Building Again!

 I'd love to keep the blog up to date, and I do have the pull to get back into it. Until then, I am posting daily updates on Instagram. 

Instagram Account

In 2020, we started our hunt for land to move our family and give the boys an experience of life at a slower pace. We found beautiful 90 acres and were so close to moving, but not everything was falling into place, so we decided to stop pushing the idea.

Creek on 90 acres

In 2022, we found another beautiful but smaller piece of land and this time, everything fell into place. We spent 2023 getting it ready to build a house and get it ready for animals. 

creek on 16 acres

We broke ground on the house in January and things are moving at a fast pace. We are using a lot of the same contractors, and adding some new ones. We are building using ICF again.

I also bought a drone so I could have my updated version of Google Earth. This has been especially helpful for landscape planning.

I'm excited to bring you along on this new journey!

Things I Would Do Differently

Now that we’ve been in the house for almost 4 years, I’ve had time to think of things I would do differently. I would build the exact same layout I designed because it has really been perfect! I find other things I like, but I just still really like our layout. It suites our needs. 

1. The bathroom window
   I picked tombstone-shaped mirrors for the master bathroom and LOVE them! They are such a sophisticated shape and dress up the bathroom vanity area. What I would change is matching the shape of the mirrors on the window to the shower. The shower window has always looked plain to me, but I didn’t know how to dress it up. An arch top would be perfect. And actually, an arch top to the door, too! Once I saw this picture of Holly’s shower, I knew I should have added more arches. I didn’t think arches were my thing, but I like them in certain places.
   
   

   

   Current

   
   

   

   Current

   
   

   

   inspiration - OurFauxFarmhouse

2. Sealed Brick
   I bought unsealed brick pavers for my flooring and I regret it. I love the flooring, but it is not at its full potential. Our installers quit on us while laying the brick floor. It was frustrating to them. If I had bought sealed brick, the grout process would have been easier. The grout would have cleanly wiped off the brick instead of having to avoid getting it on the brick. Had our installers read the box, they would have seen it said to seal the brick before you grout it, and then seal it again after your grout it. But if I had bought pre-sealed brick, it would have been one less step. Instead, I have dull brick that I have been sealing the heck out of. It is so pourous, that it took so many coats to seal it. That still didn’t make it shiny. To make the floor shiny, you have to wax it. I learned all this as I read the box THREE years later. I was going through the attic and read all the instructions. I have since waxed them and they look beautiful. I will now have to wax them once a year. You live and learn!
   
   

   


3. Not Dig Holes
   We learned a lot with landscaping our own yard. I would have had a more elaborate sprinkler system and French drain system installed from Day 1, but we have added to it, so it’s not bad, but recovering from the mess of an add on is temporarily unsightly. But the biggest thing we learned was to not dig holes for the plants. We dug them and then within six months, we dug every single plant back up and raised it above ground, then piled dirt around it and topped with mulch. Below is a diagram of what we did. If we would have done that, it would have saved us so much time not digging holes. It was a great workout, though. Oh, and I’d add good dirt on top of the clay before adding sod. And not trample on my newly laid sod until it was established.



4. Better placement of outside faucets
   What should have been the backyard faucet ended up being in the front yard because of where we put the fence. We ran the hose underneath the fence, but had to run to the front to turn it on and off. We later added faucets in the flowerbeds in the backyard.
   

   

    
5. More Showerheads in Master Shower
   Mr. JCrew requested two showerheads in the master shower and our plumber plumbed for two and I said, “No.” I thought it was excessive and didn’t need it. Now we are tearing down tile and adding shower heads! I realized how we use our shower, we need more showerheads. Mr. JCrew was right! And it would have cost less to do it then than it is costing to do it now.





6. Insulate Interior Walls
   With an open floorplan, things get loud. We insulated the walls of the laundry room and that was very helpful, but I wish I would have done all the walls and the space in between the first and second floor.

Hot Water Heater Timer & Circulating Pump

When we built our house, we met our contractors by word of mouth. We went to one supply store, and then they’d ask if we had a tile guy. Then they’d recommend someone. It was a great way to meet dependable contractors that other contractors liked to work with. Because we had different framing(ICF), we let our framer recommend an electrician that was familiar with our framing type. When we went to a local plumbing shop to shop fixtures, he recommended some contractors and they were all great! He wasn’t the one that recommended our plumber, but we LOVED our plumber. He was honest and knew his stuff. We even used him at my mom’s townhouse when I broke her outdoor hose bibb after trying to use it in cold weather. 

One feature that our plumber and the fixture salesman recommended was how to heat our hot water for the entire house with one heater! Our house is rather large and we heat the water with one tankless hot water heater! We keep our tankless Rinai water heater in Mr. JCrew’s closet. We built the alcove on purpose in the design. We didn’t want it exposed to the outdoor elements and didn’t want it so far away in the garage either.

We’ve never had a tankless water heater, and I was unfamiliar with how one works. You don’t have a tank of hot water waiting on you when you want it, so when you turn on a fixture, it sends a signal to the tankless hot water heater to send hot water… but it’s not instant! You have to waste water leaving the fixture on to keep the signal going so that it knows to heat the hot water. Once it’s on, and you’re filling your bath tub and taking your shower, the hot water keeps coming. 

