S t a y W i l d

We are doing finished concrete floors, so we had the house portion of the pour tinted with the Solomon Colors tone “Earthen”. We also had the 6 foot saw cuts put in at 45° angles. I have been told (warned?) many, many times that concrete is tricky and unpredictable when it comes to the final product and how it will look, but that actually just makes me more obsessed with the character of it, and so far I am very pleased with how warm it looks without it being orange. I can’t wait to see how it looks all finished.

When I was 9, my parents built a house, and while I know it was insanely stressful for them, all I knew at the time was the excitement of the process and it became my fondest childhood memory. I can still remember the way the dirt smelled after the excavators came through. It was never my intention or dream to build a home before we found this land, but now that we’re here it is so cool to me that we get to provide this experience to our boys. It’s the reason why I am documenting this because I know these are great memories that will stick with them their whole life. A guaranteed fond childhood experience. It’s so cool that they get to witness this whole process of how a home is built from the ground up, and truly are having a blast while doing so. Turner even got to join his Uncle Gabe in the cab for awhile!

We took advantage of this weird limbo-stage before construction on the house begins to prune out some trees and clear out so much of this underbrush. Something about hard manual work like this is so satisfying, and I not only feel it in my bones but I see it on the boys’ faces. This is their space too and they own it. The beauty here is so breathtaking to me and those oak trees are more spectacular than I thought. Our dream is to keep this space relatively wild and maintenance-free.