Picking house location

Yesterday morning I met Bob at the land and checked out where he thought the house should go. If you have seen the land, remember there was a big clearing as the driveway turned into the land (a large trailer was sitting in that spot). The suggested location is into the woods, just east of the clearing. it would be about 100 feet south of the property line on some flat ground just as the land starts to slope down to the SE. We would then clear trees around the house, and connect up to already-clear areas (including where he had his big tent set up).

I felt pretty good about that setup, but I guess I'm a bit nervous that I'm the only one who has seen it (Christina wasn't with me). So I'm trying to see if we could get one quick peek again tomorrow morning before we start clearing land. Still need to hear back from Bob. I know he wants to start clearing this week, and start digging out the foundation late next week. I guess he is out there already today getting the driveway up to snuff!

I snapped some pictures yesterday when I was out there in order to get some "before" pictures. Unless you've been to the land, its hard to get a feel for some of these shots, but I'll describe as best I can. Plus it was a very foggy/misty day so the pictures aren't that great.

View of driveway from main road. Pretty much the whole driveway is on an easement that borders the 40 acres in front of our property:

Driveway as it turns onto the land. This is approximately the NE corner of the property. You can see how it opens up at the end of the driveway. This is where the current turnaround and clearing are:

View of land from current turnaround. Current plan is to put the house into the wooded area beyond the clearing. Our permanent driveway would follow the right side (north side) of the turnaround:

Looking back at clearing/turnaround from the edge of the trees. House location is probably 50 feet behind me. Note the land on the SE side of the clearing (right edge of the picture) slopes down enough that I hope the kids (and adults) can do some sledding!

Here I am standing approximately where the south (rear) wall of the house would be, looking east back at the clearing/turnaround. As part of clearing trees for a backyard, we would connect up to the existing clearing to make plenty of lawn for Andrew to mow.

Standing at the same spot (proposed rear of house) except now looking north. the pink tape is approximate front (north) wall of house:

New Pictures and Updated Plans

Here's a bunch of new visuals we got from Bob this morning...not much change in the actual plans since last time. I think we added the door off the rear of the garage. These plans don't reflect the fact that the great room deck door won't open in both panels..it will be two panels but only a single door. Also the plans still show a central vac unit in the garage, but we cut that out. Christina figures I am too skilled with a broom and dustpan to waste money on a central vac!

Main Floor Plans:


Lower Level Plans:


Garage/Workshop Plans:


Front Elevation Blueprint:


Left Elevation Blueprint:


Rear Elevation Blueprint:


Right Elevation Blueprint:


Front View:


Front View #2:


Rear View:


Inside View Great Room:

The Contract is Signed!

Had another meeting yesterday and it was a big day. We officially signed the building contract! I went into the meeting prepared to try my best to get Bob to lower his commission percent since we are allowing him to put the house in the parade of homes. But lo and behold he had already done that in the contract. That felt good.

In order to get under our target budget, we did have to drop out the hot tub (which was expected), the coffer ceilings downstairs (understandable), and the big AV wall cabinet in the family room (audible gasp from Pat). We may be able to squeeze some of those in toward the end if we have the cash to do it, but we will see. We'll get a big tax credit for the geothermal install (we did decide to leave that in) but I don't know if we'd get that cash back before the house is done. I told Christina its OK if we drop the AV cabinet, we still have the beautiful 2x4 and plywood rolling TV carts to hold all the TVs! No comment from her on this proposal yet.

Bob is raring to go on the project. He's going to have MN Power trench and run the power to the site under his name, since he still technically owns the land. That way we don't have to wait for us to officially close on the mortgage. The bank got all the documentation yesterday but it takes up to 10 business days to actually get the mortgage officially in place. He also wants to start clearing land ASAP, probably early next week. We still haven't checked out the spot that he picked to place the house, so I will be meeting him out there at 8:30 Monday morning to check it out.

We had to commit to a few things yesterday, basically anything that has to do with the basic outside structure that would be needed to get it built and sealed up. That was placement, size, material, and color of: windows, soffits, fascia, and shingles. windows are a bronze color. I cant remember the soffits and fascia, I think they are a bronze as well. Shingles are your standard grayish/multicolor.

We also made a reconnaissance mission stop to Johnson-Mertz appliances yesterday just to get the lay of the land as far as what we can get for our appliance budget. Our conclusion is: appliances are freakin' expensive.