The recommendation that we went with was an add on to the hot water heater. There were actually two add-ons. First was a circulating pump.

This was what allowed us to use one tankless hotwater heater for a large house. It pumps hot water to each fixture in the house at a 30 minute intervals. This allows you to have instant hot water on demand.

The second add-on was a timer for the circulating pump and tankless heater. This prevents the heater to be on constantly. 

We set the timer to circulate hot water to all features at peak times when we would want it. (Morning showers, noon dish washing, evening baths, etc) During that time that the timer is on, the heater is circulating hot water to each fixture in the house.

During the off times, you can still get hot water. If you know you're going to need hot water not at a designated time, you can hit "override" on the timer and get hot water. If you don't hit the button, you can still get hot water, but you have to let that fixture run for a few minutes to send the signal to the heater (water waster). 

This add-on is so nice! When we first moved in, we didn’t have it set up properly and I got so frustrated waiting for hot water to fill up a cup so that we could grow our capsules!

I wasted so much water trying to get water hot enough, that I might as well have put the cup in the microwave to get the hot water. 

But this timer means we can turn on the shower and jump in immediately! Mr. JCrew is still in the habit of turning the shower on and brushing his teeth while he waits for the water to heat up, but he doesn’t have to! Less water wasted!

I’ve now become very spoiled with this timer. Never knew it existed and now can’t live without it!

Sprinkler System Control

I’m going to get a little geeky here, but adding technology to nature is like dessert for me! It’s so good!

There is always going to be something we wish we could go back and fix. Most things you can, but you have to decide its worth. I thought I knew what I was doing and planning ahead with my landscape, but I have learned I could have gone further and want to share with you!

I shared my landscape plan with my sprinkler installer when we built the house and I put my trust in his expertise. But I should have known I should have been more involved with the details. I assumed if I identified trees/shrubs/lawn the sprinkler guy would create a custom sprinkler system to accommodate the different requirements. We got a really good system, but I recently learned how custom it can really get!

 

Our Sprinkler controller was nothing special. We have 5 zones and our controller could be set up to have multiple start times to a zone. I used this to water my lawn once at 1AM and then again at 3AM. You need to water heavy but don’t want to waste water running off because the ground cannot absorb any more water. So if you water some, then let it soak, you can water again and it will absorb it all.

I mention 1AM, because I learned a LONG time ago not to water at night (5PM-1AM). This promotes fungus as water sits too long before the sun dries it up off the plant. Watering during the heat of the afternoon is wasteful. There is usually wind, and the hot air dries up the water too fast before the roots get any of it. I also like for my sprinkler system to be done watering before the early walkers in the neighborhood are out and have to dodge all the sprinkler systems going off while on their morning walk.

I change my sprinkler system during the Spring, Summer and Fall with frequency, but I also watched the weather regularly to make sure I didn’t’ water at the same time as a storm or right after a huge amount of rainfall collected. This manual observing and changing got me thinking of how to be smarter. For my birthday, I bought a new controller. This controller is so sweet!

It’s called Rachio. It does all the things I was doing manually and makes me look like a master gardener! It has wi-fi connection to get the latest weather. It rearranges the water schedule for you!

The setup is a little intensive if you really want to make it custom. Installation is quick and easy. You download the app to your phone and control it from there. You set up your zones with all kinds of information and it does the rest. This is where I realize how custom a sprinkler system can be. 

Our system knows Zones 1,2 and 4 are for our lawn. They run more often than Zones 3 and 5 that are the flowerbeds. 

I told it that the root depth of the flowerbeds is 15 inches, so it calculates the temperature and how long it takes to dry out before it needs to water again. (You can control the percentage you will allow to dry out). But this doesn’t stop it from watering the lawn that has shorter roots and needs to be watered more often.

I’ve also witnessed where the weather was forecast to rain, but it didn’t, so it started a cycle to make up for the rain that it anticipated.

Where I realize how custom it could be is that it can control drip lines, perennials, annuals, shrubs and lawn. There are different water frequencies for each of these. I mix annuals, perennials and shrubs in my flowerbeds. I wish I would have set up zones for perennials and annuals. Maybe down the road I will. 

And it calculates the time for you! I ask that it always be complete by sunrise. So no matter what it is watering, it will start accordingly to make sure it is complete by sunrise. You can also control the day. Some people have set water days and you can tell it to be smart, but only use those days. I don’t have any restrictions other than not to water on Friday when our lawn mower comes. It takes all that into consideration.

It will also adjust for seasons. It knows July/August are the hottest and adjusts, but I don’t have to worry about slowing it down or ramping it up. September and October I will see the amount of schedule waterings go down. Adjusting the frequency was a pain on my old controller.

Since the controller is run by an app on your phone, I have notifications set to alert me when the sprinkler system was in use. I usually wake up to these messages.

Really really really cool product! It can act like my old controller, but when it has so much potential to be custom, let it do its thing and sit back and enjoy!!