Exterior and Other Thoughts

They dropped the pallets of bricks off at the house last week... so that's some progress.  The only problem is... they don't look like we thought they would.  

The brick color we got is called Mulberry and we really liked it when we saw it on two or three completed houses.  But the bricks we have at the house don't seem to look like that.  We even went so far as to call the brickyard again to verify that the houses we looked at previously did, in fact, have Mulberry bricks on them.   They did.

Mulberry Brick on a completed house

As you can see, Mulberry is a deep red brick color with a few blackish bricks thrown in here and there... which is why I'm confused about why our bricks look purple???

At this point we're hoping that they look better once they're on the house... which they probably will.  It's hard to get an accurate sense when they're sitting on a pallet, plus bricks age and discolor and weather and so on...   No clue when they'll start laying the brick.

We're also having trouble picking siding.  We'd like a dark brown/tan siding (similar to the picture above), which is very similar to what the existing house next door has.  However, we're actually getting a slightly higher quality of siding than the existing house had, and it's not available in that color.  We can always downgrade our siding and get that exact color... but then it's a lower quality.  We're trying to see if there are any other color options for the better stuff, but we might be stuck deciding between the color we want or a better quality product.  :(

In other news... plumbing and HVAC are (mostly) in and the electrician is getting started.   Our final electrician bill came in about $500 over budget, so... eek!  We're getting some much needed lighting and outlets though, so there is definitely value in that expense.    I'm very comfortable working on residential electrical, so I can probably add a lot of this stuff after we move in a lot cheaper, but my motivation to fish wire through drywall in a 2 story house is somewhat lacking.  That being said, there are a few areas where we backed off of adding a light fixture or an outlet somewhere that we wanted, just because it will be fairly easy for me to add them in later.  

I keep worrying about money... because that's just a thing I do in my daily life, so naturally I'm going to do it when we're spending OMGREALLYYAREALY!!! amounts of money, but everything I've read, heard or seen about construction or major remodeling projects has indicated that most people reach a point where the budget is completely shot... we're not there and it doesn't look like we're going to get that out of control.  We probably are going over our bottom line numbers, but we'll be at least close.   So we win. 

Life ain't nothin but decisions and money

Bonus points for the title reference..

So we're finally hitting the period where we're starting to spend more money than we planned :-/  So far we're keeping our overrun pretty manageable, it's a lot of money in $'s, but it's only about 2% of our expected cash expenditure for building, buying and moving into this house (that includes appliances, furniture, etc...), so in terms of budget variance, we're actually doing pretty good.  As of now... we're pretty much out of things to we can possibly upgrade.   So hopefully we're done bleeding!

First up.... faucets!   Because we made a deal for an exact copy of the previous spec house, our "builder standard" for a lot of things is the upgraded versions of the "standards" for most contracted houses.  This is great, and is saving us some money and/or giving us a little bit nicer finishing materials in a lot of places.   Faucets is one area where this applies.  Our faucets are actually pretty nice.... the only problem is that they're polished chrome.

Our bathroom faucets - stainless steel finish

Polished chrome is a very popular finish,  it's classic, it works well in a lot of decorating styles and a lot of people really like it... we're just not those people.  We simply prefer the duller stainless steel finish.  The only problem is that it's going to cost us about $400 to upgrade all of hte bathroom fixtures (faucets, tub, showers) to that finish.  

Ouch.

We've also decided we wanted to go with a nicer Kitchen faucet.    (I blame Theresa for this one!) So we started looking at our upgrade options there.  We have a few very nice choices that would cost around $170 to upgrade.  But, of course, the one we really want is like $60 more, and that's probably the one we're going to get because hey, if you're already spending $170 what's another $60?  This is how budgets begin to die.

Our likely kitchen faucet choice

 

 

 

 

Our next big expense was electrical work.  I knew we would spend some money here, but I thought we'd get out for around $500.  However,  when we walked through with the electrician we somehow managed to rack up close to $1000 worth of work to:

• Add recessed lighting to our formal living room and library, neither of which have overhead lighting standard
• Add 2 more recessed lights to our family room
• Add 3 or 4 more misc recessed lights. 
• Run speaker wire from the library to the back patio
• Run speaker wire in the master bathroom and closet.
• Pre-wire the kitchen for under cabinet lighting
• Add a few misc outlets

Again... ouch.   And again... the decisions.  Having to decide where you wnat cable/data drops, where you're going to need plugs and switches, where to place the lights.... AAAAAAHHHHH.  I don't know 80% of the answers to those questions, and I'm not going to know the answers to those questions until I've lived there for a month.   But it all has to be decided now.  I'm already reconsidering or adding too a lot of stuff we decided in our walkthrough.  Luckily the electrician won't start until Monday, so I have all week to finalize my thoughts.  This is definitely the worst part about building a house.  Wondering if you've made decisions you're going to regret later.