More pictures and updated plans coming shortly!

Window Placement and Geothermal Debate

A couple updates from Bob yesterday to comment on.

First, after our last meeting one of the to-do's involved moving the main living area's deck door to the middle of the room, and make appropriate changes to the window arrangement. Not a big thing, but he did send pictures yesterday of what he came up with for our approval (below). We game him a thumbs up so he could start entering the costs of the windows into the final budget for the bank. I think it looks great!





Another piece of info we received was an energy analysis of our plans that attempts to state the economic impact of going Geothermal. The report says that Geothermal in our case will pay back within 3-5 years. I have a couple questions about the report and the assumptions it makes, but it certainly seems a convincing argument to go Geothermal.

We'll meet again with Bob on Thursday and will have more updates then. I think we will be talking a lot of details Thursday as he gets the final documentation together for the bank, including possibly a signed building contract.

Tweaking the Plans and Budget Crunching

Met with Bob today. Made many of the changes that I noted in my last entry. notably:

1) shifting down master suite entry door
2) slightly increasing pantry and mud room closet width
3) putting exit door out back of garage
4) move the closet in the guest bed downstairs
5) added vent to mechanical room
6) pocket door bedroom closet
7) moved laundry tub in garage toward the back wall

Also went through and semi-finalized window placement, sizes, etc. Also in the upstairs we moved the door that accesses the deck. It was in the corner, we centered it in the room. Thought if it was over in the corner it would block a potential places for a chair, plus, it would make for an odd traffic pattern from the kitchen when grilling, etc. Also Bob added in the exposed beams in the great room. They are beautiful! (well, as beautiful as computer-generated graphics can be I guess!)

A lot of our conversation today was about the budget. Bob doesn't have all the bids in, but has crunched the numbers and (not surprisingly) we are well over the budget number we hoped to hit. and this is the "adjusted" budget number. Well I guess we knew this was coming. So we talked a lot about different things that could get cut. Top candidates right now are:

1) fireplace in master bedroom. Would still frame out the outer wall to easily take a fireplace, and run the gas line and electric for it. But we just wouldn't put one in. Even before today, we kind of debated if we even wanted one in there anyway so it felt like a good thing to cut out.

2) Go with pre-finished doors and trim throughout the house. The negative here is that there are very few choices in stain color, but one of them we actually liked ("toffee") so we almost assuredly will go with pre-finished.

3) no hot tub -- this was always a consideration even before the budget discussion. we just wanted to make sure we had a nice spot for one (which we will). Still would run the required electrical. So the hot tub is out for now, and can always work it back in if the numbers work out next spring and/or we get a good deal.

4) The big decision will be geothermal vs dual fuel. Bob is guessing that this house, based on window quality, position relative to sunlight, and protection on the North side from cold, that our heating bills may be fairly low even without the geothermal. On the other hand tax credits for the geothermal are really good now. But it would actually be easy to add this later if we didn't do it now (we'd just be out the cost of one boiler that we wouldn't need -- about $2000). This will be our biggest debate. Bob is getting the plans evaluated by an energy expert and we'll have a better feel for the potential monthly savings with geothermal, probably mid next week.

some other options are:
1) drop the workshop -- but this is something we really want, that would actually be more expensive to do later and/or would end up being a separate non-heated building. Just doesn't seem to make sense to cut this.
2) beam work -- boy I think Christina would rather not even build the house than drop the beam work in the great room and the front porch area.
3) drop the large cabinet that will hold the home theater screen, equipment, etc in the family room. uhhh, that ain't gonna happen.

There were some other things too but these were the major ones. In the end this is a good exercise to go through, even if we weren't over budget. No need to spend money on stuff (plus 30 years of interest) that you aren't sure you really want, and would be easy to add later.

Hope to get revised plans soon, but they aren't much different that the last ones. I'm sure we will meet with Bob again next week to move this thing along.

Feedback to 3rd Revision

Christina and I had some time last night to go over the new plans. We were able to get yet another full list together of questions/changes...but the changes are become more and more minor. Excerpt of our notes is below. We meet with Bob again tomorrow morning. I'm curious if a more concrete timeline will be put in place?

