Drywall! Now things seem like they are getting real

Dry wall day...one of the most fun days in custom home building...or any home building for that matter. It is the day that your new house transforms from a structure/blueprint to the house that you had hoped it would be. Now rooms start coming together. What your house is really going to look like starts taking shape. Heck, you can even start getting accurate measurements for new furniture so you can go spend more money if you are able to find some left over from the rest of this project (easier said than done)! It is amazing how quickly this goes up. However, be patient because getting it sealed and smoothed out to the point where it is ready to paint takes some time. It takes about a week if I recall. Here are some pictures from drywall day!

 Kitchen/dining area

 Foyer and door to basement

 Foyer (and beautiful wife!)

 Living room

 Master bedroom and beginning stages of tray ceiling

 Basement

Hopefully throughout the process you are thinking about which paint colors to do. Talk to your builder and figure out how many paint colors he had in mind. This may cost more per color if they contract out for painting. Fortunately, our builder often does this with his crew and was pretty flexible with the number of paint colors within reason. Also, make sure that you talk with your builder and ask him when it is alright to go put a few splotches of paint up on the drywall so you can really see what it is going to look like. Try to arrange to see it in different light as you'd be surprised how different it looks. We were told to try to keep the sample spots in locations that would be covered up such as where the kitchen cabinets are going to go. 

On a not so fun note, we picked a certain color which you can see below on the back right wall. We were told at the paint store that there were no undertones (we were looking for a neutral, light gray for our base color throughout the house) and RJ was great about calling after one wall was done informing me that he didn't think this is what we were going for...and boy was he right! $200 of paint down the drain unfortunately...

Brick/insulation

Thus far throughout the process, the most exciting part was easily watching this hole in the ground transform into a framed house in the matter of a couple of weeks. During this part of the process, it seems every night you go out there they have made a ton of progress. It is really satisfying! Enjoy that satisfaction because from here on out, all of the progress isn't quite as..."visual" for the lack of better words. From here on out, don't expect to go to your house and see it transforming the drastic ways that it has over the first couple of months. While it doesn't look like much is getting done, it probably is. The next step was getting the outside closed up and starting on the internal workings so they can get that drywall up.

(Brick color: Mulberry; Mortar color: Chocolate)

We came out to see several bundles of bricks scattered around the house. When building custom, your builder/general contractor generally has a brick company/mason or two that he or she has had good success with in the past as far as cost and quality. They have you go out and see the different samples of brick they have. Unlike building with a large mass producing builder (where you have maybe 5 options), your options are limitless. Our advice is to narrow it down to different shades/colors that you are interested in before even going because if you don't, you will go into panic mode when you see that there are at least 50 different brick colors to choose from. Keep in mind that there are also different mortar colors too. Make sure you pay attention to that as you are driving around. When we saw the bundles of brick laying around on our lot, we got a little concerned. It is crazy how different they look like this compared to when you have seen them on a house somewhere. We spent weeks and weeks driving around every neighborhood we could find to try to find a unique brick that didn't stand out too much at the same time. We saw two houses that had this color and met with our brick people who went out to these houses and matched it for us. Even so, when we saw them in this bundle we called them asking if they were sure it was right. They assured us that it was and that they would just do a small section of the house first so we could see what it looks like before proceeding. This of course set us back a day, but we were going to have to look at this for the rest of the time that we live here so we did just that. Fortunately when they started putting it on the house, it was what we hoped it would be. The brick took roughly 2 weeks to complete.

They also did the stonework in the front. We did stacked stone using Pennsylvania stack style stone. My advice here is closely monitor the stone work. It isn't supposed to look perfect, but there were some parts that looked downright awful that I had them come back to fix. 

Sample section so we were sure we liked the brick color.