About half of that cost is for the recessed lights (damn those things are expensive!) and we may just go with single overhead fixtures in the living room/library.  We're still thinking it over.   This expense in particular really bugs me.  I'm comfortable with residential electrical, I've worked with it a lot previously, I'm knowledgeable about most of the electrical codes, etc...  In short I could happily do all of that stuff myself for the cost of materials (which is.... not much).  But I'm not allowed to work on this house while it's under construction and most electrical work is extremely hard to do after drywall has been installed.   If I had to go in and add recessed lights after we close.. It'd take me an entire weekend, I'd have to hack the everloving hell out of my nice pretty drywall and I'd probably kill Theresa our of pure frustration.... and then I'd feel bad.   So it's just way easier to have it done for me now.

We're also getting to the point where we need to decide on a ceiling fan and a vent hood.  I found some cheap vent hoods on Amazon.  I have no idea what kind of quality we're going to be getting, but the price is right so we're going to give them a shot.  There isn't a whole hell  of a lot to a vent hood, it's a piece of ductwork with a blower attached to it, so I'm hopeful it will work out.  They have pretty much every style of hood available, and I can't decide if we want to go with the modern glass look, the transitional look with the thin horizontal shelf, or with the traditional canopy.  

For the ceiling fan... we need something that is 54-60 inches, has a light, is reversible, has a remote control and looks decent and modern, is under $400.  So far we're coming up completely blank and we need to get that figured out soon!

Stupid Tax

So we (read, I) decided that the windows in the master bedroom were just a little bit too close together.

If we get a king bed in the future (and we will) and we go with a wider headboard there would be a fair bit of space between the window and the wall and very little (just a few inches) between the window and the bed.    I keep thinking that it'd be too close.   In reality, it'd probably be fine.  But my OCD has somehow chosen this little issue to lock onto and I'd rather just move them now and make sure that everything will be spaced well enough than to leave it alone and not like it later.

The bad news is that the framing crew is going to charge $150 to re-frame them.  Since they put them exactly (to the inch) where I told them too the first time... having to pay to move them is just "stupid tax".  It's money I have to pay for the privilege of walking through life being obliviously idiotic.   :(  

But if $400 (this $150 + $250 for the garage door)  is the extent of our unexpected expenses, I'm going to be pretty satisfied with that.

However, it looks like that number might go a bit higher because we're probably going so spend a bit of money upgrading our faucets as well.   I didn't think about that when I was doing any of the budgeting, so hopefully we keep the costs on that pretty low.   We're actually on a pretty tight budget  here, we're getting a lot of things like kitchen cabinets, wood flooring and stairs, etc... and in doing that, we've spent pretty much everything we're willing to spend.   So even looking at a few $100 on unbudgeted expenses or upgrades is a big deal at this point.

In happier news, I wrote about all of our floorplan changes a few days ago and there were a few of them I wasn't quite sure I liked, but after walking through the house a few more times... I think I like pretty much all of them.  I'm really starting to dig the stairs in particular.   The one thing I'm not sure I love is the master bathroom.  Theresa doesn't really like it much either.  I like most of it, I'm just not crazy about the shower.  I don't like that it shares a wall with the bedroom, and it might not have enough room or wallspace to add a 2nd shower head.  It looked like it would work on paper, but now that we see it framed... we're not really sure.    So hopefully the plumber, or the builder, or someone can figure out a way to make it all work.

I have to walk through sometime this week with the electrician and low voltage contractors to pick the locations of all of the outlets and cable/data drops.   I don't know where I want all of these things, and I probably won't know until I've lived there for a month!  You have to do a lot of guessing on decisions like this when you build a house!

Framing is done

Framing is virtually complete, windows are all in, roof is on and the house is all buttoned up and ready for the harsh weather that is inevitably coming.  