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1. Do we need to have the non-supporting walls built in the utility room in the basement or can it just be left open?
2. We don’t want an unfinished closet are in the exercise room- shift the wall with door over.
3. Closet in guest bedroom to move to hallway wall.
4. can we have an additional window in office on outside west wall (this is the room currently labeled bedroom)?
5. just a note: wall behind fireplace downstairs (in AV closet) needs to move toward fireplace as far as it can go – may be as far as possible already
6. Is stuff in mechanical room fixed or can it be rearranged? Just curious. Related to this, want to put “bathroom” vent in this area…near an open space where we would have a small workbench.
7. the big family room TV wall - can we extend even farther? I’m thinking I will have a subwoofer sitting on the floor here and want to leave as much flexibility as possible for the built-in-cabinet length to leave a little bit of wall space. But don’t want to crowd the hallway too much
8. When do we pick windows and door placement?
10. wondering if we should we widen the whole garage 3-4 feet? Afraid a car parked in the stall nearest the house would crowd the door/walking room.
11. discuss - Change mud room closet to 3 feet deep for large coats, outside gear, etc. Discuss pantry size- ? add 1 foot to both pantry and mud room closet and move window down? Ok to lose cubby on the window wall.
12. Does master potty room need to be that long? Can we give that space to the shower? Idea we really like: move master suite entry way toward front of house a little more and make toilet room smaller and give some more room to the MBR closet- square off the slanted corner. This also give more wall space to the left of the FP in the living area which would be great. Also toying with tub in the corner layout, but not quite sure on that one. Also, Where are towels hung in bathroom in current layout?
13. Clarify Hot tub deck. Move stairs to come down in the middle/more toward the back yard?.
14. put a Laundry tub in the downstairs utility area?
15. Larger closet in office- want it to be 2’6” for supplies/bins/etc
16. consider additional man-doors out of the garage and/or out of the back of the workshop?
17. Storage trusses vs. attic trusses vs. none above garage? Really debating all 3 of these. The more we talk, the more we are not sure we would use the storage space. But if we do go storage, how much more would full blown attic trusses be? We’ve tossed around the idea that we could eventually finish that area off to a bonus room (not strongly considering however)
18. Future fishing of wires – I know this isn’t an immediate decision, but would be soon after the house is closed in. I’d like to leave access to fish additional wiring from the AV closet to other areas of the house if possible. Not sure how this is typically done (plastic conduit to attic areas? Open access through joists to basement areas?) But definitely want to be able to run new AV wiring 10 years from now when the newest technology is available.
19. Soundproofing the downstairs TV/game areas – again like fishing wires this isn’t immediate concern, but would be soon after house is up. Curious about options here (I’m known to want to crank up the home theater watching a movie while others are sleeping)…not looking to break the bank.

Main level thoughts:


Lower level thoughts:

Floor Plans - 3rd revision!

Well, we expected these on Monday, but they came early today. We haven't had time to really go over these, but I already had Bob give the workshop behind the garage a little more depth, which you can see in the revised plan. He said he cant go any deeper without some changes that cost money (like sinking the workshop a couple feet). Also on the lower level, the labels are wrong for the office and the bedroom. they should be switched so that the office is in the corner and the bedroom is behind the AV closet.

It's getting close!

Main Floor:

Lower Level:

Revised Workshop:

Side view of workshop/garage:

Hey, it's finally "Today"!

Well I have finally caught up with my posts to "current day"! After we sent back our 2nd revision thoughts, we met with Bob again on Thursday (Nov 5). Bob had already integrated several of our ideas, but we still had a lot to talk about. Off the top of my head:

1) adding the extra 2 feet off the "top" of the master bedroom did allow the fireplace to be centered on the wall opposite the bed.
2) discussed master bath arrangement
3) Bob had pretty much changed the mud room to fit what we suggested. It worked out great! not only that, but it was a couple feet wider (because of some of the other unrelated changes we had made to the entire floor).
4) The downstairs had to shift around a bit because he had mis-represented where the supporting walls needed to sit. The main change is that the office and guest bedroom had to swap, and the A/V closet went from 5' wide to 3' wide.
5) we added a workshop that was about 9 feet deep and ran almost the entire back wall of the garage, ending in a full-size garage door entry!
6) we also spent some time going through the inside amenities that we want (for example, general countertop thoughts, types and locations of floor coverings, etc). This will help build a budget for the house.

