I AM BACK!

It has been a while since my last post. Obviously, the devastation of my daughter's death with five other family members within a five month period crippled me from the day-to-day living that created a new normal in our lives.  It is great to see some bloggers staying in the game when we were building together. I want to acknowledge and thank everyone who left a message of encouragement and condolences on my blog about my daughter. Our family is still adjusting to this new normal and I appreciate your support. I enjoyed building our ROME and it was a pleasure watching and learning from other bloggers. Our family decided to move forward and we sold our ROME. Yep...we sold our ROME!!! We are currently in the process of building a Toll Brothers Home. I plan to begin blogging on that journey and hope that you will follow us as you did with the ROME. Enjoy your day and I look forward to blogging again. Please feel free to join us at our new blog site at
Www.ourlangleytwo.blogspot.com 

Major LOST! Tragedy!

Hi Everyone in Blog Land!
It's been a very long while and a rough period for my family and I.  Devastation begin to hit our family extremely hard when I landed in the hospital last year in October and the events have not ceased.  I am devastated, grieving and mourning.  I have had some major losses and taking the time to recover.  We lost our stepfather in October during my hospital stay, lost my daughter on January 19 who was only 31 years old and survived by her daughter, Ylicia who is 7 years old and on February 19, my grandfather passed away as well.  I am utterly devastated!!  I decided to peek in today to see who is still activate doing the time of our build.  Sending cyber hugs to hold and please KEEP ME IN YOUR PRAYERS FOR PEACE, COMFORT as I try to do the last thing on earth I would ever have to imagine doing.  I dreamt of giving birth to a child, but never burying her...

Here's to the love of my life, my bestie:  Quaniyah "Eliana El" Luck.  http://youtu.be/YNoLJy68ZcE

http://youtu.be/YNoLJy68Z

Her Last Christmas 2013 with US!

Quaniyah and my granddaughter, Ylicia!

picture of a picture

MY ANGEL!!!

QUANIYAH was famous for taking selfie pictures...here are a few...this one is my all time favorite!!

Remember the BackSplash Ficasso

For those of you who have followed my blog journey, you know I love adding a video to speak to our experience.  This video is not only entertaining, but it also represents my DH's home town and the music he loves in the Washington, DC metro area; plus the first two lines of the song speaks to when we home owners get to make a decision about a project to KEEP WHAT YOU GOT UNTIL YOU HAVE WHAT YOU NEED TO GET THE PROJECT DONE.  My waiting paid off and I am so happy what a difference it makes in our kitchen.  Much, Much thanks for my husband. :-)

***PLEASE JOIN ME AND WATCH THE VIDEO BECAUSE I AM SO TICKLED TO GET WHAT I NEED AND WANTED FOR OUR KITCHEN**

Do you remember the backsplash that I picked out for our kitchen that horrified me beyond my imagination?  So some of you do and some of you will get to see what I was so horrified about during the process.  I knew I wanted a subway tile pattern with the travertine stone.  I had two choices that RH offered which were a gold tone and a ivory tone.  I was willing to take my first interior design risk and go for the gold tone hoping it would pop even though my granite counter top was not pre-selected nor could I pre-select it.  Well, when the backsplash was installed I nearly flipped my lid because it was a total eye sore to me.  However, the rep at M&R floors, our sales representative and project management  thought it was a good fit and suggested that it would grow on me given time.  Well, I became accustomed to looking at it and chose a color palette to work perfectly with the colors to mute it.  The back splash and the granite had the exact same colors which looked pretty in one sense because they matched, BUT the gold was over powering the granite.  So I put out my post and received several suggestions; however, I picked the solution that would make me the happiest and that was to rip it out and change the color to the neutral pattern and I LOVE IT!  It makes the kitchen feel lighter and brighter.  The gold felt heavy and like a burden every time I looked at it.

Before
You can see how closely the colors are the same; however, both are t0o busy and a total eyesore.

Part of the concern was damaging the walls.
Well, this guy started out cracking each individual stone and finally figured to just rip sections at a time.
Smart Choice or he would have been there all day.

All the stone and drywall ripped out completely.
Sweet. Now we have a clean slate.
The adhesive that was used for the original install was very strong and the dry wall was pulling apart which some blogger's mentioned as a potential problem.  I preferred for it to be ripped out because I did not want them to patch up spots leaving the wall uneven.

AFTER 

It feels so much lighter and now my kitchen has the right formula for color palette success:
light, medium and dark.

Notice that we put cast stone outlet and switch plates to match the backsplash stone.

Here is my light (backsplash/cabinets), medium (granite counter top), and dark (espresso floors)!

Sorry, bad photo.
This picture is distorted so you really can't see the beauty of the two combinations.
But it looks great in person or a better photo.

Oops, another blurry picture!
Oh well, but you can see the difference from this angle with our double wall ovens
leading out to the dining room and foyer.

