Day 5 - Blueprints - 5/30

Unfortunately it was another wet and rainy day, so not a lot got accomplished on the basement! I am hoping that with the nice weather we are supposed to have these next couple of days, that they can make some real progress!!

Here is the picture of where we are currently at :)

I decided that since I am sick of looking at block and dirt, I would put our floor plans up! Here is a photo of the exterior. We are doing tonal grays and a lot of stone. I really, really like the look of the stone and I don't think I will regret doing it :)

This is our basement. We are doing a walkout so that it is easy access to the hockey rink in the winter :) We decided to make one of the bedrooms downstairs into an exercise room so that we don't have to drive into Rochester to go to the gym everyday! The basement will also have a bar and I am hoping to do a neat wall for our TV. 

This is our main level. We are going to have a large, dramatic foyer, which I am excited about :) We also decided to do a coffered ceiling in the family room and I am still deciding on my statement piece for the kitchen!! 

Upstairs living is just us and the boys :) The boys have their rooms, and bathroom; laundry up; and the master suite! We decided to expand our closet in this home because Baron hates tripping over my shoes ;)

I hope this was a more fun read than just pictures of block and dirt!! Looking forward to more progress being made today!

Day 4 - More Basement :)

Bear with me as the next few weeks may get slightly boring in terms of this blog! The basement takes awhile to do, so I need to be patient, but we still head out there every night to see the progress!! 

Here it is as of yeesterday!  It looks like they are about halfway done! YAY!!

I told Baron that I think they have it set how high the block needs to go in one of the corners. (I highlighted this with yellow on the picture below!) They are about halfway done with the basement, but the garage still needs to be completed :)

Enjoying watching the steady progress everyday!!

Day 3 - The Basement

They started on the basement now!! Yay!! It is fun to see where everything is going to go and have a better visual of the house! 

The look from the back of the house is neat to me! We are going to have a walkout, so you can see on the left will be a guest bedroom (in the jut-out area) and the right will be our family with a patio door to outside. 

We had beautiful black dirt/top soil, but in order to do a walkout, they had to scrape down our backyard. Here is Tristan in front of a huge pile of dirt! It really puts into perspective how big that pile actually is! And we have three more of them on our property!!

It is Memorial Day Weekend, so it will be a few days until I update next! To be honest, it feels like the progress is going quickly right now! I love seeing the changes day to day!! 

Day 2 - 5/24 - Pouring the Footings

I am shocked by what I have learned about the building process just in the last couple of days! Let's be honest, I had no idea what "footings" were until I stopped out at the lot and saw them for myself! I would have assumed they were a new type of shoe that I probably needed to buy ;)

This is the "top" part of the house where the front will sit. As you can see from this angle, they had to level our backyard, but luckily it is beautiful black dirt, so we may be able to use it and salvage some cost from our final grade and sod!

This is the framing for the footings. Again, please bear with me as I am not 100% sure I am using ANY of these words right - haha! But I am definitely trying!!

The guys working were very kind and explained to me what I was looking at - our basement - and where the stairs would go, etc. It is really very, very cool to see everything come together from the ground up!!

This isn't really my area of expertise, but it is fun to see the progress they make everyday! It is about 90 degrees here, too, so we appreciate their hard work! 

Day 1 - 5/23 - Breaking Ground!!

We broke ground on our new house today!! YAY!! We are so excited to begin this process! I went over my lunch break and took a picture of the lot. I hope to be able to do this quite frequently during the summer months. Actually, if I am honest, I am torn....if I don't go everyday, I will definitely notice the progress made when I DO go....but if I do go, then I will get to watch it go up in person, which is so fun!!

Here is a picture of a pile of dirt and a little hole. But it is OUR little hole! YAY!!

With that being said, we have already run into some issues. Our builder called me today and said that they need to build up the slope more for it to be a walk-out home. We are getting final numbers on that to determine if we want to do it or not. Baron really wanted a walk-out lot, especially for the winter hockey season, so I hope the numbers don't come back too high!!

We also found out that we don't have enough sand in our soil, so we will have to bring some in to help accommodate that issue. Apparently building on black dirt is not good...who knew??

Here's to hoping that these are the only issues we run into during this process! (Ha!) But also to knowing that Baron and I can work our way through just about any issue!

Background Info :)

I decided to start this blog on our home because I have so many ideas that I want to share, but I am SURE our family and friends are getting sick of hearing them :)

A little background on us...

We have lived in our home in Rochester for about 4 years. We decided to move north to a smaller town that is on the river. My husband didn't want neighbors behind us, but I wanted neighbors AROUND us, so this lot proved to be a great compromise!!

We are excited to start this adventure and build our dream home! It is truly going to be the place we finally settle down and raise our family!

I went out yesterday and took a picture of our lot before we start building on it! Everything is all marked out for where the house will stand, so it is very exciting for us to see the placement!

I am excited to look back at this blog in the upcoming years and see how the entire home came together! It is also nice to have a place to share my thoughts, questions, and suggestions about building :)