The Ground is Broken

... Such a strange way to describe digging in the dirt. "Broke ground". It really just sounds like a problem. If anything the ground is getting "fixed" to support our home. English is stupid.

First things first - Our contract is finally signed. We took up the task of writing the contract ourselves with a little help from the Google god. It was a laborious task because there were certain clauses that our builder couldn't agree on, and visa-versa but ultimately we came to a consensus and feel comfortable that we have some protection and contingencies if something should go awry...knock on wood. We agreed on the wording last week and got it signed yesterday with our builder. Really should have finalized and agreed on the contract before starting the work, but hey... timing doesn't always work out perfectly and it ultimately had no affect on the build timeline.

We also have been tasking ourselves with finding the right front door, exterior doors and windows for our home. These are details that the builder will need to build in the walls with the right rough opening sizes. We think we landed on a great deal for the front door. More to come on that later.

On to the progress! Mike came to the property over lunch because our builder told us he'd be digging the footers today. No progress over lunch--Texted him a couple hours later and he said it's done. Man, these guys don't mess around. We stopped over to take a look at things starting to look real official. The task was accomplished with a mini excavator and a small bobcat front loader. The bucket on the excavator is about 2 feet wide, so they dig the footers that wide and about 1 foot deep. They've placed the rebar stakes in the center of the footer trench and will be laying rebar throughout the lengths and corners and pouring concrete this Friday. The plan is to lay the foundation block on Monday. It sounds like we might even start seeing  some "stick" walls here in the next couple weeks or so.

Anyway, the footer is not much to see in person, but it did help give us a better perspective on the size of the home. Sorry the photos aren't very good. Would really like some imagery from a drone but can't see shelling out hundreds of dollars for a toy that i'll take a few pictures with, then likely crash into a fiery ball of death.

There are several of these large holes inside the perimeter of the footer trench. I think these are for concrete pillars to support the internal structure of the house. That's my guess anyway.

That's it for now. Will have more photos of the footers and foundation here shortly.

Toodles!

Mike & Liz

Location Location Location... Of the Front of The House

Where should the front door go? What angle do you want the house to sit? Does it fit in the space before the steep hill sets in? Does where you picked make sense for the garage and the driveway? 

Who knew picking a place for your home took more thought than "I just want it here". Once we closed on our loan this week, the first assignment we got from our builder was to go mark where we wanted our front door. Then, since we are putting the house on a bit of an angle on the property, we marked off the whole front wall of the house. 

Just hold out a tape measure and walk around your property a bunch until you like the fairly random place you are standing. 

Then add some stakes.

And step back and admire the view. Our house will face the pond more than it will face the road. It offers a much more scenic view out the front windows, and once someone does build on the front property, we won't be looking directly at another house all the time. 

Liz posing for scale. The front of the house is just over 22 feet wide. That doesn't include the garage, but where the porch and front door will be.

And boy was it muddy! It doesn't look too bad but we were squishing all over the place. Ended up going home to wash shoes. 

This is a good idea of a view of the front of the house. Can you see the two little stakes out there?

Here is an easier view for you! That is the front of the house and porch. 2-car garage to the left. The front door will sit to the left side of that space. 

This is just to show you how red the dirt down here is. There is still some brown bits, but this red tone is really very pretty.

Once we have a couple of dry days in a row, our builder will take the home dimensions and our stakes and mark out the rest of the house. So we will have a chance to go to the property and do a walk through before we okay it all and they start digging the footers. No turning back then! 

Things are really going to start moving right along (we hope) now. Many more decisions and updates to come soon!

Toodles! 

Liz and Mike

Scrapbook Layouts are Easy. Floor Plan Layouts are Hard.

Our builder directed us to a couple of websites with great floor plans. All we knew we wanted for sure was 3 bedrooms, 2baths, and a loft overlooking a vaulted ceiling great room. It was easy to filter this criteria out but none of the floor plans were really speaking to us. So, we took inspiration from a couple of elements that we liked in a few different plans and came up with our dream home floor plan ourselves.

Features that we love:

• Very open floor plan when you first come in our home.
• The great room with a overlooking loft.
• Stacked stone fireplace as a focal point for the great room.
• Curved Staircase just adds some additional charm.
• Master on the first floor and separate from the other bedrooms.
• Walk-in pantry in the corner of the kitchen and a large island.
• Large walk-in shower in the master bath
• Master walk-in closet accessible from the master bath

Features that we love:

• Loft/Study area is open to below giving the feel of a very large area for Liz to work from home.
• Additional storage area that can be finished and turned into another bedroom or 2, or a home theater down the road.

Then, because Mike and Liz are both visual people, we took our floor plan (at least the first floor), into Google Sketchup to get an idea of the proportions of the spaces to each other and how well furniture and other items would fit around in the space.

We considered adding a third garage bay for a while and Liz's Uncle Bill had a brilliant idea - just extend the two-car garage and make it longer instead of having to pay for a third door! Perfect. We really wanted the extra space since our garage will pull triple duty of being a home gym, car storage, and Mike's workshop area.... at least until our budget allows for a separate workshop building.

Half of this back deck will be a covered deck (from the middle bedroom upstairs). So it will be easy to turn into a screened porch area right off our master (and a perfect place for a hot tub according to Aunt Dawn) and still have open outdoor space for grilling.

Tell us what you think of the plan - we are still making changes and tweaks based on things we see (mostly on Pinterest) and feedback from friends and family.

Would you angle the island?
Do you like the idea of having outside entry in the master?
Anything you would add or subtract (and save us money)?

Toodles!
Liz and Mike