"Approved" A word we've been waiting to hear for a long time

Finally!
We heard from "the City" today and our building plans are approved! We can now officially begin building. (Until now we have only been doing prep work to get the house and yard ready to dig the footings and foundation. The contractors will be here Wed. or Thurs. to dig the basement.

We are so excited!! They will pour the footings the next day, and the foundation the following day. This time next week, we will have a huge hole in our backyard. Any of you are welcome to drop in for a guided tour. Emphasis on guided. We want to avoid the liability of curious onlookers, but we would love to show you around and show our plans. They have changed quite a bit since the original plans we posted.

So, now it is official. Hooray!

Taking the first step

No, this post isn't about Spencer learning to walk. It is about taking the first real steps toward our house project. We found a cute little old German man, Manfred to survey our lot. He told us in his accented English that he has "been doing this since [he] was 16. It is a little different now then it was back then." Ironically, when he was staking our lot, the GPS he was using miscalculated the boundary by almost 4 feet! There were also some trees that interfered with the satellite, so he had to do some of the measurements "the old-fashioned way." That made us laugh. You might be able to make out the can of neon orange spray paint he used to mark the boundary points. It is very apparent that we have been surveyed. He came out to the lot 3 times, which surprised me. I thought it was a one-shot deal.

Step two was to find an architect we liked. We did. His name is Mike and he has been wonderful so far. He has designed a lot of the homes in this area, and his portfolio was amazing. His bid was not the lowest, so hopefully we made the right choice and he will improve Troy's design (the floor plan posted on this blog) enough that we won't regret spending the extra $2G to use him.

To protect these guys' privacy, I haven't used their last names, but we would be more than happy to give you their contact info if you will be needing their services in the future.

The Park, Model homes, and our future home

Last Saturday, we decided to look through some model homes in a new subdivision that's being built about 15 minutes away from here so we could get ideas of what we would like in our new house. The models weren't open when we arrived, so we went to the park to pass the time. Here are some fun pictures from the park. Since then, all the snow has melted and maybe we will have an early spring. I hate when there is snow on the ground (or especially falling) on my birthday. We had a fun time on the slides. Timmy was especially proud that he could climb up the ladders all by himself. He did not, however, like the monkey bars; his dad did, though! Spencer is growing up too quickly! He is now able to crawl and can walk along the furniture. He loved standing on the jungle gym and holding onto the bars for balance. He has a real independent streak like his dad and brother.


We thought you might like to see some of the things we liked about the model. Here are few of those pictures. After looking at these new homes, we came home and incorporated some of those things into our plans on the computer. Troy bought some CAD software (for drawing floorplans of houses) with 3-D ability and we have designed what our "addition" look like. The elements we added were: the stairway shape and the wrought iron ballasts. It's a little hard to see the angles in this picture, but the stairs start in a straight line, then turn 45 degrees, then continue, and then turn another 45 degrees. It has a look similar to a round staircase, but it's a little more modern (and a little less expensive). Besides, Troy will be doing most of the building, so he said straight lines are easier to build.
The corner fireplace, rather than the traditional.We like the way the tile was laid, more like a brick design, than a square design.
We like how on the island, rather than just overhanging the counter and pulling barstools for informal dining, they added legs to the island so it looks similar to a table. It looks better once the counter tops are installed.

We also re-arranged the layout of the master bed/bath after seeing these model homes and made ours a little more "standard." We want a house that will accommodate large groups of people, because I like to throw parties and the way it is designed, we have a lot of open space from the kitchen to the living room, and I think we will really love it.

Our floor plans

So I mentioned that Troy is using some software to design our "dream home." He is pretty pleased with his work and thought some of you might be interested in looking at his plans. I know others of you will look at this and wonder what it all means. I am one of those who have a hard time looking at lines on a paper or a computer screen and figuring out how it converts into a house. Luckily, the software has a feature that renders the plans into a 3-D view, so It's like taking a virtual tour. That is something I can visualize.

The two images are not drawn to the same scale. There is also a basement that will be another 2700 sq. ft., all unfinished. So the first image shows the main floor, plus our current house. We will continue to live in our teeny tiny (950 sq. ft.) 2 bedroom house while we build the house shown below. When it is finished, we will move into it and convert the existing structure into a very large garage. (Troy's dream come true.) The second image shows the second story, with yes, 4 bedrooms. Don't go making any assumptions- we may or may not fill them all with children. We would be content to have one of them be an exercise room and one be a craft/scrapbooking/sewing room for the time being. Also, not that there is an office/nursery on the main floor- that is for convenience. I don't want to have to go upstairs every 2 hours when my newborn baby wakes up in the night. There are no eminent plans for a newborn. Our current house is just getting too crowded, so Troy and I agreed that we would have a bigger house before we have another baby. Besides, Spencer is only 9 mos old!

Main Floor 2700 sq. ft.

Second Floor 1850 sq. ft.

So, here's the plan! We have been meeting with architects and draftsmen for the past week and will select one on Monday, tomorrow. Then we should have the plans ready to submit to the city for our building permit the following week. Then, we'll let the dirt fly as we break ground for the basement. If any of you want bigger plans, Troy would be happy to email you a PDF of these. We're so excited to have a big adventure to begin.

I've been tagged!

So, my pal Julie tagged me, which, I'm told means that before I can post anything to this blog, I have to list 6 facts about myself.

1. We are planning on making a large addition to our house. For Valentine's Day, Troy & I are "giving" each other an architect. Or, in other words, we are looking for someone to draw up the plans we have designed. How romantic...

2. I have a new calling to work in the nursery, as of Jan 1, 2008. Since that time, I have gotten sick 3 times. Any chance those are related? At this point, Troy would comment something like, correlation does not prove causation.

3. I hate snow. I don't want to sound too negative, so I will leave it at that. If you really want to know the details, call me and I would be happy to have a gripe session about snow.

4. Yesterday, I (with the help of my lovely mother in-law) re-arranged the boys' room. I am really pleased with the results. Although it is a small room, the way she suggested we move the furniture really opened it up and makes it feel more inviting and spacious. It also helped that we took 2 baby swings, and 2 boxes of outgrown clothes out to the shed and moved my hope chest into another room.

5. We are hoping to go to visit the folks down south in warm country for Easter/ Spring Break/ My Best Friend's Wedding. My friend Tonya, is recently engaged and is hoping to get married the day before Easter, which coincides perfectly with Spring Break, so the uncles will be out of school. (A note to all other friends: don't get your feelings hurt that Tonya is my BF, I still like all of you, too.) Timmy said something funny about the uncles the other day, "Garrett is the big uncle, [streched his hands high above his head and used a deep voice] and Kirby is the little uncle [pinched his fingers together and used a squeaky voice]."

6. We spend a minimum of 2 hours a day reading books, often more than that. Some of our (Timmy's) favorites are: Curious George (no thanks to uncle Shannie G.); Mercer Mayer's Little Critter Books; Big Al; Go, Dog, Go!; most of Eric Carle's books, especially the Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Very Busy Spider; Clifford; King Bidgood's in the Bathtub and he Won't Get Out; and Bears on Wheels. We go to the library at least once a week because I get sick of reading the same books over, and over, and over, and over...

I don't feel like tagging anyone else specifically, especially since not many people visit our blog, and of those that do, very few have blogs of their own, However, if posting 6 random facts about yourself sounds like fun, consider yourself tagged!