The Forever Cottage Inspo: The Exterior


This last weekend was a busy one for working on the house. Well, it's always busy I guess, but it's been a while since I actually worked long and hard on something myself, Dane's been doing most of the work lately. But he needed help putting up fascia board (the edge board you see that covers the end of the joists) and I started paint prep!

We get so much rain here in southern Oregon, I wanted to get the exterior painted before it really gets going. Usually it hits in October sometime, so we're kind of racing to get the roofing done and most of the exterior before that happens. It's still showing clear for the 10 day forecast though, so fingers crossed it will stay nice weather for a while!

There isn't really much I need to do to the new part of the house as far as prep before painting (although there will be a ton of caulking at some point soon), but the original part of the house really needed some attention before I could do any painting. It's obvious it hadn't been painted in a really long time, maybe over 20 years! And most of it was peeling and flaking off.

To get a good adhesion with the new paint, I had to get all of the loose stuff off, which required going over it with a pressure washer, going over it all by hand and scraping it, and then pressure washing one more time! It was as much work as it sounds. It took me three days!

Now that it's done though, it looks so much cleaner without all the flaky paint and cobwebs, in spite of all the missing paint, haha! And now I have a smooth slate for priming and painting. I wrapped that up today, and here's what it looks like now.




The plan is to start painting this week, and since I will definitely be sharing an update when that's done, I thought I'd show you some of my inspiration for it!

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I had a really hard time deciding on a color for the house, because I actually really loved the green it was originally, and I also love super dark colored houses. But when it came down to it, I decided to go with white, since I've been wanting a white house for years! I figured I'd regret it if I didn't do it.

We're also doing a gabled front entry, that will be enclosed on the sides and only open on the front. Our house is far from a Tudor style house, but I kept coming back to them for their front entries and so I took inspiration from them for ours. It's not built yet, but it will be done soon!

And lastly, I know we're doing a wood front door, and I got some brick on craigslist for our front steps and walkway.

It's going to be so exciting seeing the outside come together, and it's a pretty big check off the list. Soon, we'll be moving onto the interior, and man am I ready for that!

So what do you think? I know white houses are very trendy right now, but I just love them so much! Are you on the white house bandwagon too? What are some of your favorite exterior details?

Have a great rest of your day, and thanks for stopping by!
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Neat Stuff Friday | 4

This post contains Amazon affiliate links, and I may receive some compensation from purchases made through them.

Happy first day of fall!

It's been perfectly fall-ish here this week, with some rain and cool weather, and today it's sunny and cool and a Friday, so win-win-win if you ask me :)

I'm hoping some good progress can be made this weekend on the house. Dane will be working on our front entry and my job for the weekend will be stripping the interior doors for the house. They are vintage five-panel doors from the early 1900s and luckily they only seem to have one layer of paint on them! But in the interest of having a better finished product, I'm going to strip them down and re-paint them.

I'm looking forward to enjoying some more outside time this weekend and soaking in the perfect weather. And maybe finalizing my exterior paint color as well! Now, onto that neat stuff I came across this week.

NEAT STUFF

  1. Did you catch our anniversary post this year? I found a very cool spot to have a romantic picnic for our date!
  2. Apparently there's a rumor that instagram is going to be changing it's layout from a three photo grid. Does that bother you, or are you like, meh?
  3. I have a growing pile of clothes that need some minor adjustments, including some jeans that need hemmed. I found this tutorial and I think it'll be just what I need!
  4. If you're not following my fall board on pinterest, you really should be ;) it just makes me so happy, and if you love fall as much as me, you might find some good inspiration there!
  5. This post is making me really want to do pine boards for our flooring. I have been tossing the idea around for a while, and that color is just so close to what I'm picturing for our house!
  6. I've been seeing this rug around being layered under a front entry rug. So cute! And pretty inexpensive too :)
Alright, I hope you all have a fantastic first weekend of fall! Thanks for stopping by!

9 Years of Marriage


Yesterday we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary!

In July we hit our decade mark of being together, and it seems like so long ago, and also like it was just yesterday. That's a long time to get to know somebody!

I'd like to think we've learned a thing or two over nine years, but I don't think I'm one to give marriage advice. We've had our ups and downs, good times and bad, like any marriage. And nine years is enough time to get comfortable and know each other pretty well, but even after all this time, I think we're still learning some things. As your life changes, so do you, and still, on occasion, we learn things about the other one that we didn't know.

Overall though, we know each other's likes and dislikes and I always joke that we are two peas in a pod! We have a tendency to say the same things and read the other's thoughts all the time, and we always get a good laugh out of it when we do.

And that's probably what I'd say my favorite thing is about us, the laughing. We are both kind of dorky, and we love to make each other laugh. We have the same sense of humor, and we enjoy being silly. I would say laughing is the best way we get over arguments. It's hard to stay mad when you're laughing together, haha!

Alright, that's probably enough mushy-gushy about us, and I wanted to share how we celebrated this year! I had a hard time coming up with something fun to do that was a little out of the ordinary. We wanted to go out, but we've tried most of the restaurants in our town, and even though we love to go to our favorite places, I wanted something a little different.

I was up the night before, wracking my brain, and since southern Oregon has some cool hidden spots, I decided to get on google maps and see if anything came up. We both enjoy being outdoors, and the weather this week has been perfectly fall, so it seemed like something would work out! I was scanning around our area and the name Mckee popped out at me.



