7 - Progress and Problems

Just to preface this post... it is going to be a long one. It's crazy how quickly things have progressed in the past two weeks. I meant to post last week, but stuff got in the way. Lately, it's been iPhone games... yup, they're distracting. But I'll do a breakdown of what has gone on, and where we are currently. Then, I'll try and do better. Especially since the house is moving along at an alarming rate now.

It's been raining a lot lately. By "a lot", I mean... it's been raining. "A lot" is probably an overstatement, but I'd prefer it not rain too much these upcoming months if possible. It would be great if we could actually close on January 1. The ground is sort of dry now, but what I had hoped to be a nice dry season for our build, has turned into most everything being wet and covered in nasty, red clay/soil.

Before all the rain started, we drove by and noticed the plumbing was in. Very exciting. Then it rained, and nothing happened for awhile. I think this picture was actually taken before my last post, but I originally had this grand plan of spacing out my posts each step of the way. Well, that obviously didn't happen. So let's pretend this all spanned over the time frame of the month of September.

Plumbing! And our moat!

The first problem we ran in to--yikes right? first problem, meaning there's more, and so early on too!--was after our foundation was poured. If you remember our floor plan from a previous post, the left side of the garage is slightly longer than the right. When we met with the builder during the pre-construction meeting, we had discussed leaving a space for our storm shelter in the garage... on the left side of the garage. Well, lo and behold...

Call me crazy, but pretty sure that hole is on the right side. Bummer. Not a huge deal, my car can still pull up enough to access what will be the entrance to the storm shelter without having to remove it from the garage. Thank goodness Katinka (my car) is a shorty! We called our sales girl to ask what happened. Supposedly, they (the foundation people, not the builders) had already drawn the plans for the cables in our monolithic post tension concrete slab. 

Not sure if I mentioned in the pre-con post, but we were originally supposed to meet with one guy, but since our plans weren't ready, we met with a different guy about a week later and our house was turned over to him. Apparently during this time frame, the previously guy had already gotten started on having the cables/foundation engineered, or whatever you call it, for our house. I don't know. It's all mumbo jumbo to me, but whatever. It's too late now, we still have a hole for our storm shelter, so I'm not complaining. No use wasting energy being bummed over something that can't be fixed right?

Well, about a week goes buy, and our sales rep texts me mentioning that our wood had been delivered. After a couple days, we stop by to see what else has been done. Framing! No roof, just the body of the home here. I took tons of pictures of each room, but I'll show you guys the main house, entry, and then what I'm hoping will be one of my favorite parts of the house. That is, if my requests are fulfilled... still waiting on quotes.

So here's the outside from the curb. Vernon looks like a marshmallow because it was a little chillier (more chilly?) today, and he wanted to wear his leather jacket. Probably a little more warmth than needed, but exciting for him nonetheless :) Also, you can see the swampy muddiness that is our front yard. It's like a little piece of Lake Thunderbird right at home.

Our house isn't huge, it's only 1700 square feet, but in these phases, it looks so small! It's so weird the perspective, and I just can't imagine it being the size of the finished home that we walked through. It's like a little baby house. Here's one of my favorite parts though. Our master closet! So excited. My second favorite will hopefully be our kitchen, which is nothing spectacular, but I do love kitchens. The closet is a wrap-around Australian closet. Love it. I want to say it's about 5' x 13', but I could be wrong.

Oh, and here's our entry. I'm standing between the living room and kitchen. The living room would be on the left of the picture, and the kitchen to the right. To the right of the entry way (from this viewpoint) will be my little office. Very excited about the office. I probably work about 85-90% from home, and it will be nice having a dedicated room to work from. Right now, I have a little space in the corner of our bedroom. Which I chose, rather than using the second room in our apartment, but I think I'm ready for an office. That, and to move the docking station and all that set up from my corner to the second room just seems like more effort than it's worth... told you I was lazy.

While walking around, we did notice a few odd things. The first being this weird elevated piece of concrete in our garage. Not sure what it was. Vernon said it was probably on the plan when there was initially going to be a storage closet in the garage. We asked for there not to be one, but apparently the foundation plans weren't modified, and we got this little step. When we asked the builder folks about it, they said it was a tire stop... Really?! Come on now, we're not stupid. It's like a foot and a half from the back wall... on the long side of the garage... and it's like four inches high. That is not a tire stop. There's a tire stop in our current garage. I think I know a tire stop when I see one. We asked if there was anything they could do to fix it, or make it not look so awkward. Vernon was going to add a workbench along that back wall, but with it not being one level, it might be more difficult.

I mean, really? A tire stop?

The other issue we noticed was the sink plumbing to our spare bathroom. Maybe you can see what's wrong. To give a little more information, the picture was taken from the bedroom, looking straight on, into the second bathroom. The other spare bedroom is on the other side.

Can you spot the error? Maybe, maybe not? Well the little piece of plumbing on the lower, right side of the image... that's for the sink. Notice how it's in the bedroom and not the bathroom? Yeah, we did too. It's not even in line with the wall. Definitely a mistake. We pointed this out to the builder as well, and they said they can fix it. I hope so, and nicely at that. I don't know what all is involved with moving plumbing when the foundation has already been poured around it, but it sounds difficult. Would have been nice it if was just measured out and done properly. Who knows, maybe this is something that happens with new builds. I mean, the plumbing was done when it was just a big patch of dirt. We'll see I suppose.

