Well, there has been so much happening with Grove House. Keeping up with the day to day details of construction has proven to be challenging, exciting, frustrating, rewarding, and a little bit exhausting. Here's a recap of what we've accomplished thus far. The framing took much longer than expected, and we are happy to have moved on from that phase...

One of the more "bold" design decisions for Grove House is to do polished concrete flooring throughout the entire house and studio. We debated on doing reclaimed wood, travertine (which is in our current home), wood tile and even marble but eventually decided to take a risk and do what we've always wanted to do, polished concrete. If in the years to come, we ever tire of it, we can always lay wood or tile over the concrete.

Let me start by saying, these won't be pretty pics, but I thought I'd share what's been happening over at Grove House. My brother-in-law and The Man were masters at recycling the trees that needed to be removed. They were first picked clean, (fruit juiced, frozen or eaten, more donated to friends, family, food banks and shelters), then the small branches and leaves were put through a chipper to make mulch for our future vegetable gardens....

 I've always loved white houses with black shutters, they appear timeless to me, and never seem to go out of style. For the design of Grove House, this was the exterior I wanted to create. Defining the exact architectural style was a bit more tricky, since I'm drawn to both farmhouse and cape cod style homes. So our architect helped us create a hybrid of the two.

The furthest project we have planned for Grove House are the gardens, even so, I can't stop thinking about them. Maybe because the excavation and foundations aren't that exciting to me, it leaves me to wander off and daydream about the potential beauty at the end of our build.

I'm so excited to begin sharing my design process for Grove House. We've spent the better part of the last few months working on the layout and design of the home, and all those little details that will make it our own. One of those details, high on my list, was a Dutch door.