Keep in mind that there are also a decent amount of shingle options when building custom. This will likely be done by the same company that does your brick, so you may want to try to knock two appointments out with one if you are up to it. We had only seen the shingle color that we picked on two houses in the area and had the hardest time matching it. The company we used kept going out and telling us that they thought it was a color called Barkwood, but we felt it was Weathered Wood. In person, it has a brown color with some lighter brown mixed in. We felt the Barkwood color was too light. We had samples of both and we happened to be driving past one of the homes that had the shingle we were looking for when the gentleman who owned it was standing in his garage. I decided that this was the perfect time to embarrass my wife and stopped to talk to him. He proceeded to get a ladder and let me climb up to the roof and compare the samples with this shingles! The end result is that it was indeed Barkwood and our problem was resolved. Don't be afraid to knock on someone's door if they have something you like. In my opinion a few minutes of being uncomfortable so you don't make a mistake that you will have to look at forever is worth it!

Once all the electric is run, they very quickly get the insulation in. You have options when it comes to insulation and although this is the very basics of it, the options are regular insulation like this or cellulose spray insulation. The spray insulation is much better at insulating if you have the money. It costs roughly twice of what the normal insulation costs. We did not have this in our budget as this is our starter home. The one concern that I did see about the spray insulation was in terms of flammability and if not mixed properly, creating an odor that is very irritating (although this seems to be rare and only happens if someone inexperienced does the job).

And on a fun note, the pictures below show some bible verses that we put on the interior walls throughout the house. We saw this idea on another blog and liked it. It is a form of "blessing" your home. We were a little more adamant about this after the graffiti incident we had earlier on in the building process (see a few posts back). We scattered them in several places throughout the house prior to drywall.

Up next: Drywall/siding

Can't get rid of me that easy!

Hello everyone! It has literally been months since I've posted. I apologize for my absence and I will explain my hiatus. At the time of this blog being in full swing in the middle of the construction process, I noticed that there was little to no traffic. I had a couple of amazing people who were following it and going through the same home building process, but other than that, it seemed like I was mostly talking to myself. I admittedly am new to blogging and didn't realize that this was relatively normal at the beginning. Over the past 1-2 months I have started getting e-mails inquiring about progress of the house and decided that I'd revive this thing and provide more information that could be beneficial to those partaking in this long, challenging, but fun endeavor.

Obviously our house is now complete since I haven't posted in so long. We have since moved in, started on some projects, and even added a little member to our family in the form of a beautiful cockapoo puppy named Emmie. I know...new puppy in a new house. Real smart, right? We've got a lot of catching up to do. So here is the plan:

I am going to go dig through my photos and paperwork that I have that date back to the last post I made and begin showing what the progress was throughout different steps. Once I have completed this, I will make a few new sections that will provide tips and lessons that I learned along the way to building our first home. After we have that accomplished, I will continue to provide occasional updates with projects that we've done to improve things around here.

I'm going to go start digging through some things to get us back on track here. In the meantime, I will leave you with a picture of Emmie so that you all will forget that this blog disappeared for a while!

It's been a while

Sorry for the hiatus...life has been busy and in the free time I've had, I've been lazy. Quite a bit of progress has been made although we are behind schedule. Rainy weather has us a few weeks behind where we'd like to be. We should still finish before our lease is up though toward the end of August. Here's a look at what has happened over the past couple of weeks:

Tubs delivered

Upstairs before framing/roof



"Dried in"...although every time it rains it still gets soaking wet. Haven't understood why they call it "dried in" at this point!

Probably will need a window covering of some sort there!

So as you can see, we now have windows and some doors! They are LoE rated windows and after going to the window place, it is amazing how energy efficient, but cheap feeling windows are these days. They feel flimsy (if that is a word) to us. But some of the most expensive windows there felt like that. These are all energy star rated and supposed to help keep the costs down. Wish I could have budgeted for some of the windows with Argon in them, but these are better than what we have now and should be good for our first home.

Plumbing and HVAC guys start tomorrow and Wednesday while the framers finish framing the basement and a few other small jobs before they move on. Tomorrow we are also doing an electrical walk through. Any suggestions? I plan on doing dimmers throughout most of the house. Going to make sure where we plan on putting the Christmas tree has an outlet controlled by a switch. Making sure there is an outlet on the island in the kitchen. Putting outlets so I can run under cabinet lighting. Outlets where our night stands will go. If I can budget, I will have outlets on the roof for Christmas lights if we do them, but I think that will push my budget. I'm sure I have other ideas written down, but feel free to comment with any suggestions!

