room we added, my #jgpdreamoffice,  in addition to the kids rooms both with a custom wall of some sort being at the top of that list!).  We live in a small but amazing neighborhood with lots of young kids (and older ones too!) and just the nicest neighbors.  It really is a dream come true to us, because when we moved in 5 years ago, there were really only older kids.  It is just the PERFECT place to raise a family, and we are praying for the next family who will live here, that this house would be a blessing to them like it has been to us!!  We have 5 bedrooms (or less and an office or two! :)), beautiful country views for days, an extra lot included in the listing, and a fenced yard for kids to play in.  It is a WONDERFUL house!  If you are interested in more info about the listing, send me an email at jill@jillgum.com!

Time for picture updates!! I don’t edit the cell pictures I share here at all (it just does not fit in my schedule right now!!) so pardon some darker pics here and there please! 🙂

After a HUGE debate, we chose windows with a black exterior and a single cross just on top to allow our country views to be very clear and we LOVE them!!! The back of our house has the majority of the windows, and it looks amazing!!

Click HERE to see the first post about our home build

Click HERE to see the second post about our build

Click HERE for part IV with a drywall update!