The Foundation is In!

Here it is. The base for our new home. Funny how small it looks. The framing materials had been delivered so it was hard to get a good picture of the whole lot.

Our little "corner of the world".

Selections - Another Sneak Peek

We met with the interior designer to go over our options for the finishes that were customizable.

The exterior: L-R front door, trim & garage door, siding, shake

Granite, kitchen flooring, cabinetry style and color. Door and drawer hardware.

There was also tile and grout for the bathrooms and laundry room, and the cultured marble vanity tops for the bathrooms, and some other miscellaneous finishes and accessories, but for some reason I didn't get pictures of those.

This process was pretty fun and exciting. I love that we got to choose our exterior colors from the Sherwin Williams fan deck and weren't just limited to a certain number of palettes that they had already put together. It will be so so fun to see everything come together with our personalizations.

What We Left Behind

This photo was taken on December 12, 2010. We were busy packing and getting ready to move. Besides packing, we had lots and lots of snow to deal with. The snow just kept coming and coming right up to the very end.

For this. Photo taken exactly a month later from our apartment patio, January 12, 2011. And this was just two days after a "winter storm" went through.

Sneak Peek at our Lot

As it looked back in October when we were first here.

And after it was graded and trees cleared.

One week later. Gas and water lines and sewer work complete. Looks like the foundation will be coming very soon.

Welcome to North Carolina

We were lucky to see lots of houses when we came down in October. The Parade of Homes was going on, so our Realtor was able to get us into many different houses in many different parts of town. We really lucked out. We only had a few hours on Thursday afternoon, all of Friday and Saturday to do the hunt. Then we were scheduled to come home on Sunday.

One of our stops on Friday included a model home in the South Lakes neighborhood. Our Realtor was long time friends with one of the builder representatives in the development.  She asked for 15 minutes of our time. I think we were there closer to an hour! She had four different houses on the Parade. Her first choice for us was not the one our Realtor had in mind, but once we got inside, the sparks started. Both of us really loved this house. We talked it out and decided to go ahead and pick a lot to build on and put together our purchase agreement. We came back the next day to do all the paperwork. Holy crap! We just bought a house! (well, contingent on the sale of our home in MN)

Here are pictures of the model and our lot as we saw it in October. Our house will be oriented the same as this first image. It's kind of hard to picture it turned around after walking through the model laid out this way. The house has 5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a loft, screen porch and is just over 2000 sq ft.

Artist rendering:

Photos from the model home we visited:

Front of house with small porch.

Kitchen and living room

Entryway and stairway.  Doors on left are a coat closet.

Looking into master bedroom and into master bath.

Masterbath.  Peeking into walk-in closet.  Can't wait to soak in that tub!

Loft area.

We're Moving!

My poor neglected blog. You have a baby and your whole life changes. You go from busy to busier. All the time.

Yes, that's right. The Frueh Fortress is moving. Well, it isn't moving, but the Frueh Family is moving. After six years, it's time to move on. We've done all we can for our little house. There is only so much you can do to fix the problems of your house. Cosmetics were easy, but you can't change your neighbors or your neighborhood or the reputation of your town.

We put our house on the market late in October, 2010 and got an offer in less than three weeks. In this market, that is practically unheard of. We closed on our sale on December 30, 2010.

So, where are we moving to? The Raleigh area of North Carolina. We're tired of winters. As most any Minnesotan will tell you, this has been an extremely hard winter too. The cold and snow started early and shows no signs of letting up. While friends back home are complaining of temperature of -20°F, we were sitting in nearly 50° weather. Even though the sale and move happened much quicker than we could have imagined and packing and moving out right after Christmas was extremely challenging, we are so excited to be out of there.

For sentimental reasons, here are some photos that I took for our Realtor for the MLS listing. Kind of like embedding the memory someplace where I can go see them again. I didn't get pictures of Megan's room. She was napping when I took these. I should have gone in and done it as soon as she woke up, but I never got back to it.

Bye bye Brooklyn Park house. There are many things about you that we will miss. Too bad we couldn't have packed you up and moved you with us.