So right now we are anticipating getting the next set of plans tomorrow. Can't wait!

Oh and also, Bob had already talked to MN Power about how much it would cost to run the underground electricity back to our house. They told him over $10K!!! Ack! But not to worry, we have our industry insider (Pa Harvey) already saying that he's going to "make a couple calls" to see what that is all about!

Reaction to 2nd Revision of Floor Plans

So we went back to work going over every square foot of the plans in excruciating detail. And by "excruciating" I mean it was excrutiating for Christina to live in the same house as I did while I spent most of my waking hours talking about the house.

We came out of the first revision realizing the we needed to cut down the square footage. So a lot of our thoughts had that in mind. Once again, I'll take a shortcut here and just cut-and-paste an excerpt of the feedback we emailed our builder, including some sketches we sent:

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(1) The major change here is dropping the front entry closet and lose that 2 feet of width for the entire house. This impacts a lot of areas:

a. Shift the entire right side of the upper floor 2 feet to the left. (living room and deck shrink).
b. Downstairs, cut 2 feet off the guest bedroom width, and what is now the workshop
c. Shift allows for a larger window in the kitchen, and requires re-designed mud room area

(2) leave the exercise room unfinished

(3) push the window wall of the master bedroom out 2 feet. this extra 2 feet can cascade to either bedroom, closet, or bath. Overall this change does 2 things:

a. will help allow to center fireplace/TV on the bed (hopefully). Related to this, opens up that wall in the living space for shelving since it wouldn’t be used for recessing the fireplace
b. It will also allow extension of the room below the master bed, making it logistically compatible with pool table in the future.

(4) Move the entire Bar area down approximately 1 foot (eating into the space labeled wine cellar). push it as far as you can as long as someone seated at bar can still see all of family room and big TV.

(5) Net result of (1)-(4) is cutting out 135 square feet

(6) Kitchen thoughts: With the upper level shift, hopefully this means ability for a bigger window with room with double sink below. Would move dishwasher next to sink, and move the oven to the refrigerator wall. Island would have prep sink, and ample food prep area.

(7) Mud room area is still same size, just sits differently relative to kitchen. We tried to come up with a configuration but feel free to suggest others. Ours does result in a smaller closet, and possibly a cramped bathroom (pocket door the bath maybe?), but still has good size panty, large laundry, and nice locker area. PLUS gives a window back to the mud room main area.

(8) don’t have downstairs bath "jut" out quite so far...just go out 6' instead of 7'. afraid of cramping chairs in the TV room.

(9) entry door to office, would rather shift it over to be next to the AV closet. also add a single door inside the office next to the outside wall accessing the AV closet.

(10)We’ve decided we want to drop the workshop/shed concept in the basement. think it makes more sense to attach workshop off back of garage . also removes need for retaining wall and removes the outside access.

Main Floor thoughts:

Lower Level thoughts:

Mud Room thoughts:

Kitchen thoughts:

Floor Plans - 2nd Revision

So Bob took all of our feedback and came back on Oct 28th with the 2nd revision of our floor plan. He also included a front view picture:






This version of the plans was getting a lot closer to what we were looking for!

Reaction to 1st Revision of Floor Plans

So Christina and I obsessed over the first floor plan revision to the point of losing sleep. Well, on second thought, that was just me. Either way we had a lot of feedback to give Bob on the plans. Some of this was just due to the fact that we had only had one real "nitty gritty" meeting and were still conveying to him what we were looking for.

We really had our heart set on the type of vaulted main floor feel that the Thompson Hill "model" house had. If you looked at the links, that house had the first floor vaulted ceiling encompassing most, if not all, of the living/dining/kitchen space. The plans of our house included a vault only over the living area.

In addition to that thought, we had a bunch of other comments, and here is an excerpt of an email we sent him, and some sketches that we sent. Remember, I'm still blogging about stuff that happened "in the past" so those of you who are more up-to-date than this, don't get confused!

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• GARAGE -- We’ll plan on the storage space above, but that isn’t a “10” and could get cut if we start pushing the budget. Would like 3 single garage doors instead of a double and a single.

