We have a hole

They started digging first thing this morning and had the basement dug by lunch time. Lisa took Weston over in the morning after dropping Winter off at school. He loved watching the excavator work and didn't want to leave. After school got out, Lisa took both kids over to the house. Winter wanted to go down inside the basement but Lisa thought it wasn't a good idea so instead she got to take a picture standing next to the edge. Next up is the footings for the house.

Staked

Today we approved the location of the home on the lot based off the plot plan and stakes set by the builder. We should have a hole tomorrow if everything goes right. Once the hole is dug the home will progress very fast.. We might even order our windows by the end of this week once we decide on color. Hard to see in the picture but they staked all corners of the home. We end up with around 40' in the front, 70' in the rear and 30' on the sides for yard space. Should give the kids plenty of space to run around.

Already behind

Nothing happened last week on the house due to the plans not being finished up until late Thursday (this is what happens when you make changes at the red line meeting). I was told they are moving forward and we should see some progress this week (fingers crossed). Sunday we decided to take a nice trip out to Lake Afton, so on the way home we stopped by a new development out by Goddard, KS. They had some nice model homes (Nies, Robl, Bob Cook) to tour so we stopped in and took some pictures of some of the items that we liked.

Kitchen Island - First end cabinet actual is only 3-4 inches deep but adds a nice place to put spices or canned food. Second cabinet (furthest to the right) is a normal depth cabinet. This gives us a great feel of what our island will look like.


HVAC/WATER - We will have similar products but we just loved how organized this layout was. Makes your storage area very usable when it is laid out like this.

Can it be...

This should be the week when things on the house actually start. Since the red-line meeting Lisa and I have made several changes to the house. Nothing that has to-do with the layout just with how and what goes into the house. I got my wish to have the house fully bricked on the front but Lisa got her wish to have the shower enlarged which meant it got bumped out into the garage by 6". We are both super excited for this week and hope we can post up some pictures soon.

New house means new grill

New to me that is. It actual is a craigslist find that I picked up today. I paid $40 for this Weber grill and I am super excited to have it. I have wanted a charcoal grill for some time now but never wanted to fork over the big money for a Weber. Well today I got one and you can see by the picture that it is in great shape. I can't wait to use it and see what kind of flavors I can get out of a charcoal grill.

One week and counting

We are one week away from starting the build. We signed off on the plans today at our red-line meeting. We made a few minor changes but overall it was a very productive meeting with the builder. Soon we will be making weekly product decisions which we will post.

A Few Ideas

Lisa and I have been spending a ton of time trying to figure out what we both want for this new home. Most of the time we end up getting frustrated at each other since both of us think we are right and know what is best. Here are just a few of the things that we have to decide on.

We like the look of this tile floor for the master bathroom.



Gives us some ideas for our master shower.


Perfect match to what we want our fireplace and bookshelves to look like.


Now we are just trying to figure out the outside. We are torn between all brick on the front or split it up with mostly brick then accent it with a stone front.


Please share if you want.

Red-line Meeting

We are going in on Monday, August 15th, to have our red-line meeting with the builder. During this meeting we will verify the drawings and make sure everything is a-ok. If there are any last minute changes to the plans this will be the time to do it.

The waiting game

We now are waiting for all the paper work to be done for the lot. This stage of the building process is hard because we want construction to start so bad. In the mean time we have been spending a lot of time looking at ideas for the house; appliances, cabinet color, flooring, decor etc. So many things to pick out yet we both have to agree on the final choices.

Designing the new home

What did we want in a house plan? Well we knew from the beginning that we wanted to try out a "ranch" style home and that it had to have 5 bedrooms, 3 baths and a functional kitchen. The layout had several things that we liked to begin with. First, Lisa loved that it had a Jack-n-Jill bathroom for the kids and a half bath on the first floor. For me it was the huge kitchen island (I do all the cooking). However we soon found out that once you move something big (like the pantry) it kind of screws up other parts of the layout. Then you fix those and it messes up something else. Needless to say we met with the designer 4 times and will probably need to meet one more time to get it right. We now feel like it has a very good flow and very usable space but we are always looking for ideas and comments on the floor plan.

Where to build?

When we decided we wanted to build our next home our first mission was to find a lot. We had it narrowed down to 3 lots in 3 different subdivisions but after looking at the pros and cons of each one we easily decided on the one. It should give us the perfect amount of room for the kid's toys and for the garden that we hope to have.