As you can see, Charlie and his guys have been crazy busy knocking out the framing of this house. We went over on Friday, but it was pouring. I couldn’t get any pictures then (but that didn’t stop Charlie from continuing to work). However, Sunday was gorgeous, and I spent quite a bit of time walking around and through the house, though I had to employ some climbing maneuvers to get on the second floor with no ladder and no stairs.
Totally awesome.
Rhya’s birthday was yesterday, and in her words she “was cel – e – brat – ed!” Rhya’s parents, sister, and grandparents came down, and we went to Weaver Ridge for brunch, which is absolutely excellent. Lindy loved it, and she tried at least 10 things. Then, we took everyone to our lot, which her grandparents had never seen. We went back to our house, where Rhya was bombarded with presents. Then, my parents came over and took us out to Japanese! Needless to say, neither of us wants to eat again for at least a week (but there are Japanese leftovers calling my name already). It was so nice to see so much family in one day!
I put a couple more pictures of the house up, as the forms have been taken off, and the dirt has been backfilled around the foundation. It’s amazing how much deeper it looks when you can stand on the edge and look down.
The foundation was poured last Thursday or Friday, so we’ve now got some walls to go with our hole. So, the next step is that Charlie is going to fire up his Bobcat and backfill the dirt around the foundation. Then, around Monday or so, they’ll start bringing in the lumber.
You’re looking at the view of our entry way, with the garage in the lower right and the far left corner is the kitchen. It’s starting to look like a floorplan!
I apologize that I don’t have a picture of the foundation forms, but it’s been dark when I’ve been leaving work lately. I should have some updated pictures on Saturday. In the meantime, I understand that the forms for the foundation are going up today and being poured today and tomorrow. Then, the foundation needs to cure for a few days again, and then be backfilled – which means that they fill in the dirt around the foundation. So, if the weather stays on our side, Charlie should be able to start framing within a couple weeks!
Yet another thing that I’ve been delinquent in mentioning: Rhya and I officially own more dirt and snow! We closed on the lot last Friday, and then it immediately started to warm up. No word yet on when excavating will commence (we were told there are a couple people in front of us), but we’re excited nonetheless!
Here’s our dirt! – (It’s actually where the road intersects the horseshoe…yahoo is off a bit, but google can’t even find it)
I spent some time over the last week trying to brainstorm things that we need to do to prepare to build a house. I remember moving into our current house and trying to figure out how we could fit our stuff into someone else’s construction. Most of the time, we just had to “make do” because it would be too hard to change the house.
However, we are in a unique position in that we can dictate what shelves, wires, and walls need to be put where, and I think that is going to take a lot of planning to work through. Even though we aren’t going to have the money to buy all of the things that I want to put into the house (home theater, indoor/outdoor sound system, alarm, some type of voip, etc.), I need to start planning how all of the wiring, electrical, etc. would need to lay out to support it all.
I’ll let you know how it goes, but right now, this is what I have in my brain:
I’m sure there are a ton of things that I’m not thinking of, but you see the tip of the iceberg.
Time for a home-building update. Charlie called us earlier this week and let us know that our blueprints were ready. We set up some time last night to go through them and make sure that they were what we wanted before he started to get detailed bids from his subcontractors.
Of course, we started thinking about it early by looking at the preliminary drawings that we had. We both decided that we weren’t in love with the Victorian look that our exterior has, and we weren’t sure if we would ever sit on a front porch. We decided to drive around a couple neighborhoods and take a look at some exteriors.
First, I just want to say that when we were picking out the plans at the very beginning, we were much more interested in the floorplan, so the exterior kind of fell by the wayside.
Anyway, we drove around a bit, and decided that we really needed to find a way to make the exterior look more modern. Immediately, we started to question whether we really wanted to keep the front porch. As we looked around, we started to like the brick arches over front doors, and also the doors with gables and columns over them.
We went over to Charlie and Amber’s house to look at the plans last night. As we went through the lower level, the upper level, and the basement, we realized that we absolutely love the plans, and this house is going to be amazing. We were both really excited to picture the different rooms and the flow from room to room.
As far as the exterior: we spent about an hour and a half re-drawing it, but I don’t have the drawing skills needed to reproduce it (I’ll put a picture up when it is finalized). For a sneek preview, we added a bunch of hip to the roof, got rid of both of the gables over the dining room, added a gable over the front door, got rid of the porch, extended the laundry room underneath the walk-in closet, and added some brick to the face of the house. It’ll be hard to picture, so I guess you’ll have to wait, but in the meant-time, you can check out some home building glossary terms.
Other comments at this point: The house is bigger than our estimates. I’m not talking The Incredible Hulk huge, but it is a bit Hulk Hogan huge. Our original drawings pegged the house around 1811 sq. ft., and after we extended the laundry room last night, we ended up around 1982 sq. ft. with a 291 sq. ft. unfinished bonus room upstairs.
I know I said it before, but we LOVE the floorplan. The rooms are big, the closets are big, the stairs are really nicely placed, the pantry is nice, the basement is going to be really awesome (there are zero posts in the middle anywhere in the basement). We’ll be able to put a huge family room, a bar, a guest room, and another bathroom all in the basement when it is finished.
We had a good discussion about budget last night, since the house is about 130 sq. ft. more than we had put into our budget, and we decided to leave everything that we wanted in right now, get new blueprints drawn up, get the detailed bids, and then see where we are. Like I said last night to Charlie. We’re going to build a house, we just need to figure out the right house to build!
Exciting times. We’re getting closer and closer to getting a hole dug in the ground! We’re figuring that it will take a week for the blueprint revisions, and another two weeks to get the detailed bids back. We’re going to the Hofers’ house in KC on the 24th, so hopefully we’ll have some news when we get back!
Charlie let me know that he’s going to pick up our blueprints today! I had talked to our bank, and they gave us a preliminary nod to go ahead and start getting detailed estimates for the blueprints.
As we are one step closer, I thought I’d throw a map together that has our new neighborhood. We have NOT bought this lot yet, but it is definitely the frontrunner!
I’m a bit hesitant to put this up on the site yet, as I’ll be antsy until there is actually a hole in the ground, but we have begun both the financial and construction process for a new home! We have a rough approval from the bank, and we have a lot that we are happy with, and we are having blueprints drawn up right now (We created a design based on this plan).
We are definitely excited, and I will update the site throughout the process, and hopefully impart the lessons that we learn.
First of all, I’ve got both a bank and a builder that I trust, and I feel like I would recommend them to anyone. I’ll hold off on disclosing the former until we are farther along, but I would recommend the builder in a heartbeart to anyone: Charles Rusk II Custom Homes. As a bit of disclosure, I’ve known Charlie for almost all my life, and we’ve been really good buddies for most of that time. That said, he is one amazing builder, and we’re lucky that he is taking the time to build a house for us (as he is normally undertaking much bigger projects).
We are very excited, but it seems that the blueprints will take 3-4 weeks to be finished. I’m debating on making this journey its own page instead of a series of posts. We’ll see!
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What are me and my homies doing?