MUD ROOM/LAUNDRY/BATH
• We would give the broom closet back to the laundry area.
• Sacrifice bench space to add a true coat closet to the mud room for extra coats/boots/toys/etc. something like 5’ wide not sure where that would fit.
• We would rather keep the rear-facing window, but we would sacrifice it to make the above changes

KIDS BEDROOMS
• In general, we’re thinking this whole “wing” is slightly short on space
-- Specifically, the bathroom is small. It’s a bit smaller than the bathroom the boys share today and it can be a warzone in there! We’d prefer something like 6x11 or 8x9 might be better.
• another need: linen storage in this part of the house.
• Bedroom sizes seem OK. Maybe think about adding a window in the corner of the room with a back yard view

LIVING/DINING/KITCHEN
• As mentioned before, getting the “entire area” vault is a key for us at this point. We’d almost rate it an “11”
• Having part of the kitchen under a 9’ ceiling would be OK (in our sketch, that is essentially the “working space” behind the island. The island itself and anything to the right or toward the deck would be under the vault)
• Changing the vault to what I described helps accommodate a front closet that is turned 90 degrees from what you have designed. Closet entry is directly to the right of the front door.

MASTER SUITE
• In general we like this design better than the previous one.
• The more we think about it, the more we like the idea of moving one of the offices upstairs and putting the bathroom next to the walk-in closet.
• Also it is more appealing to walk into the bedroom, and from there enter the bath/closet area instead of having direct access to closet/bath from hallway.
• We accommodated this by adding square footage for the bathroom off the end of the house, which opened up space for an office.

DOWNSTAIRS
• moving one of the offices upstairs really opens things up to a lot of different possibilities..I tried to sketch out what I was thinking (attached)
• I would extend TV wall even further, “pulling” the center of the TV room further away from the rear of the house. I’d move the bar to the rear of the TV area and put it on the other side of the stairs. Adjacent to the bar, and directly behind the TV room would be a place for a card table. Then next to the card table (where the guest room currently is) for a potential pool table, or something else who knows…just some “play space” to be used however we decide down the road.
• I would like the large storage closet (with A/V access) to be bigger…Enough to just use it for storage. Then I would have just a hallway door giving access, instead of bi-folding it from the adjoining room.
• What is now allocated to office/office/storage/workshop would change slightly to be office/guest/bath/workshop/storage and possibly exercise space. I started to try to draw this part out but wasn’t sure where I was headed so I stopped.
• Speaking of the bathroom, probably would like a little bigger than the current 5 foot wide design.

Floor Plans - 1st revision

During the meeting on Monday Oct 19, and our follow-up first official design meeting on Oct 22, we talked a lot about what we would change from Bob's base plans to make the house exactly what we wanted. It was a long ongoing (via email) conversation and we left that Monday pretty excited and really looking forward to meeting the next time to see what he came up with.

Another outcome of the the Oct 19 meeting was a very aggressive timeline. One of the things we agreed to do was to allow our home to be shown in the Duluth Parade of Homes in May. The benefit to us was that hopefully vendors/contractors/etc would be willing to give us a discount or product upgrade in exchange for their work and/or products to be advertised to whoever sees the house. We're not sure how much savings that will translate for us, but we agreed! In addition to that benefit, it really gave all involved incentive to move the process along as fast as possible. Related to that, we and Bob had agreed to have the plans set in stone by Nov 16!

Anyway, I am rambling a bit. the point is that our meetings are going to be fast and furious at this point to get a shovel in the ground in mid-November. So we have been doing a lot of conversation over email between meetings. The number of things we discussed/changed/added/removed these first few days is large and I'm not going to go into all of them, but one thing we did struggle with was the master suite layout. At one point we suggested that we push the bathroom out and move an office upstairs. This did 2 things: create a direct entry into the bedroom, with access to bath/closet from the master BR. It also brought Christina’s office to the upper level which she would prefer anyway. It turns out we didn't go this route due to trying to cut the square footage down. The only real reason I point this out is that I have a picture of what we were thinking:


Anyway, the outcome of our first 2 discussions was our first revision of the house plans:

Main Floor:

Lower Level:


Along with the floor plans were a lot of great views of the house generated by the drafting software:

View from inside master bedroom:

Looking into master bedroom:

Main floor great room:

View from kitchen:

Lower level family room (complete with optimal football viewing TV layout):

We had a ton of feedback and suggested changes at this point...which I will have to save for the next blog entry!

