Inspiration Field Trip

Like most folks who are building (or are planning to build) a home, we have an idea file that consists mostly of pages we've torn from magazines showing the look we're aiming for with our house. Although I have a binder with plastic sleeves to contain this file, right now we have things piled all over the place (and a folder of bookmarks on the computer). And because we can never have too many ideas, we took a mini field trip last Sunday to the Lexington County Museum to look at houses that are similar to what we're hoping to build. The LCM is a collection of buildings and houses right in the heart of downtown Lexington. It's a really beautiful place.

Idea #1- Need to find/buy/build a joggling bench for our front porch. Read more about the Joggling Bench/Board here: http://www.oldcharlestonjogglingboard.com/history.htm

Idea #2: We've gone back and forth with our exterior color selection but I think we're 99% sure now that we're going with white HardiePlank and black shutters with a silver metal roof. Now that we've decided this, we've seen TONS of old houses just like that.

Idea #3: Just getting an idea about what outbuildings can look like. The LCM has tons of buildings around their property, including an oven stand, chicken house, potato house and smoke house.

Idea #4: Love this barn roof. We need a different barn to have this roof but it's great!

Idea #5: A pigeon house. No, we're not going to build a house for pigeons but I really like this structure!

Idea #6: Blue porch ceilings. We always knew we wanted blue ceilings on our porches so here's a picture. Another reason we chose Perry as our contractor is he asked during one of our initial meetings if we were going to paint our porch ceilings blue. That immediately told me he understood what type of house we were building.

Idea #7: This is basically what our house will look like, color-wise. I love how white with black makes a house feel established--and it's just classic!

In other news, the lumber should be delivered tomorrow and the framing will begin (barring any torrential downpours).