Theresa took this picture a few days ago, and for some reason I find it strangely beautiful.

The bathtub and shower fully framed.

I also got a chance to stop by our granite shop and take a look at some granite.  I was even able to take home some samples.

For the kitchen and master bath:

One of these for the guest bath:

The fireplace surround:

 

The plans they are a-changin

If for some ungodly reason you've followed read this entire sordid story from the beginning, you really need to find something better to do with your free time.. but also, you probably know that the floor plan of our house was based very closely off of the floorplan of another house, with a few significant (and a few not so significant) changes.

Since the day we saw "our" floorplan, we wondered how some of these changes would turn out.  We had  a rough idea obviously, but now that the house is totally framed in we really got a chance to see and experience everything firsthand.  Most of the changes are good, but not all of them...

Bedrooms: 
3 of the 4 bedrooms in the house underwent significant changes.  The original plan had a very small (10x8) 4th bedroom.  Our plan increases the size of that room to almost 11x12, which is the same size as our other 2 "non-master" bedrooms.   While 11x12 is not exactly "large" it is a significant increase in size and makes the room a lot more usable.   Love this change.

Our master bedroom also got bigger.  They bumped out about 8 to 10ft of an exterior wall by 2ft.  It gave us roughly 30 or 40 more square feet in the master bedroom, and created a rather untraditional room layout.  It's kind of.... odd, but I really like it.  In addition to that we (read I) had the bright idea of putting two more windows in our master bedroom.  The idea was to get them to bracket the bed.   However, I apparently thought that the wall was a little longer than it actually is. It's 13.5 feet, but it's amazing how quickly that gets eaten up!  We put the windows 12 inches form the walls, and the windows themselves are 24inches wide... leaving us 88 inches between them.  That's just about perfect for a queen size bed where the frame will be about 65 inches... but we'd like to get a king eventually and that is going to be REALLY tight.  Those windows are going to be virtually touching that bedframe and I think they are going to look supremely odd.   I'm not really all that happy with where those windows ended up and it's 100% my fault.  

Finally, one of the other bedrooms was re-arranged a little and the entry door was moved.  Overall it's a good change because it creates more usable wall space in that room.

Overall I really like the floorplan changes to these bedrooms, the only thing I don't like is the placement of those two windows!  That is really tweaking me off... I can't decide if I should throw a hissy fit and insist they be moved, have them drywalled over, or just let it irritate me for the rest of my life.   Ideally there would be a fourth option: "get over it" but sadly I'm just not wired that way.  

Also, I'm having a really tough time deciding which room to use for my office.  None of them work *quite* right.  

Staircase: 
Another big change was with our staircase.  Instead of a straight staircase, ours curves as it comes down so it faces the front door.  It looks very grandiose, but we're not terribly grandiose people... and in my opinion it's not very practical.    For one thing if you're using the stairs from inside the house, you virtually have to walk all the way to the front door before you have access to them, and I'm not sure I like how much space they take up in that entry hallway, although the other staircase stuck out a little ways too, so it's entirely possible that is all in my head.  The worst part about this is that it makes our 2nd floor catwalk all crazy.  Instead of the railing being all nice and squared off, it has this crazy angle jutting out and is just weird and offends my orderly, symmetrical, mathematical mind.

Theresa really likes this change... I don't.  But as long as it makes her happy I won't feel too badly about it.  :)

Bay Window:
Our bay window was moved from the "dining room" to the "living room".  It make the dining room feel a lot smaller and the living room a lot bigger! Personally I'd rather have that extra space in the living room, so I really like this change.  We'll just have to get a slightly smaller table for the dining room.

Fireplace: 
Our fireplace was moved so it's no longer a dual fireplace that serves two rooms, instead it's on the back wall in the place of a rather large window that is in the other house.   Overall, I like this change (I hope so, because it's one we requested).  I think it makes the family room a lot more usable a lot more versatile in terms of layout.  However, I will miss that big window on the back of the house! (although I won't miss the air leaking form it in the winter, I won't miss buying expensive blinds for it, and I won't miss replacing it in 15 years)

Closet: 
Our master closet was made a little larger.   That thing is just ridiculous.  It's 140sq ft with 54ft of wall space.   I literally just shake my head in amazement when I look at it.   It's REALLY nice to have a closet that large, but I can't help but wonder if we couldn't have maybe used those extra 20 sq ft somewhere else  (and maybe a few more besides!)  We'd never even miss them!