TOP 20 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT OUR HOME - #6 - Master Suite

Every time I watched my favorite shows on HGTV; namely, House Hunters, House Hunters International, Property Brothers, Virgin Properties and the list goes on...I would immediately connect to our MUST HAVE LIST for our new home.  Our Must Have List:

1.  Cul-De-Sac

2.  Long Driveway

3.  Plenty of Parking

4.  Large Closets

5.  Large Kitchen with plenty of cabinet space and lastly, a huge.....

6.  Master Bedroom 

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE our MASTER SUITE!!

The floor plan that you see here is from the new ROME 05!  We have the ROME 04!  I am completely annoyed that when we were purchasing the ROME we were told hundreds of times that the ROME could not accommodate many features that I was asking about.  I ended up putting in 13 custom requests to create some character in our home.  I am going to save that RANT for another post so that I can stay focused on this post about our Master Suite which I LOVE!

If you notice from the floor plan, the master suite is on one side of the house.  Bedrooms 3 & 4 including the LOFT occupy the other side of the house.  We did two things in our master suite that I love:  1.  Combined bedroom 2 & the bathroom closet into my dressing room.  2.  Combined the sitting area and the bedroom closet into a larger gentlemen's closet for my husband.  This means that the Master Suite side of our home is truly a Master Suite and I LOVE IT!  Since the room is so huge, I intend to build/install a mini wet bar with cabinets in the room.  I am still researching the perfect design and also designated the perfect location in the room.

The first thing we needed for our master suite was a new bed and mattress.  We chose the Sleep Number mattress to accommodate our differences in sleeping patterns. The guys are putting together  the top portion of the mattress.  I was so excited because our original bed is a Queen size ergonomic tempurpedic bed which is awesome; however, it only works with one body type and this was a major problem.  We put the Queen bed in the guest bedroom for our guests to enjoy. 

Notice the color of the headboard--I will share more about this below.  For some reason my pictures are not in order of presentation.  
So bare with me.  Thanks. 

The mattress requires several steps before it is ready to GO!
DH is drilling holes in the head board to accommodate the pumps.

This is the covering they placed over the base.
There is a picture below where you can see the base before they covered it up with this nice padding.

DH cleaning up the mess with the Central Vacuum System.
The headboard is huge.  This is the stock color--it's a beige linen fabric. 

The guys are hooking up the pump to the mattress.

Air pumps are ready to GO!

Notice there is still plenty of space from the corner of the bed to the wall which can accommodate lots of furniture options.

My pictures are so out of order.  Hate it!
But you can see the theme. 

This brown piece is the base for the mattress.  They had to snap the pieces together which made it easy for carrying up the steps and assembly.  Similar to lego blocks   :-)  The other part of the mattress that gets pumped up to identify your sleep number is on the floor to the right.

There seems to be a slight problem here--the pumps won't go through so DH must drill larger holes.

Great Job!  The pumps are through the holes.

DH returning the central vacuum to its home!
The picture below shows the new stock fabric.
As I mentioned, the pictures and text out of order....ohhh well.

Check out this bed all dressed up!  We purchased it from Arhaus in a beige linen fabric which was their stock fabric.  A few weeks after our purchase, they changed the stock color to this charcoal velvet fabric which I loved more.  I requested for them to switch out the old stock fabric bed to the new stock fabric bed.  A week later they picked up the other bed and delivered the new stock velvet charcoal fabric bed to us.  SCORE!  Here is a picture that shows the Queen size bed from their catalog.  We own the KING size bed!  I have to tell you the bed is huge in stature and the room still swallows up the bed.  This is one of the many things I love about our Master Suite--its size.  
LOVE IT!

I am HOME! - UPDATE!!

******UPDATE:
As I mentioned, I was released from the hospital after having a stroke in my right eye which resulted in the lost of vision in that eye.  They claim my eye sight will never return because the optic nerve was damaged beyond repair.  I have and had an awesome team of doctors to work on discovering how someone so young as myself could end up with a stroke in her eye.  After 30 plus tests, they discovered I had Lupus last week.  Both of these discoveries are major ruptures in my life and I am doing what I can to adjust, however; it's very difficult to say the least.  In the meantime, please feel free to share any information with me at proctorhousehold@gmail.com and please keep me in your prayers for a miracle***** THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CHECKING IN ON ME!

After a week loooonnnnggg stay in the hospital, I am back home and getting used to this new style of living.  I am looking forward to the unfinished projects and blogging.  I am grateful and blessed to be here.  It was a close call.  And I mean, a very close call.  I am so grateful to be alive.  Keep me in your prayers for complete restoration in my right eye (lost my vision) and for peace and a stress free life. I thank GOD for keeping me here to finish my purpose in this life time.  I am counting my blessings.  Thank you blog family for your prayers.