Living Room!

It's been a while since I posted the empty finished pics of the new house we built! I think I finally have the rooms to where I want them enough to photograph:-)  This house really was a labor of love and a lot of work, it kind of turned into an art piece in itself.  My husband David is from Florida originally and wanted our home to look like it fit in the south, Florida especially.  So, that started our inspiration!  Since I'm from the midwest, I could quickly see that heading towards seashells and fish which is not what I wanted!  When I started looking around at design inspiration I loved the coastal shabby chic look so that kind of started my kick and it just took off from there!!  My photography studio is here too, but since I don't do your standard studio and mostly location work, I still wanted the option of shooting at home though if I needed to.  You don't see much wall space, there's lots of windows and natural light.  I also tried to buy all the decor and furniture from location Tampa Bay area stores, since I'm a small business myself, I'm all about that.  So, I'll be blogging each space and I'll even tell you where I got everything:-)  We did work with Studio M Interior Design for the fixed design elements like the build in designs, bead board, hard wood, tile designs etc, but the soft elements I actually did myself and I can't believe it all came togeher so nicely.  The initial color scheme I wanted was in the cool pallette of gray, blues, and light greens.  Cool, calming, and a sense of home is what it created.  Clean, simple lines are also what we were going for and in the living room a build in with cabinets for storage and the tv.  I love that you can close it and hide the tv right in the wall.  The anchor of the room is a gray soft, which was actually really hard to find!  I couldn't find any accent chairs I liked either, so I started my search at antique shops and some of the more creative vintage furniture stores.  The first place I went to was Wisteria over on McDill and seriously, they were the nicest most helpful ladies.  The 2 accent chairs you see use to be dark wood with an ivory fabric with pink and green flowers.  But, they were comfortable and with some re-upolstering and wood re-finishing they turned into these really awesome blue and paisley patterned chairs!  Since it is an open space I added a couple end tables and a trunk that all have that shabby chic look in a white/ivory tone.  I love the one on the end, it has to pockets that hold books and magazines.  The coffee table is just an old truck, so again great place for storage.  There's just a few subtle patterns in there that in the chairs, persian rug, and the blanket on the sofa.  The sheer curtains are actually believe it or not from Ikea, they have a see through pattern on them that makes for soft light to come through and when the sun comes through the patten projects onto the walls too which is really cool. I couldn't keep Dixie and Abita out of the pics so had to include one of the too:-)  Next up will be the kitchen!  Here's where I got all these awesome finds:

Sofa: Macy's, Accent Chairs: Wisteria, Trunk and End Table: Blue Moon Trading Company, Corner End Table: The Missing Piece, Persian Rug: Shiraz Rug Gallery

Foundation Starting!

I'm doing a once a week photo journal on the house building progress! Nothing super super exciting yet, but you can see the footprint of it starting now which is kind of cool!  They poured this grid and next the plumbing will go in then the foundation will be poured.  The framing might even start end of next week so that's when it will start taking off!

Bring on the dirt.....

The house building is moving along!  Right now it's just dirt going on.  It's a 1/4 property so not huge but the county is making us raise it 3 feet which means 60, yes 6-0 truckloads of dirt! I never thought we would have to buy that much dirt!  Friday or Monday I should have more interesting stuff because they are going to start driving pilings for the foundation....