I looked it up, and it turned out to be the Mckee covered bridge over Applegate River. It's no longer in use for driving, but it's a pedestrian bridge with a day use park next to it. Apparently in the summer, it's a great swimming spot, but I figured (correctly) that 57 degrees and a chance of showers would give us the whole place to ourselves. So, after work, I had Dane pick up pizza and meet me and I drove us out there. He didn't know where we were going until we arrived, and I lucked out and he'd never been there before either ;)


So we had ourselves a romantic little pizza picnic, and checked out the old bridge. There was also a covered gazebo that had a neat vintage piano (that worked!) but I didn't get a picture before it got dark. It was so nice, and we both agreed that we enjoyed it more than if we'd just gone to a nice restaurant. And the setting was so neat, I think we'll definitely be back.

Now, in the interest of transparency, here's some blog/instagram vs. reality for ya! ;)

Here's what I had pictured in my head:


And here's what it actually looked like, haha!!


Still nice, but definitely less pretty!

If you live in the southern Oregon area, I definitely recommend checking this place out, and if not, maybe check and see if there are any cool historical places in your own area!

Happy Thursday, and happy fall eve! Thanks for stopping by :)
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Neat Stuff Friday | 3


Happy Friday! It's even happier, because it seems like fall has finally shown up here in southern Oregon :)

The weather has cooled off, the smoke we've been getting from wildfires has drastically improved, and I'm already wearing sweaters and boots! Plus, the other day I saw one of our grocery stores had pumpkins out too, hence the phrase above ;)

I just shared a house update last week but we've already made more exciting progress, and so I'll be back with another one next week. Sometimes the process still feels painfully slow, but it's coming along and it's been so fun watching the house take shape.

And now for some neat stuff! 

NEAT STUFF

  1. I found this recipe last week and it's been sounding so good. I plan on making it for breakfast tomorrow morning for sure!
  2. I thought this picture was way funnier than it probably is haha! And the caption, "shrooms just wanna have fungus." LOL
  3. When we bought our house it was painted a (peeling) dark green that I actually really liked. But I've wanted a white house for so long I stuck to my original plan and decided white it was, even though I also love DARK houses. Then this post came along and had me reconsidering again! I'll probably still stick with white, but dang those houses look good!
  4. Some of you may not want to hear it, but did you know Christmas is only 100 days away?! Just another reason to add to this article I read a couple weeks ago.
  5. Fall always feels like a fresh start to me. I just started running again, and it seems like a good time to re-set. Here's some more wellness tips just in time for this new season.
And with that, I'm off to get some things done so I can enjoy the rest of this beautiful day. I hope you all have a fantastic weekend, and thanks for stopping by!
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The Forever Cottage: Framing and Siding


I'm finally back with a house update for you all!

It seemed like a slow summer in terms of progress, but we've actually gotten a ton done since the last time I posted an update. Right now we're in the process of trying to beat the rainy season and get the outside wrapped up and roofed. So far we're on track, but we really only have a month or so until the rains usually come, so wish us luck that we can get it done!

Dane's been working on things like crazy, and I'm so appreciative :) I have my own list of things I need to do while the weather is still warm and dry, and then it'll be onto the best part: the interior!

But first, let me run you through our progress.

We got the foundation poured in June, and let me tell you, that part took so stinking long! There's a lot of little details and when you're mostly a one person operation, it takes a chunk of time. Then we got our rough plumbing done, and subfloor laid.

After subfloor came one of the most exciting parts, the framing! It took a couple of weeks to get the framing completed, but it was so fun to see it start taking shape. To actually be able to walk around inside and see the sizes of the rooms was so awesome, I was practically giddy!



Next came our outdoor siding, and now it's really looking like a house. We decided to match the existing siding on the old part of the house instead of re-siding the whole thing, and I actually really like the siding. It's not something I've seen very often, (it's more common to see it where the gaps are spaced farther apart) and I think it's pretty cute. Dane got that finished last week and sometime in the next few weeks I'm going to start painting! :)


Our list for the coming month includes: building our front entry (which should have been done already, but I didn't finalize what I wanted until a couple weeks ago. Whoops!), fine tuning where to two parts of the house connect, installing ceiling joists, new fascia, roofing, and painting! In fact, our joists are coming in this week and they'll be going up this weekend!

After a summer of what felt like crawling at a snail's pace at times, it feels so good to be making some big, visible progress. And I should say, I am way better at sharing up to date progress over on my instagram stories, so if you aren't following me over there, you should ;)

That's all I have for today, but soon I'll be sharing all of my light fixtures (which I did already share on instagram), and some more inspo posts. I hope you all have a great Thursday, and thanks for stopping by!

Neat Stuff Friday | 2

This post contains Amazon affiliate links, and I may receive some compensation from purchases made through them.


Well, it's been a few Fridays, but I'm back again with some neat stuff!

I also kept intending to share a house update with you all the last couple of weeks, but life's been busy! If you follow me on instagram you've probably been seeing my updates there, but the house looks so different from the last time I shared anything here on the blog.

Next week for sure I will have an update post for you all, and maybe a video too ;)

Neat Stuff

  1. I'm so ready for fall, it's not even funny. I've been wearing this perfect nail polish from the photo above, and it might be my favorite ever!
  2. Here's a super pretty screen saver/September calendar from Place of My Taste that is perfect for fall. It's available for your desktop or phone!
  3. This crazy huge fire is only about 30 miles away from us in the neighboring county. It's taken out some homes already, and it's creating a massive amount of smoke for southern Oregon and northern California. Just another reason for fall to come soon, for the rain!
  4. Simply Grove shared this beautiful bedroom refresh on her blog and I just love how it turned out. So pretty!
  5. Lastly, what a great way to mix summer and fall than with a no-churn apple pie ice cream recipe? Check it out over on Boxwood Ave :)
And that's all the neat stuff for this week. Have a safe and happy labor day weekend, and thanks for stopping by!

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