Hey hey. Hope you're all dwelling in that perfect in-between-Christmas-and-New-Years-bliss! I know we certainly are, especially since we're now three weeks into living in our new home. We hosted my family overnight on Christmas Eve Eve and, let me tell you, it was so much fun filling this house with people. We had people sleeping in every room, including the living room! Lots of great memories.

Today I'm excited to share the first photos of the house once it was finished, right before we moved in. An empty house tour, if you will. As I mentioned before, I'll bounce back and forth between the building process and the new finished house, but I just couldn't wait any longer to share the new space. All the heart eyes. And today I'm starting with what you see when you drive up... the outside!

The theme of the exterior of our home is simple, traditional, farmhouse. Our exterior siding is painted with Sherwin Williams Alabaster. The trim color is a standard bright trim white our painters used. We tried as hard as we could to stay true to the traditional farmhouse look and didn't add shutters or a ton of decorative things like fancy porch columns, railings or cornices. Just some solid 8x8 pine columns, unstained. True to my Charleston roots (I'm a College of Charleston graduate, go Cougs!), we painted the porch ceiling "haint blue" (here we specifically used Sherwin Williams Tidewater). We upgraded the soffits to a Hardiplank soffit and simply trimmed the porch ceiling out with simple trim work. Our front doors are made from Douglas Fir and we left them unstained (but with a protective clear coat, of course).

The front porch is pretty self-explanatory. But in the back, it's a bit more complicated. Our keeping room comes off the house at an angle, so we decided that instead of having both sides underneath the keeping room be at basement level, we would add another set of French doors off the keeping room and build up the dirt to create a courtyard between the keeping room and the additional detached garage we built. That's what you're seeing in the third to last and second to last photo. I love this little space now and I can't wait to entertain out here when the weather is warmer. I picture lots of sparkling twinkle lights : )

In the true back yard, we have a large space that I forgot to photograph, but it... looks like a backyard! Ha. It's basement level, so the back porch we created comes off the living room/kitchen on the first floor. We put a roof on the back porch which unfortunately lets in less light into the living room, but it's a fair trade off because that space is amazing. My entire family piled out there around the fire on Christmas Eve! Such a great spot to relax. Not pictured is a little open space grilling deck which opens up to this covered porch area. We truly love our entire outdoor space, to be honest. We built this house with simple, clean lines so that the true beauty and focus is on God's beautiful green earth outside. The kids are loving spending as much time as they can out there (especially riding their new John Deere Gator that drives fast enough to give their momma a heart attack every other minute) and I'm happy to oblige!

And I know everyone will ask, so here are a few of the sources!

front porch ceiling fans

lantern sconces by front door (large size)

lantern sconce by side door (medium size and motion sensing)

over garage doors- barn lights and barn light neck

brick is Old Georgian Tudor with Savannah White ivory mortar

outdoor ceiling fan on back porch

shingles are CertainTeed Georgetown Gray

metal roof accents are Sheffield Metal Slate Gray