Nesting. It’s a mother-to-be’s instinctive urge to make a new baby’s house a germ-free, ultra-organized, impeccably designed home.

Brad Moss, 35, says his wife Sharee, 33, took the hormonal-based nesting instinct to new heights as contractor of the couple’s North Idaho home built in 2013, while she was pregnant with the couple’s 3-year-old son Brexton.

“By day she is an incredible mother of three (soon to be four, she’s about 8-months pregnant) . . . and a part-time, luxury-home general contractor,” Brad says.

The couple and their other two children, Finley 5, and Olive, 1, live in the 5,200-plus-square-foot home located on five acres about 20 minutes from Spokane Valley, in Post Falls, Idaho.

The house is located about halfway between Brad’s job, director of sales and marketing for Row Adventures in Coeur d’Alene, and Sharee’s part-time nursing position as a Pediatric Emergency Room practitioner, at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and Children’s Hospital in Spokane.

The home’s physical address is 19123 W. Treend Road in Post Falls. It’s been on the real estate market a little more than a month and Sharee, in nesting mode again, and the couple has started construction on a new home just down the street.

Jumping in mid-stream

Brad says when Sharee went into building mode, she went from sketching custom home designs to hiring sub-contractors.

“It’s serious when she gets pregnant, she starts nesting in a way that’s unbelievable,” he says.

“It soon moved to full-on building plans. Trusses, window schedules, electrical details, plumbing layouts … the works,” he adds.

Brad says Sharee worked with a drafter on the design plans and then took the plans out to bid. In hindsight, Brad says the writing was already on the wall.

“We went to these awesome building contractors,” Brad says. “But nothing felt right.”

He says nothing felt right because Sharee wanted to do the project herself. And he says his wife jumped right in.

“We heard all the horror stories,” he says, but added “there were some bad moments, but the reality was that it wasn’t that scary. She was good at it and she knew what she wanted.”

What Sharee wanted was a high-end home with traditional yet rustic finishes, designed with plenty of family storage to eliminate clutter, and her personal touches … which meant an open floor plan with tons of windows.

The house is every woman’s perfect family dream home, from the custom-built dark alder, nearly ceiling-to-floor built-ins in the mudroom, to the delicate white wall-mount Kohler drinking fountain for the kids, to three laundry rooms—one on each floor, and the massive windows which bring the spectacular view from the outside to the inside.

The home has five roomy bedrooms, four full bathrooms and two half baths, and a 3.5 car garage. The view of the mountains from the first floor is breathtaking.

A daylight basement with its 9-foot ceilings, complete with a fully equipped second kitchen looks nothing like a run-of-the-mill basement.

Outdoors the landscaping is impeccable, complete with a huge fire-pit zone, and a second tier lawn, including a slide built into the hillside and a play area equipped with adventure play sets.
Design is everything

“I really, really love the classic, clean white trim but also like to incorporate the more rustic and I would say that’s kind of like the two sides of my personality,” says Sharee.

She grew up on a working farm, not far from the couple’s current home, smack in the middle of 11 kids—with five brothers and five sisters on either side.

“When I was growing up, I had that girly side … yet growing up on a farm you know, I loved horses and bucking bales, and we never had a gender-specific job.

“It was always … boys were in the kitchen and girls were outside or vice versa, so I really attribute my kind of fearless craziness to growing up there, and trying to have the confidence for things like building a house,” she says.

Four bedrooms, including a master suite make up the second floor.

The vaulted ceiling in the master suite, which she designed to accommodate massive windows, is one of the features that Sharee dearly loves.

But it didn’t come without stress, she says.

Originally the plans called for a flat ceiling but a vaulted ceiling would allow for extra window height and bring in more light.

“This is something I fought with the contractors on,” she says. “There was some confusion with the truss company and the trusses delivered were for a flat ceiling.”

Although the contractor didn’t want to wait for the new trusses, she says she insisted.
“I said no, I’m sorry the ceiling has to be vaulted,” she says. “That was a hard day because it set us back two weeks.”

The results speak for themselves.

“I mean look at it,” she says pointing to the sunshine bathing the master suite in golden hues. “It was worth every headache and heartache.”

A sitting area beneath the windows is perfect for gazing at Big Rock and Mica Peak, and a see-through fireplace soaker tub to the adjoining bathroom is “great for relaxation for sure,” she says.

Hiding clutter was high on Sharee’s list of priorities. She also pushed for turning dead space into storage space.

“They’d be walling off a certain area and I’d be like no, no, no, leave that open, I can use it for storage. They were going to cover the exposed beams and I said no, that’s fantastic. That’s an excellent design and décor aesthetic.”

Milk and cookies

Even with occasional pushback, Brad says his wife handled it all with ease.

“She was lovingly relentless,” Brad says. “It didn’t hurt that the whole time there were contractors here she had a cooler in front of the house, and every single day it was refilled with beverages and snacks.”

Sharee admits it was stressful at times but says, “Anyone who’s been in the construction or building business understands that if you don’t have a problem every day it’s not a regular day. So you’re constantly kind of putting out fires and trying to problem solve.”

On those days she says she brought milk and cookies over and said, “Let’s talk.”

Brad may be the consummate husband. Yet he says he’s really only good at only one thing.

“So that’s the best part. I’m really good at one thing in this whole house building scenario … and that’s moving things,” he says with a chuckle. “I really trust her, and I have very little opinion, and that makes this very smooth.”

Brad says the nesting instinct has kicked in again and Sharee, who is due this month with the couple’s fourth baby, is working on plans for a new home.

The excavators are already at work on the property, which is just a short jaunt down the road from the original house.

Sharee says she has incorporated most of the plans from the original house, but has tweaked a few things here and there.

“I’ve really integrated most of what I have in this house; I have the open floor plan with similar finishes and white trim and the rustic and traditional décor.”

Brad is the kind of guy who takes it all in stride.

“If you can get through this you can get through anything,” he says.

The house is located at:

19123 W. Treend Road

Post Falls, ID 83854

Listing Broker:

Joel Pearl Group

Hayden, Idaho

Judith Spitzer is an independent journalist living and working in the Pacific Northwest.