A Comment on Comments

Hey folks I know some people have tried to leave comments. I had to change my settings so that I need to "approve" comments because I was already getting spam on the blog. Go ahead and leave comments they just wont show up until I click the little "publish" button I get automatically by email.

Initial Floor Plans

When we first met with Bob (Oct 19) he had a couple sets of "rambler with walk-out" plans that he had previously designed. One wasn't really close to what we wanted, but one of them was in the ballpark. Like I've mentioned before this is "The Dogwood" from his web site. Here are the plans. These were our starting point.

Main level:


Lower Level:

The "model" home

I'm really trying to get caught up to where we stand currently today, but I want to catch up on past details first.

One of the builders we met with (but didn't choose to build the house) actually met us in the spring at his house. He had built the house, so it was a good way to show us what he could do. It was beautiful! And a one-story with a walk-out basement level! Not only that, but he ended up putting it on the market this fall!

At one point Christina and I became frustrated with searching for land and checked out a couple of houses...this being one of them as we remembered it from when we saw it in the spring. It had a lot of features we liked, but the main downside is that it was fairly close to I35 just south of town...you could hear the constant "hum" of the cars on the freeway. But we did get to see it again and much of our design is based on our memories of this house. And because of that, I thought I would share it. I'm not sure how long these links will be up, but here is a couple places you can check it out:

Virtual Tour

Listing on realtor.com

OK, next I'll start to get into the actual plans of our house!

p.s. somebody leave a comment! It's lonely in here talking to myself!

Builder Selection

We started talking with builders as early as last spring. We came up to Duluth for almost a week to try and find a rental home and check out schools. So at the same time we also talked to some builders recommended by our Realtor. We ended up talking to a 3rd one once we moved here, but in the end we settled on Bayfront Builders.

Bayfront Builders Web Site

Bayfront Builders is operated by Bob Bruckelmyer, who comes from a very large family, many of which are in the building industry in the Duluth area. I like to kid him that his family is like the mafia of Duluth. I think I've used that line about 3 times. Its not quite as funny as the first time. Bob has a great reputation around town and is easy to talk to. We felt like this is someone that we could easily work with on such a big project, so we went with Bayfront!

If you go to his site, our house plan is actually based off of the Featured Home titled "The Dogwood". We've obviously made a lot of changes from the original plan (more to come on that).

And, yes, we have referred to him as "Bob the Builder".

The "Back 40"

The land we are going to buy (hopefully) actually happens to belong to the builder. It isn't part of his business, just some hunting land he owns with his in-laws that they had been looking to sell. It is heavily wooded, and has some sloping areas good for a walk-out basement. It is truly a "back 40" with a driveway roughed in along an easement. It has state land on two sides which is nice.

We looked for land for what amounted to about 2 months and couldn't find anything that matched our requirements other than this one. Its near enough to town (23 minutes to Saint Mary's), has the minimum 40 acres, off a rural quiet dirt road. The approach is from the north so its ideal for our walk-out rambler with the big south facing windows and backyard deck. At first we were put off by the fact that it is a "back 40", but I just decided we will just have to invest in a bobcat!

Here's a rough picture from Google maps that I tried to draw in the various surrounding plots:

Lakewood is a major ("major" is a relative term - we're talking about Duluth here) north-south road that turns off of hwy 61 about 5 minutes north of town. It takes about 10 minutes to drive completely to the end of Lakewood, then take a right on Pioneer and you are practically to what will be our driveway.

You can see a large path cutting diagonally through the SE portion of the property. There is an underground natural gas line that cuts across a fair chunk of the rural land north of Duluth. Every few years the state comes through and clears the path just to keep it accessible. otherwise it isn't used for anything. It's actually a nice walking path!

I cant figure out how to get a dang hyperlink to work in this stupid blog otherwise I'd post a link to Google maps. Just search for "East Pioneer Rd Duluth MN" in Google maps and you will find it. We are to the west of the creek.

Here's an image capture of the map:

First Post

Well we've been working at this "building a house" thing technically for a few months now, if you start counting since we first were looking for land. But I've finally got around to starting this blog. Hope to use it just to be able to look back on years from now, and also to keep others up-to-date who are interested in the progress. So far we have:
(1) found some land
(2) picked a builder
(3) started house design
Tentative timeline is for us to be moved in by the end of May! Wow that is only 7 months away!