Last week we met at the lot with our builder and the person in charge of doing the excavating. This was to discuss what trees would come down (as few as possible!), where the driveway would go, where to bury stumps, etc.
There are many things that go into the beginning process of building a new home. A lot of these I didn't know about because I wasn't "present" last time. I am enjoying learning all of these things this time around! The same day we met with our builder, we noticed that both the sewer and the water were in the process of being taken care of. More progress!!!!
A big part of our time over the past couple of months has been researching, researching, and researching some more. While it IS fun to pick out all of things to build a new home, it is also time consuming if you want to do it cost effectively which we definitely do this time around. We have spent a lot of time deciding the things that we want for the house and then researching the best places to purchase these things. We recently ordered several of our exterior doors from Menards and picked them up last week. They are now living in one of our storage sheds with the majority of all our other belongings ;)
In addition to picking up the doors from Menards, we picked up our big cedar beams. These beams will be used for Tommy to build the trusses for the exterior of the house. He built the trusses for our last house as well and they were absolutely beautiful. These will be more simple style than the last beams which is good since Tommy doesn't have a workshop to build in right now and obviously he isn't far removed from back surgery. Our wonderful friends Dan and Linda were kind enough to lend us their back yard this past weekend to work on them a little bit. :) Have you smelled fresh cut Western Red Cedar? It's incredible!
We have decided on Natural Cherry cabinets so one of our next steps was to pick out granite for our countertops in the kitchen. I am pretty open to anything as long as it has brown tones but Tommy is a little more picky about these types of things - HA! We thought we had chosen what we wanted but when we went back, Tommy saw a slab that he fell in love with. These pictures don't really do it justice due to the lighting and reflection on the granite but it really IS a beautiful granite.
Hey! We officially have our slabs paid for and on hold! Yay!
Yesterday was the big day - the excavating began!!! I've been waiting VERY patiently (Not) for this to happen so I was beyond excited to get up yesterday morning and go check it out. I went out to the lot on three different occasions yesterday to check the progress and it was very exciting to see an actual spot where the driveway and the house would be!
This was the beginning of the day and you can see where the driveway will come in from the road. As I mentioned we are trying to keep as many trees as possible. We want a house in the woods!
As you can see, as the day went along the lot changed quite a bit! Looks like we will have plenty of firewood to use next year ; )
Today they were supposed to dig the hole for the basement and finish up the excavating but the weather is not cooperating so not much action today. The plan is to finish digging tomorrow and then the footers will go in.
Thursday I am taking a trip to Nashville to look at and price flooring which is our next big decision. We've gone back and forth on several different options. We have at least decided that we will be doing wood look ceramic tile throughout the house. We LOVE hardwood, but we always plan to have at least one bulldog, and someday possibly multiples and our last flooring was ruined by the time we sold the house. We don't want to make the same mistake this time!
Stay tuned for more updates! Hopefully more frequently now that we have officially begun!