Master Bathroom:
The configuration of our master bathroom was changed.   I *love* the new vanity layout.   The vanity's have their dedicated corner and are in an L shaped layout with an angled corner it's just perfect I think.   We also ended up getting a corner tub, which is nice However, the shower was moved right next tub, which we don't like and it also happens to be right next to the door which is odd, and is on the wall closest to the bedroom, which happens to be *right* next to our bed!  So I'm definitely worried about shower noise :(

Upstairs linen closet: 
The linen closet that serves the guest bathroom upstairs has been moved all the way across the house and is now directly outside of the master bedroom.    This seems like a really odd place to put it to me.  Although Theresa pointed out that it does make a little bit of sense because it's right at the top of that stairs which makes it convenient for putting laundry away, of if you need to get something out of it that isn't being used for the guest bathroom.  It also has some interesting effects on bedroom closets.  We have a 2nd (much smaller) walk in closet serving the bedroom next to the master and the new linen closet steals some of that space.  However, that space was oddly shaped and not really usable anyways, so it's a clever design.   It also allows our 4th bedroom to steal back some closet space that was previously used for linen closet as well as allows them to eek a little bit more floor space for that bedroom.  Overall I think I wish they'd left this alone, but I think the new configuration will grow on me, it definitely has some good points.

Garage entry door:

We added a side entry door to the garage.  The framer's screwed up and cut the hole for it, so we decided we might as well slap a door in there. More access is always nice. 


Other than that there are a few more small changes.   There was a niche in the wall downstairs in the other house which was removed and replaced by two wall niches outside the master bedroom, the kitchen island will be rotated, a few closets have grown or shrunk a tiny bit, and I'm sure I forgetting a few.

Overall... there's a lot to like about those changes.  But I am disappointed that I don't like all of them.  Maybe I should stop being so whiney, but when you build a house from the ground up and you get to pick *everything* you kind of want everything to be perfect.  

One thing is very very obvious to me as I re-read this though... I have got the single worst case of undiagnosed OCD in recorded history.   I seriously need to be on medication.  Most of the stuff I worry/obsess about wouldn't even occur to 99% of the population.  This is the type of thing that keeps me from being a productive member of society...

Time Line in Pictures

Meant for it to be showing progress, but I guess I went backwards instead...oh well...took 30 minutes to do this and the spelling tests aren't grading themselves!

New Pictures...new thoughts

Ok so they figured out that they framed the "optional door" so we now have a choice...they can close up the hole, or we can spend 300 bucks on a door so we have another entrance to our door. I think it worth it, Brad's not so sure...I think I will regret not investing 300 bucks to get a door....

Bedroom windows are a continued threat to our sanity. Check out the pictures, share your thoughts! Is there room for a king sized bed between them...do we keep them or get rid of them and sell our newly purchased windows that were ordered for us...Which by the way arrived today!

I can not believe how fast they are going, it's sooo fun to stop by every day or every other day to see how much progress they made.

Our Master Closet is HUGE! That is one part of the house I can not wait to see the finished product....Ok I can't wait to see lots of parts of the house in their finished state! Not so sure about the master bath...it on the other hand feels a little bit on the small side....interested in how that will look finished...

They are also moving the kitchen window down....they had me stand in front the of the window and when I couldn't see out it, they confirmed that they would be lowering the window...

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Hmmm...So I got a chance to walk up the STAIRS and into the 2nd level...whahoooo! Butttttttt...There are a couple of things to make us think....first they framed the windows in the bedroom, 12inches from the wall...not sure if we made the right decision, I am sure Brad will Blog more about that later....I do however like the staircase, so hopefully that opinion will stay!
I also got the chance to see the new look of the balcony over looking the foyer. In the other house it had a door to the 3rd bedroom, but that was moved so now there is just a weird looking area....hope we find a use for it!
I also found out that on the plans it calls for a half wall right in front of the front window where the belcony over looks the foyer. Not so sure about that, either was the builder, he said it was strange that there was railing and than a half wall....he said it is usually one or the other. I guess I will call Glenn and get to the bottom of that one (although he did say he would be calling on it himself.)
Ohhh another plus was the way the back wall looks from upstairs, I love it!