We finalized the kitchen plans today with our designer. That is a huge relief! We had been working with two different designers and I basically had them competing against each other. Both started off about $2000-3000 over our budget. After all was said and done, one of them basically gave us everything we wanted, plus bumped us up to 42" cabinets throughout the kitchen and came in right on budget. We didn't have to drop anything we wanted, gained stuff we hadn't even thought possible, and got them to come down between $2000-3000! Our builder was impressed. He said he has never seen them come down quite that much. Finally one of them dropped out of the race today and said she couldn't go any lower, so we finalized with the other guy. Here are the drawings:

The cabinets will be a very dark "espresso" color and we have selected this hardware (in brushed nickel):

We will have granite, but haven't selected that yet. We want something in the low-mid level price range that is very light. Jenny likes anything with as white of a base as possible to go with the dark cabinets. My next house will definitely have the Cambria stuff in it! That stuff is amazing. I know...too early to think of the next house!

We also have our appliances picked out. We had the refrigerator ordeal (will never buy from Sears again), but finally got it sorted out and got a great deal when Best Buy price matched so we could return the damaged piece of garbage Sears tried to dump on us. We will be doing all stainless steel appliances. We are doing a slide in range with smoothtop electric. Everyone says go gas, but we really don't like it for some reason. Our microwave that will be an OTR unit also has a convection bake capability (up to 450 degrees), and will serve as a small, second oven. We didn't even know that existed and are excited about that!

That is about it for now. I will try to update this more frequently! Take it easy everyone.

Framing

Sorry it has been so long! Things have been moving slowly thanks to lots of rain and the framing company running behind last week. Since the last post, things are starting to progress and we've had some minor frustrations along the way. We were excited to see the foundation and basement floor get finished one day, only to go back the next day to see that some teenagers in the neighborhood drew all over the walls...
Fortunately, they just used chalk. It is a nice neighborhood, so this was disheartening. They drew satanic things over each wall of the basement. We are Christians, so this was not something we wanted to experience while building of first home. Jenny was quite bothered by it and we are thinking about having a "house blessing" by her hometown preacher that she knows right before we move in. We had entertained doing this before any of this happened as some of her friends (or my co-workers...can't remember) have had that done and said it added a nice feel and made their new homes feel safe, but now I'd say there is a pretty good chance we will go through with that.

Onto more fun things! Late last week they got the floor joists in. That was fun to see and gave me an idea of how high the basement ceiling is going to be. We had them put higher ceilings in the basement to make it more open. I have to say, it has exceeded our expecations in terms of how high the ceilings are and how much bigger it makes it feel down there!

 

 

Last week we got to start meeting with the kitchen designers. One of them has come in right on budget and given us everything we had asked for. The other person was much more enjoyable to work with, but I have a feeling she won't be able to meet our budget. We are still waiting to hear back from her. With the first guy, we even got some extras that I hadn't planned on such as soft close drawers. We are having a hard time selecting granite. We really like very dark cabinets. We have picked a shade of espresso. We know we want a lighter colored granite to accent these and not make the kitchen too dark. Jenny seams to like granite with as close to a white base as possible. We also tend to like granite with "flecks" of shiny silver in it. We are trying to stick to a grade A or B granite for budget reasons. We will have to go to more places soon and see what else is out there. We have considered Kashmir White, but aren't completely sold on it. She really liked one called Tuscany, but we have had a hard time finding it elsewhere and we imagine it is likely more pricey.

