Two bids, one gate, and a cop (the excitement never ends)

My, my! What a difference a week makes! We have been some busy bees and have still had time to chill out (ugh, sweat profusely rather) in the North Carolina mountains. Last Friday morning, we met with Pickle, finally, and spent about two hours with him looking at three houses and listening to him answer phone call after phone call. Two of the three houses we looked at were complete so we had to judge the final product, which is helpful to give you an idea of how the home looks after a bit of settling. We only saw one home in process and that was only at my request. It was a rather unique home to say the least, and the design work would certainly not appeal to the masses. It was being built for the owners alone and not for resale. Anyway, touring the homes was not the exciting part of the morning, not by a long shot. As Pickle was taking Noel and I back to our car, he witnessed a domestic dispute/assault in progress at the neighborhood Chili's, whipped his truck in there, and flew to the rescue. I'm not making this up people. He jumped out of his truck to break up the fight between the man and woman, and only after they left separately did he call the authorities. We, then, had to wait for a police officer to come speak with us only to tell Pickle that jumping out of his truck to break up the fight was probably not the smartest thing to do. All we wanted to do was leave for our mini-vacay. Anyway, we gave him our plans for a bid, and now we wait.

Freedom from Murfreesboro! We headed to Chattanooga later that day to check out the concrete countertop/sink store, Set In Stone, and to chow down on some really delicious burritos at MoJo Burrito (we HIGHLY recommend this place!!). We had no idea how beautiful concrete could be. Set In Stone customizes sinks, countertops, bathtubs, and planters for the individual based on specifications. The big kicker with concrete, though, is that it has to be resealed periodically because it scratches (about every 5 years). The concrete dude, Warren, mentioned that the newer sealers on the market now are light-years ahead of the sealers from a couple of years ago. We are considering concrete countertops and sinks in our master bathroom. That decision will come later.

We were able to get some more home ideas while in North Carolina, considering that homes in the Lonesome Valley subdivision in Cashiers, NC, were the inspiration for the exterior of our home. (Check out the link in our 'Links we have used' in the right margin.) Although we passed right by this subdivision on our excursion, we did not drive through it because it was getting dark and we were hours from the nearest hotel (another story for another day). We did, however, venture toward the town of Black Mountain, which had lots of new beautiful mountain style homes. We took mental notes of exterior color combinations: from creme and sage to blue and grey. 

We also got two bids in from Fishy and Indy. We have Fishy's bid in hand. Noel is going to pick up Indy's bid hopefully today. Fishy's bid is lower than we expected, but it is a turn-key home. We want more say-so in the building process than a turn-key home offers. Word to the Wise: the bidding process takes approximately 3 weeks.

Yesterday, Noel and Dad ventured to Tractor Supply to pick up a gate for our fence that we haven't worked on in months. Then, rolled up their sleeves for the twenty or so minutes it took to install it. Now, we have a nice new blue gate to keep out those unruly cows. One day we'll get the rest of the fence finished, but we're waiting on cooler weather.

Noel and I get asked quite frequently how we developed the idea for our home: numerous hours spent on the Internet, in bookstores, and driving around looking at house plans, home exteriors, home features, material types, etc. We have so many home design and home plan magazines. When we have nothing to do, we'll go to home stores like Ferguson, Lowe's, and Home Depot just to get ideas. We'll stare are stuff that isn't even important at the moment like appliances, countertops, faucets, ceiling fans, etc. When you are building a home, you start noticing things that you would not normally pay attention to. For instance, we were at a restaurant the other day and were admiring the ceiling fans and the faucets and tile in the restrooms. Sounds boring, but we love it!