November 4, 2010: She's a Brick...

HOUSE.





We went up this morning for our pre-drywall walk through with the Construction Supervisor (who is a hoot, by the way). Everything is coming along beautifully - other changes in addition to the brick included a garage door, locks on the doors, electrical wiring/outlets/switch boxes, and the cable/phone wiring. SPEAKING OF WHICH...

Please recall my rant about Todd, the Guardian Home Technologies rep. Well, you better believe we double checked all the cable/phone placements, since we didn't trust the guy farther than I can throw him. And sure enough, the placement in Mr. S's office was wrong. I may be "uncomfortable with technology," but AT LEAST I CAN READ A FLOOR PLAN. Thankfully we'd brought all our paperwork with us (in case of just such a scenario) and showed the Supervisor, who was in total agreement. So I gleefully left Todd a nasty message that he screwed up. It was a lovely moment.

Mr. Supervisor expects we'll have our final walk-through on December 17. So yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he's bringing us a house for Christmas!

October 31, 2010: Trick or Treat

A few more photos from our trip up last weekend to poke around while there were no workers there to give us the evil eye (because we weren't supposed to be there, and because it was Halloween!)

The 2-story foyer:


With pretty stairs!


Kitchen and morning room:


Adjoining family room:


Master bath:


Basement (which Mr. S has claimed):


View of the backyard from the morning room:


View of the mountains from the garage!

October 29, 2010: The Inside Scoop

Now that we have something more closely resembling a house, the sales assistant has started sending us weekly photo updates. Today's gave us a view to some of the inside rooms we haven't broken contracts to spy at yet. From the bottom up...

The basement, looking toward the bump-out under the morning room. The area at the far right will be a big unfinished room (Why hello, storage! It's been so long...)

The living room (not sure why the floor is dangerous?) looking into the dining room. In love with the bay window already...

The kitchen area and morning room, with the open family room to the right:

The always exciting garage, which leads into the even more exciting laundry room and then family room.

The upstairs open hallway/landing, with Chris's office to the left and guest room on the right:

The master bedroom, with master bath in the far left corner:

And last but not least, the outside with one major difference - shingles!

October 28, 2010: House 2.0

Just got a call from Todd, the rep from Guardian Home Technologies who we met with a few months ago, to let us know that he's out at the house site marking all the places we chose for our cable/phone/internet wiring to go.

I had a difficult time being civil with him - this is the man who offended me in every possible way during our meeting, beginning with asking Mr. S all about his job while completely ignoring mine, and ending with his condescending response to my nixing of a home security system: "Oh, are you uncomfortable with technology?"

Yep, I'm so uncomfortable with it, I'm going to go blog/Facebook/Tweet to everyone I know what a chauvinistic jerk you were. So there.

October 22, 2010: Raise the Roof

Woah. This week we went from what was essentially a covered hole in the ground to a an honest-t0-goodness house with doors, windows, and a ROOF. It didn't matter that Mr. S told me exactly what to expect, I was still amazed when we pulled into the subdivision:



Like I said, woah.

View from the left side:

View from the right side, where you can see how much backyard we'll have:

And there's a streetlight right in front of the house - good for "curb it"!!!

Even though we signed papers saying we wouldn't do this, we couldn't help sneaking a peek inside. And I'm so glad we did, because while the footprint of the house last week looked small, the interior now looks HUGE. Here's a view from our kitchen into the morning room:

And from the family room into the kitchen (that's the pantry on the left, and the dining room beyond):

My favorite thing though? That the first two things Mr. S did when walking inside were 1) check out the view of the backyard and 2) stand where the couch will go and gauge the distance to the TV. Priorities, people.

Next week will apparently involve plumbing, HVAC, sprinklers, shingles, and the fireplace. Good stuff.

October 16, 2010: You're Sleeping in my Garage

On Saturday we met up with Chris's parents and headed over to check out the house. I hadn't been there since they actually started working on the HOUSE, not just the land, so I was pretty excited (Chris drove through a week ago, but it was too dark for pictures). There had certainly been lots of activity:



There was tons of lumber everywhere - we were a little confused as to why it looked like a big pile of pick-up-sticks, but oh well...



We got there around lunch time, so the workers (yup, they've been working on Saturdays) were all away from the site on their lunch break. Well, all except one, who'd pulled up a patch of concrete and was taking a snooze. He woke up as we got out of the car, and I told him "You're sleeping in my garage." He just sat and watched as we poked around (you can see him on the right):



At the corner of the garage, with the front porch area and the front of the living room on the far left:



The front half of this side is the living room, the back half is the dining room. You can see the little basement windows:



Standing in the garage, where there's a storage area in the back. You can see the place where our fireplace will poke out on the right hand side:



We were also really impressed with the landscaping they've done - you can see it in the photo above, and here's a detail - the big hill is all planted, and there are 2 trees that will eventually block our view of the rancher above. Nice.



It's still hard to tell from seeing just a footprint, but the framing will be done this week, and we'll finally have something resembling a house!

October 15, 2010: Movin' on Up

This just in from the construction manager:

This week, we managed to get the concrete slabs poured and the lumber package was delivered. The framers have begun and should be finishing up next week.

So we're finished with the digging DOWN and are now building UP!

We're going to head there tomorrow to check out the progress and take some new photos. Stay tuned!