 

Saturday we went and talked with the appliance guy. I was extremely frustrated when we left! He knew our budget, but kept showing me things outside of my budget like it was acceptable. I finally got aggitated and told him to stop and to show us things inside our budget. He finally got the hint and dulled it down a little! However, we kept coming in over budget and discovered it was mostly because of the refrigerator. We really want a french door refrigerator with the pull out freezer on the bottom. Having an ice/water dispenser is non-negotiable with me. Unfortunately, it kept running us well over budget compared to doing a refrigerator without the ice/water dispenser. After we left, we went and looked at some local retail stores and discovered a refrigerator we had seen months ago was coming down in price. We then went to Sears and found it to be on clearance for even less! Then the sales guy tells us he will hold it for us and we could come back the next night and buy it during the "Friends and Family" sale going on...saved an additional 15%. Overall, we got the refrigerator for half of the original price we had seen it months ago! This also put us right back on budget. Since then he has sent me different options for the other kitchen appliances and we are right on track! He has definitely redeemed himself. I compared his prices to other stores and he is routinely coming in $200-600 cheaper per appliance for the same model! We have decided on a slide-in style range, middle of the line dishwasher, and an over-the-range microwave that has a convection baking setting to basically serve as another oven for smaller items! Next best thing to having a double oven I suppose! We are close to making our final selection and at least getting that done. 

Back to the building process...
Yesterday they made some of the walls and today they put some up. So far just the first floor external walls so I am excited to see what they do tomorrow. I hope they don't let a couple of pop-up storms stop them from working at all tomorrow. But ultimately, whatever is best for the house is fine by me.

To wrap things up, here are the latest pictures from tonight's visit!

Wet basement thanks to the rain...

Lovin' us some concrete

Week 2 came to a close and onto week 3. The weather has been rough, so a little slow going at this point. Last week came the gravel and they dug out the sump pump.

 

A couple days later, came out to see the frame being put up!

 

 

Fortunately, we had a few days where the weather cooperated and they got the walls poured.

 

Yesterday, we climbed down into the basement and layed out the finished basement. The builder measured out where the stairs, the bathroom, etc would be so we could get a visual of sorts. After we layed out my initial plan, I decided that I did not like it and we completely redesigned everything on the spot. We found a much better layout in the basement that will allow it to be more open instead of chopped up. We are glad we climbed down and marked everything out with him instead of just going off of paper because it helped a ton. He had the walls water sealed today and the plumbing in the basement will go in tomorrow. Then, when we can get a string of dry days (and once we get the next money draw squared away), he can pour the basement and garage floors and start framing. He said he expects to start framing in 1.5-2 weeks.

 

That's all for now! And congrats to another blogger, Amy, and her family for completing their home and moving in this past week! Check their blog out at http://lot23blog.blogspot.com/ if you are looking for more insight into the building process. It has helped me out along the way so far!

 

Underway!

We are now officially 3 days in and seeing some progress. However, after tomorrow it is supposed to rain and he said next week could be slow going as far as progress goes. But hey, at least we are started! They dug the basement out, cleared out some of the brush/overgrowth from the back of the property, and poured the footers today. I know we aren't building a huge house for our first home, but when I saw the footers I was kind of suprised. We both thought it looked kind of small. When I talked with our builder today, I started with "So when we saw the..." and then he cut me off and he said, "I know exactly what you are about to say! And no, it isn't as small as it looks. This is the first thing almost every client says to a builder once this gets going...I promise." I believe him since I literally didn't even get to say that we thought it looked a little smaller than what we were thinking.

Here is a look at the progress:

Coolest hole in the ground I've ever seen...

There were a few of these trees near the back of the property that I requested they not take down...so far so good. The builders dad knows a lot about trees and thinks they are wild pears.

 



 

Footers are in

Tomorrow they will poor the gravel. Then he said if the weather does what it says it might, he probably won't get to the walls at least until Wednesday next week. Sucks, but I'd rather they do it right and not rush it.

On a side note, I've now met the couple that lives next door and a neighbor from across the street. They are all our age and very nice! I think we will get along great with them. We are all huge Reds and Bengals fans and are already planning for get togethers for the games and bonfires this summer! We could really use a few new friends and I hope these neighbors are the answer.

That's all for now!