House Building for Rookies: III

FRIENDS! Fret no longer! I have not abandoned ship and left you to meander the tumultuous path of home building alone! We are, however, in survival mode so bear with me :)

As you can imagine, as LOT has happened since I left you  :) Let's get to it:

The basement is already proving to be a hot spot for friends/neighbors. One of the major reasons we wanted to build was for people to fill it! Notice the beams/posts. Gotta have those things sporadically to hold up the upper floor...think about that when you are thinking about your future basement and that layout. The beams/posts affect that. This is step 1 for the framing crew. 

 Next comes subfloor! Dangerous time to be bringing children (or clumsy adults) around. Also, for the first time the house seemed huge!

 WALLS! THOSE ARE WALLS! And this is where it all changed. It finally became a house (to me) that's not a legal description! :)

Trusses (the framing portion that creates the roof) are custom made off site and brought in. They are set with a crane. Fun to watch. The boys and I sat in the car munching chicken nuggets & watching the live movie! :)

 THAT IS MY HOUSE! Taking shape now, for sure. Framing is quite a process but wow! Makes a huge difference!!! After the framing is done foam board (the blue stuff) is attached to the 2x4's and then covered in Tyvek, then covered with siding. That's it....seems weird, no? Plywood is added over the trusses to create the roof. Felt is laid and then the shingles. Also got the front entry beams/gable done which is super fun! Columns come later. Such a muddy muddy mess! When the framers feel like it they come back and put in the windows and temporary exterior doors. Temp ones are used so the pretty new ones don't get banged up. Also true of the interior stair way. Right now it's a temporary staircase/railing. Better than the gaping hole that caused me GREAT anxiety with the kiddos around.

 And now let's take a tour inside and play a little game: name that space! Based on only the framing see if you can guess which spaces are which. Answers below. Please notice the puddle of water on the floor. When you don't have a roof and it rains the inside of your new house gets wet. It's a little alarming but apparently ok. Also notice the blue foam board that is now the exterior AND interior of your home. There are parts of it that are super muddy from people stepping on it and such. Apparently that's part of your house forever...not a big deal but a strange thought nonetheless. GAME ON:

 Name that space: 1 What areas do you think Zeb and Silas are "cleaning?"

 Name that space: 2 Silas (shirtless because construction workers leave A LOT of 1/2 full energy drinks around. Silas found one and dumbed it on himself) is peering out of???

 Name that space: 3 What have we here? And why the red boards? That I don't know, btw...

 Name that space: 4 Hint: it's where the "magic" happens. Or so they say...

 Name that space 5: If you can't handle the heat....

 Name that space: 6 Obviously that's the stairway....what's to the left & right?

 Name that space: 7 Who shall rest their head here?

 She's pretty. I hope she comes with the house :)

Name that space: 8 More wee ones MIGHT rest here

ROOFING!

 SIDING!

And as of tonight, the drywall is hung! Waiting for it to be mudded and taped! Before they could drywall Seth had to insulate the walls & spray foamed pipes & wires going through the attic/exterior. Plastic is stapled over the insulation and drywall over that. Can't wait to get pics -- that REALLY changed things. I can't see through my whole house anymore! We have windows and doors and hoping to wrap up siding this weekend! We also now have a driveway. A lot of stuff can go in different orders depending on who's available when (driveway/sidewalks/siding/garage door/etc.) Siding wouldn't normally be done unit later but since Seth is doing that he's already started. We will also get to work on the deck ASAP so we can get some sod down before the snow flies! 

A few product notes: 
-WINDOWS: we went with Pella windows and Seth does use Pella for most of his jobs. He's not opposed to other brands, but does believe Pella is quality product with lots of options. 
-SIDING: for our sliding door we opted to have blinds IN the widows because let's face it: vertical blinds are a HUGE pain and I HATE curtain shopping. Easy peasy. Another product Seth HIGHLY recommends: Hardi siding. Cement board siding: maintenance free/durable! We opted for a pre finished product because "ain't no body got time to paint" :) haha. But in the end we did discover it ended up being a few hundred $ cheaper to go that route. Something to consider. 
-EGRESS WINDOWS: we did the metal window wells but had we known the cost we would have done poured. I do hate those corrugated metal window wells. Ah well....I won't look.

And now...the moment you've all been waiting for: ANSWERS!!!
Name that space: 
1. Zeb is standing in the living room & Silas is cleaning the dinning area.
2. Silas is standing in the pantry in the kitchen. To the left is the master bed/bath/closet area.
3. Mud room. Entry from garage on the left side. Washer and dryer will be on one side of the window and sink/cabinets/lockers on the other side.
4. Master bedroom!
5. Kitchen! Pantry on the right, bar/island thing straight ahead. Dinning area beyond that.
6. Front entry to the left of the stairs, closet to the right and kids wing (bedrooms/bathroom) after that.
7. Grace's room/big closet!
8. Boys' room!

Oh you guys, you're fun :) I'll try to update again after this weekend so they don't get so long next time! :)

House Building for Rookies: Part II

We officially broke ground on July 31st, 2014. This is what breaking ground looks like. I was pretty disappointed when I found out there are no gold shovels and photographers involved.

