Basement Prep

All the plastic is down in the basement waiting to get covered in concrete.  Unfortunately it will have to wait until after Labor Day!

Taking shape

So things are starting to take shape.

If you look closely you can see A and O checking out their new rooms.

This is the back of the house.  The Tyvek wrapped portion is the Master Bath.

This is the back of the main part of

the house including the back porch.

Framing

A little nervous about the size of the house at this point.  While it looks to be a good size on the outside, I'm seeing the overall layout and when you divide up the rooms in here I'm really nervous!!  Sounds silly since the house will be over twice the size or our current rental.  

One thing to consider, we drew these plans up all on our own.  We have not been through a model home of similar dimensions.   A good friend told me, "It always looks bigger on paper."  I'm totally seeing what she meant.

Day 21

The crane arrived this morning to start bringing in the beams.  This is what it looked like at the end of the day plus a couple of little people.

View from the side with the walkout.

Gravel in the basement

Now this was pretty cool.  I took video because I knew the boys would think it was awesome.  This guy actually controls all this with remote control.  I was careful not to let my son believe that video games CAN be useful in the real world.

What a difference Back Fill Makes

A whole lotta stone was brought in for backfill.  This process actually took a few days.

Concrete forms are off.

Now that they have removed the forms you can see the basement starting to take shape.

And of course with all this dirt, we can't forget our "Hanitizer"

August 16

Concrete is poured!

All Formed up!

It took several days but the basement is all formed and ready for the cement truck to come.

Day 4

As promised, nothing too exciting today other than the delivery of the forms.  Quite a bit of rain delayed the workers from doing much today.  Luckily there is sun in the forecast for the next 7 days!!

Choosing Windows for a Custom Home

Once you start building a custom home, you suddenly start noticing all sorts of things about houses that you NEVER noticed before.  From roof pitches, hip roof, gables, colors, trims, etc.  Windows are something I guess I have always looked at, but picking them our for our house was much more complicated.  (Partially because I also had to pick out exterior doors which I was not entirely prepared to do.  Little did I know this would also mean I should know what my interior doors are going to be....Yikes!)

We had given the builder a rough idea of the type of windows and doors we wanted so he included all that in the price quote which in turn means that we have a budget to stick to....or fork over some cash.  

Color - Easy Peasy.  We knew we wanted white.  First decision made...Awesome!

Grids - Knew we wanted inside the glass.  Thought we wanted grids but only on the tops.  I think when we counted we have 47 windows on this house so with that much glass too many grids could get really busy looking.  Kind of like this:

The Prairie style grid is VERY big right now and we really like it, but my fear of being overly trendy on something that is very expensive to undo steered me away from that.  If I was planning on being in this house a shorter time, we might have went that direction.

Because of the busy-ness and since we wanted more of a farmhouse feel we ended up going with a 4 grid, like this:

This also worked well with some of the other smaller windows.  

The only other window challenge was our kitchen window over the sink.  This window over the sink caused us to completely alter our floor plan.  Most ranch plans have the master bedroom on one side and the kids bedrooms on the opposite side with the common areas in the middle.  This typically leaves the kitchen sink on an interior wall.  Jeff really wanted a window over the sink, so we shifted things around to accommodate that.  .The architect just threw in windows that weren't really all that pleasing to the eye so we decided to have bigger picture window in the middle with two smaller windows on the sides. Since this appointment I am obsessed with looking at everyone's windows! 

Then we got to the doors which will have to wait until tomorrow due to some technical difficulties.

The doors were a whole different beast for which I was not prepared.  

Sweetgum Tree

Have you heard of Ana White?

If you have not heard of Ana White, you need to!  She is this amazing woman who has a website to build all sorts of projects.  I have completed my first one, actually I made 2 and I plan on making many more.  I am so happy to have found Ana White and I can't wait for many more projects.  Here is a pic of my first one!!

I cannot wait to try some more of her projects!

Day 3

I wasn't really sure what a footer looked like or what it did but here is a before and after footer shot.

Before Footers.








After Footers.







Exciting stuff, right?  From what I understand not too much can happen while these are setting up which means we can move onto more exciting things like EXTERIOR COLORS!!

On the front of our house this consists of Siding, Shakes, Stone and Board and Batten.  B-n-B we are doing white so that choice is complete.  The Siding and Shakes we are going to get as close in color as we can to each other .  
Looks like we are going gray and here are our top two choices:

Option 1:    Slate 

I like the neutral tone of it.  This trim on this house is not a white, it is more cream so I think there would be more of a contrast with white trim which we would like.

Option 2:  Flagstone

This is Jeff's favorite.  In the first picture it doesn't appear to be quite as dark.  I think the garage picture is more accurate of the color.  (BTW - Love those garage doors!!)

We were also liking the the stone they chose with this house.  It brought in some warmer tones to take away the harshness of the gray.  It tied in nicely with the stained door.  

*Note for those looking to build:  The darker colors often have an up-charge.  The Flagstone while the same manufacturer and same line is slightly more expensive

 Stay tuned for tomorrow for the Wonderful World of Windows!!

Let the Digging Begin

Aug 5th - The big day!
They started digging in the morning and I swung by in the afternoon to take a couple pictures.
Believe it or not, I drove by 3 times before actually stopping to take pictures.  I had to talk myself into the fact that it is my land so if I want to take pictures - I can take pictures!  It was a little awkward.  I'm sure they are used to it, but I picture them sitting with their families at the dinner table saying, "Yeah, you should have seen the crazy lady out taking pictures today.  It's just a bunch of dirt!"  Once I got that image out of my head and the image of my mortgage, I quickly gathered the courage to stop and take the pictures.

We took the kids out later in the evening and they were so excited to have a basement!!

Notice Elliot is more concerned about taking pictures on Jeff's phone.

Why we needed to move to the country…..Exhibit A!
Eli decided he needed to pee in the new basement.  Of course Elliott could not be outdone by her little brother.