It’s official. We’ve purchased a new house which will be completed sometime in August. We’ve officially made color choices and so on. I suspect some people will think some of our choices are odd. The thing is – this is new construction. There’s some amount of similarity in the houses and we have little interest in a beige, white or grey house that looks nearly identical to 20 others. Our siding is teak, with white trim and white shakes. Our front door is called Evergreen Fog.

Another choice we made, which is perhaps more popular today than five years ago, but still unique, is dark cabinets. Our cabinets today are espresso (which is almost black) and we love them. This was not an option on the new house. Instead the color is like a dark chocolate. The counter tops are a white quartz and the hardware throughout the house is a black matte. This is one of the small changes we’re really excited about. We like a lot of wood and metal. I’m thinking maybe I’ll get bronze or copper hardware for the cabinets.

Something I hope we were smarter about this time was lighting choices. We got 4 fan rough-ins. One will be for the front porch. One will be in the family room and two in the bedrooms. We think the ceiling fan on the porch will be really cool. (no pun intended). Not having one in the family room of this house has always been a regret, so I’m excited about that too. We also added a floodlight on the back of the house. I can’t tell you how often I have wished for more light on the back deck during the winter when it gets dark so early and I was trying to grill. Silly little things that you don’t think about at the time you’re building.

When we were signing some papers last week were were able to walk through the house being built next to the model and see a house with the basement bedroom. We really liked it and agreed that it was a great choice. Your dad will probably use it for his office so he can keep work and life a little more separate. I’m going to do my best to document the process by taking photos each week.

In other news, it is tourney time – March Madness! Our Dayton Flyers limped in with a 7 seed which I felt was generous based on how they played the last couple of weeks. They faced Nevada in the first round on Thursday and played much the same as they had for the past couple of weeks, scoring a whopping 25 points at half. Stagnant offence, poor floor movement, poor passing. Here’s a look at the game with about six minutes left.

You know where this is going, of course. THEY WON THIS GAME! Right about here is where they caught fire. It was crazy. We were crazy. They won 63-60. Unbelievable. I’m happy for these guys and the university. It’s a completely different team, but everyone remembers that in 2020 the flyers were 29-2, #3 in the country and everything was canceled. The US was closed and that team never got to play another game. They play one of the best teams in the country next, so this may be their only win, but it was a good one.

XOXO