So they dig and make a giant hole in which your new house will fit.

It's everything I dreamed of and more :) Next they pour the footings. You know...footings. No idea what that means except they are made out of cement and look like this...

I thought about going around with a tape measure to make sure the poured them all right because if those footings are wrong...the whole house is wrong. Seth informed me that wasn't necessary. He'll be sorry if our house ends up smaller (or bigger).  Those big...things standing up there would be the forms they will next set to pour the foundation walls into. I didn't see them go up or come down, but seems like quite a system they have. Once that's done you have a basement and can really start to envision what the house will look like. Naturally, it has to be sprayed with some sort of tar concoction...I assume that is related to water? Maybe I should update these things when Seth is awake to explain stuff to me? Nah...I mean this is supposed to be a rookie's prospective... Rock is dumped (via a cool machine thing) around the outside of the house (for drainage) and in/on the basement floor.

I will say that at this point, I freaked out because the house seems so small....I'm looking from wall to wall thinking of everything that has to fit, but Seth assured me it will be ok. We'll see Seth...we'll see. Seth and his dad spent a weekend in the muddy trenches to put foam board around the outside of the foundation. Next the plumbing had to be 'roughed in' which basically involved PVC pipes in the basement. Just this past Monday the basement floor concrete was poured and the garage was prepped for concrete. They should be doing the backfilling tomorrow and then maybe we can stand closer to the house :) Framing is SUPPOSED to start Monday so pray for no rain and timely contractors!

In between we've been keeping these cuties alive

and making tons of decisions. Here's a sneak peak at what may or may not appear in the new house:

Hoping for exciting updates next week with framing and such! Stay tuned for more sneak peeks...

House Building for Rookies

We're about to start building a new house. In order to document the journey, provide some insight, tips, etc. and to keep the nosy people out there informed, we'll be keeping a blog as we go along. Let's DIG in! Get it. Dig!?! HAHAHAHA! :) You're in for a treat!

So, as you can imagine MUCH goes into house building before any building takes place. First of all you've got to decide if you want 2 story or ranch and how many bedrooms/bathrooms you want where. We knew we wanted a ranch since that's what we had lived in for the last 7 years and loved it. [[Helpful hint: 2 story houses are cheaper to build because there is less foundation and roofing, which are the spendy parts of the house.]] We knew we wanted 3 bedrooms on the main floor and at least 2 bathrooms, ideally a 1/2 bath for guests. We wanted a split plan so the kids bedrooms were on one end of the house and ours was on the other. You can then start searching till your eyes pop out of your head. We have literally spent years combing house plan after house plan. You've got to find one that is close to want you want and your builder can make changes and re draw it to your liking.

Things to look for/my advice:
-Avoid a front entry that opens right into the living room. Even a tiny foyer makes a big difference. Our last house opened right into the living room -- hated it.
-Watch closet space. I kept looking at plans thinking "where on earth will I store my vacuum?" Things like that can be easy to overlook, but you're going to want and need plenty of storage.
-Bedroom sizes/number--I was surprised by the sizes of most bedrooms in the plans I saw. The kids' bedrooms at our other house were so tiny we were looking forward to having bigger bedrooms for them. We also knew the boys where going to share: which seems to surprise people. They are 19 months apart...why would they need their own room? Plus, the square footage that each kid having their own room would create would pretty much deplete any other living space. So, we ended up finding a plan that would allow us to add some extra space onto the bedrooms. 
-Sinks: I know the whole 2 sink thing is a huge deal right now and that was originally in our plan for the kids bathroom. I couldn't imagine 2 (or more) of our kids using an actual sink at the same time. So we opted for 1 sink and more counter & closet space. In the master we did do 2 separate vanities...but that's just so I can prove that Seth is the messier one :) Anyway, something to consider...just because it seems to be the thing to do doesn't mean it's what'll work best for your family.
-Best use of space: our original plan had a fairly large covered patio on the end of the living rom. Being that space still required foundation and roof...seemed like a waste. So we enclosed it to be part of the house which made the living room very long but we then added in some custom shelving & columns so it should work out nicely. And we'll still have a deck so I'm good with that. 
-We were also a little concerned the dinning room might be tight so we bumped it out into a bay window shape to give a little more room. Cheap fix. 

We knew early on we loved the craftsman look and ran with that. Thanks to Pinterest & Houzz we've gotten so many ideas! Truth be told: we have a friend who was/is an interior decorator & she is amazing. We give her our general ideas, she narrows things down, approves/disapproves, gives new ideas, etc. and has made decision making SOOO easy for us. We've got everything picked out already except 2 lights and 3 ceiling fans. Even furniture! Not bad, eh? It has been a lot of fun for us. We don't argue about anything--we each kind of have a couple areas we are passionate about being a certain way and we respect that. I also respect that this is Seth's area of expertise and I let him do his thing. Despite popular belief, there are a lot of things I just don't get too worked up about. Paint colors, flooring, etc...I don't like certain things and beyond that -- I'm pretty flexible. 

So...here's a glimpse and what (we hope) the house will look like :) Keep posted to see the end result...