Other than that, everything else seems to look pretty good. We went sailing on our Lasers today and decided to make a pit stop at the house. The zip board has been put up, and we have a framed roof now. When we stopped by during the day, the construction workers were still doing their thing, so I just snapped a photo and left. We came back tonight and walked through the house again. Exciting seeing the outer "walls" up and all the window holes.

Okay, I'm now caught up to present day. Literally. The last picture was taken this afternoon around 4pm. I promise to try and do better. Did I say that last time? I probably did. Well, I need to now, with how much they're getting done and all. Goodness. Vernon thinks we'll have a shingled roof by the end of this week. Seems pretty quick. I question it. I'll be in Austin this weekend, so I'll check back Sunday night or Monday. Will update you all then! Until next week... have a good night!

6 - Design

Wow. Who knew keeping up with a blog would be so difficult. I give all bloggers props for being able to post something on a regular, or even semi-regular, basis. My hopes were to try and post once a week, but sometimes the last thing I want to do when I get off work, is transition to a different computer monitor... but a TV, phone or iPad... totally different. Haha.

We had our design meeting the Friday before Labor Day weekend. Yup, that's how lazy I've been... It went really well. It only lasted 4 hours, which was about the shortest they could hope for. Some people take much longer than that. Thankfully, I'm a crazy person and we figured out a lot of the details that we wanted prior to meeting with the designer.

The colors we went with were as close to a grayscale palette as possible. It seems the most neutral without going beige or off white. We're really excited, and hope that all the colors we picked will actually look good together. A little scary, and would suck if they don't. I wish I wrote down the names, but I believe they're from Sherwin Williams. I also wanted to go with nickel fixtures, but after looking at the oil-rubbed bronze, the bronze just looked so much nicer. So we went with that.

Most of the design details will be revealed over time as the house slowly gets completed. Therefore, I won't talk about it too much. I did drag Vernon to Lifestyles and Metro Appliances to see what appliances we're getting, and also to start looking at light fixtures we might like. That's probably going to be the toughest decision. The allowance for lighting seems small, and I don't know how anyone does it without going over. With our initial walk through, we're thinking we may end up going $100-200 over the allowance. Which I guess in the grand scheme of things isn't all that bad.

What I do want to mention, which will be meaningless to all except the few friends of mine that share my love of television, is the ten cable drops we get! For anyone that knows me at all, I love my TV, and now we basically get a cable outlet in every room... including the garage and above the microwave. They say the kitchen is the heart of the home right? Well, why not stick a little TV in there too?! If either of us took baths, we'd consider putting one in the bathroom, but we don't. We actually took the jetted tub out of the master bathroom and are going to put a window seat/storage bench there instead. Did I mention this in the previous post? I can't remember, but apologies in advance if I did. Again, it's been so long!

The only major disappointments during our design meeting were finding out the kitchen backsplash that we thought came standard, was an upgrade. Bummer. It was the long glass strips type backsplash. It was really nice. We'll get travertine tile backsplash instead. The other downer was the fireplace surround. In the model home, it's huge. It probably takes up a quarter of the wall that it's on. It's definitely a centerpiece of the living room. Of course, it was also an upgrade. So we'll get a normal sized fireplace... whatever that is. I'm a little bummed, but we want to stay as close to budget as possible, so unless we feel something is needed, or we can't live without it, we're going with whatever comes as a standard option.

Other than that, we've been driving by the lot on a weekly basis to check on the progress. They've laid out the framing for the foundation. It's so weird how small the footprint looks. I know our home won't be huge to begin with, but only seeing the outline... it looks so tiny! Either way, we're really excited. We also picked out our storm shelter that will go in the garage floor. We're getting a small one that will fit 6-8 people, and by we, I mean my mom. It's her housewarming gift to us. A pre-housewarming gift :) having lived in SW OKC/Moore all her life, tornado safety is at the top of her list and she didn't want us to wait a year or so... which was our timeline for when we would probably have purchased one.

Have a great week!

5 - I Spy...

... a truck and trailer!

Today, work took place at a facility near our lot. So, of course, after work I had to make the drive to check it out. As I drive down the street, I see a big trailer and movement! I want to say they're grading the lot, but I'm not sure if that's the correct terminology. Whatever it's called... They're flattening the lot and moving dirt around.

Exciting stuff :) Can I officially say we've broken ground?! Or at least scooted some dirt around? You should see the area the city (doesn't look like it's part of the neighborhood based on the final plat plans I saw, but I could be wrong) is developing around the neighborhood. It's like a sea of red clay right now. Gotta love Oklahoma!

I think I'm going to try and come at least once a week to check on progress, but hopefully twice. It's just such a far drive from where we're living now, and I've gotten so spoiled with not having to drive very much. I could probably ask Vernon to do it, but I don't know if I trust his phone photography skills to get a picture I'd like. Maybe a practice round to see how it goes.

I also need to find a good spot to take pictures. One of my coworkers, at least I think it was a coworker, suggested I take a picture from the exact same spot during the build, and it could almost turn into a flip book by the time the house is completed. Brilliant idea, I love it! Now I have to make a trip back up while the lot is just dirt, and snap a pic before they start prepping the foundation.

That port-a-potty has also been in that same place ever since we chose our lot. It's just weird because there were no current houses being built in that little corner over the past month. Now there's construction going on about six lots down, but I guess it's nice to have it right by our curb. Down the road when we've got plumbing and toilets in, hopefully the workers will choose to use that pretty blue green port-a-potty outside instead of ours :)

Can't wait to see what things will look like next week! I feel a little bad for our neighbor. Hopefully she doesn't work a night shift and sleep during the day when the construction crew are doing their thing. That would be four to five months of hell!

Have a good evening!