Plumbing Fixuters - DONE

After several rounds of emails and phone conversations, we finally agreed on the plumbing fixtures. We nixed 2 of the $315 shower heads which immediately cut our overages (and I love the internet - $205 versus $315 - I will take 2!).

Electrical Walk Through

One thing Jo Nel and I agreed on for our next home is that we wanted to be careful on our placement of our electrical outlets, switches, etc. Tonight we had our walk through with the electrical contractor. One thing quickly became apparent - we may have been too efficient with our use of space in our floor plan. Since the kitchen, dining and great room areas are a contiguous space, there are not many walls to place light switches on. Andy, the electrician, was very good at giving us some ideas. We also seem to have a lot of recessed lighting in the house. Again, not a bad thing, just a ton of can lights.

Shingles and Windows

Here is a view after the roof has been shingled and the windows have been put in.

A Front View

Here is a front view after the plywood has been put on the roof.

Mia

Mia the construction foredog. She is always at the site with the crew. When she gets cold, she will stand by the pickup door until they let her in. When she is ready to come out again, she will bark. Too bad they can't teach her to fetch their tools!

Setting the Roof

Today they set the roof trusses. Watching them guide the structure in to place was absolutely fascinating. It is actually starting to look like a house!

Exterior View

Here are a couple of shots showing the exterior. The first one is looking at rear of the house (the 3-seasons porch in the structure not wrapped in Tyvek. The other picture is looking at the east side of the house with the garage.

Granite

The quotes just keep comin'. The granite quote was high - but we had been prepared for it. Heather's ballpark was pretty close. Now we need to decide how much we like granite!

An Inside Look

Here are a couple of pictures from the inside. Using your imagination, the first picture is taken from the great room looking toward the kitchen and master suite. The second shot was taken from the kitchen, looking toward the great room and then toward the two bedrooms.

The Rock Shop

One of the things we have always wanted is granite counter tops. We have also heard the horror stories on how much it cost, etc. We decided to at least explore this option for our new home. The worst thing that could happen is we faint over the price, pick ourselves off the floor and forget about using granite. Tonight we met with Heather from the Rock Shop. Having absolutely no idea about what to look for in granite, we started to wonder about looking at all of these slabs of rock. We saw a couple we liked and Heather dug them about the store so we could see how they looked in natural light and against our wood flooring, cabinet, and trim samples. She was very patient with us - she just let us work through the process. We all finally settled on a couple of darker pieces that would compliment our birch cabinetry. She gave us a rough idea of cost - notice we are still standing upright - but would give us a formal estimate in a few days.

Framing Begins

Today the builders started to frame the main floor of the house. Weather continues to challenge us as we get periods of rain that then freezes to everything making it extremely slick. We are hoping this Iowa winter comes to an end quickly!

GULP!!!

We received our estimate on the plumbing fixtures! GULP - guess we will start making the determination between 'like to have' and necessity. Not sure $315 for a handheld shower head is in the cards.

Plumbing Fixtures

The part of building this house that I was LEAST looking forward to was having to pick out toilets, faucets, etc. I just don't find those things exciting - they are a necessity - just not exciting. Tonight we met with Nichole at Plum Supply to pick out all of these wonderful (HA) items. The process actually went very quickly. Our builder already had picked out items and we only changed a couple of things. Pretty slick - still not exciting! Now we will wait for the price tag - gulp!

The Rush is On!

As we have grown accustomed, the Iowa weather just rears it's ugly head with very little notice! The forecast for the weekend was for snow (3-6 inches). Since we were unable to get the basement floor poured, they wanted to get the floor on the foundation before all the snow was supposed to hit. Unfortunately, there was too much work and not enough time. Here are some pictures of the crew working to put on the floor.

Kitchen Layout

Finally, we feel good about the kitchen layout. Here is a view of the layout from the dining room. Now that the layout is done, we get to narrow down the million choices for the cabinetry!

Our Super Bowl Sunday

After allowing this kitchen thing to consume us for the better part of 2 days, we decided to go to Jay's Parade Home. We wanted to get an idea of the kitchen size in that home and if we could get our minds to open up to possible ideas. After boring Sami and Jessie for 2 hours in the kitchen and great room, we think this kitchen layout will work better for us than what we had envisioned before. By not having any partial walls separating the kitchen and the great room, we can created a very open-air design that will make both rooms not only look bigger, but be better suited for entertaining. Hopefully, our thinking is correct but we will have to wait till LeeAnn lays it out on our plans to know for sure.

Frustration

We met with LeeAnn again this evening to go over some of the various designs for our kitchen she had put together. The layouts seemed to be so small compared to what we had envisioned for our kitchen. After meeting for over an hour, our frustration started to kick in to high gear. All the planning that we had done to build our house around the kitchen and great room area seemed to come crashing down. Not only did the kitchen seem like it was going to be small, we were now encroaching on the great room space. How did this happen??? After 90 minutes, we needed to take a breather from this and regroup. LeeAnn could sense our frustrations and she was doing and saying everything she could to get us thinking about designs, but we just couldn't.

Basement

It is one thing to have a hole in the ground and call it your basement. It is entirely different once the forms for the walls are put in place. Here are a couple of pictures showing the basement starting to take shape.

Kitchen Cabinets

When we began to design this house, we really started at the center of the house and worked our way out. The center of the main floor is the kitchen. Sounds kind of strange planning a house around a kitchen, but that is what we did. Both of our previous home had the kitchen somewhat separated from the living area and that did not seem to work well for our lifestyle. So, not only was it the starting place of our design, but it is now the starting point of the many decisions we will have to make.

We met with LeeAnn from Cabinets Galore tonight. Both Jo Nel and I are visual people so until we see something, it is hard for us to visualize. We were shown more kitchen cabinets, features, colors, etc. than any one person could possibly remember. We felt as though our head was going to explode from all the information.

After spending some time listening to LeeAnn tell us the billion different options we have, both of us settled on a design and color from the main display at the front of the store. We will now wait to see how she can incorporate our ideas in to a usable design.

Breaking Ground!

It was a long time coming but we finally broke ground today on our new home! Even though there was 18 inches of frost in the ground, they were able to break through the frozen Iowa turf! Based on the elevations that were taken of the lot, we will have a full walkout basement along with a flat drive.