We met the excavator at the land to go over our proposed "new" outline of where the house would sit. We talked a lot of the grade of the land, what locations would require more fill than others, and pros/cons of all sorts of things. Main concerns were having to potentially pay for a lot more fill, and potentially ending up with a backyard like a "bowl" if we had to dig it out to allow for a walkout. The excavator seems like a nice honest guy who isn't worried about reasonable extra labor (like tree clearing) but needed to be able to recoup his cost if we need more fill brought in than he budgeted in his initial bid. Makes sense to me.
In the end, after the excavator went out there again and took a lot of detailed measurements. It basically boiled down to the position we had picked was the best possible weighing all the pros and cons. It will cost us a little more for material that needs to be brought in, but in the end we will have the house sitting where we want it, with south-facing windows, and plenty of room for garage apron and driveway approach on the north side. Once the excavator checked out the potential backyard slope, he decided there was enough of a slope to be able to grade the backyard without any problems. The next day he was back clearing backyard trees already!
It turns out that while we had the septic location planning and testing done last fall, we never did get a permit. So we had to go to the county offices yesterday afternoon to pay for that. Unfortunately they said it would take up to 10 business days, and the excavator is nearly ready to roll on that piece right now.
We have our siding, shakes, soffit, fascia, and window colors all picked out. Nice to have that behind us. Next up is exterior stone and shingles.
We got a little surprise for our current landlord yesterday. Our lease is up on July 31. The landlord is offering us two options. One is to sign another lease through February. Our house is scheduled to be done by mid-December, and the rent at this house is really high. The other option is to lease month-to-month. The problem with month-to-month is that it is possible with 30 day notice that they could rent this place to another tenant. Neither option is particularly appealing. Seth's new town home (1500 sq feet) is a possible contingency plan, but that isn't too exciting of an arrangement either. Just another tough decision to be made I guess.
The joys of home building!
Friday, May 14, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
The final steps before work begins
Once again I've allowed several steps in our journey to go by without updating the blog. So this will be another entry with a variety of mini-milestones.
Shortly before our construction loan closing date, we decided to do a little investigating into the official easement on which our driveway was built. What started as a simply question about if we could gate off the driveway turned into multiple conversations with the title company, the bank, our builder, our original builder Bob who sold us the land, and eventually a real estate lawyer. It was a little nerve-wracking with a lot of happy thoughts like "why didn't we look into this last fall" and "I can't wait until our house ends up landlocked -- that will really help its value."
Kidding aside, we got some questions answered and feel good about going forward:
Our driveway is on an easement through State owned tax-forfeited land. This means the driveway is open to the public up to the point where it turns onto our 40 acres. We had assumed this and were expecting this, but now we know for sure. This means we can't officially block access with any sort of locking gate. But Bob told us that in all the years he hunted there, he only had one person come down the driveway, and that was the "front 40" neighbor and his dog just to say "hi". Plus, there is really not much of a reason to go down to driveway as the public land is relatively small (about four 40-acre parcels), its surrounded by private parcels, and a lot of it is borderline swampy.
Our lawyer's opinion was that there were some passages in the easement he would change. There were provisions in the easement that the State could cancel it for mining purposes, or if it wasn't maintained properly, both with 30 day notices. He wasn't particularly comfortable with those passages, even though he wasn't too concerned. He's started the process of editing out those sections and is pretty sure we will get it changed. He was fairly sure the State would not be interested in just selling us the strip of land the easement is on. Maybe after all this dust settles we will look into if we can buy a bigger sized parcel that contains the driveway...but until then we will have plenty of other house-related expenses to drain our wallets.
We did go ahead and close our our construction loan on Thursday May 6. Fairly uneventful except for the 5-figure check we had to hand over the the title company. I guess building a house does cost money.
Later than same day, we met our builder, Mark, along with his excavator (Chris) out at the land to have an initial discussion on house location. We tentatively marked out the outline and location of the house. Seems like we can't push the house as far west as we would like because we have to leave lots of space around the septic mound in the NW corner of the cleared land. We also knew we had to clear some more trees to have a nicer backyard, and Chris hinted that he thought the land was already cleared and hadn't planned for that in his bid.. Mark later told us not to worry, he will get Chris to do it. Mark's been pretty good at coming through on things like that.
Another thing that will have to be done is increase the slope in order to accommodate the walk out basement. I'm not quite sure how they are going to do it as I don't want them to just dig out the backyard and move it to the front. I'm envisioning a very muddy swimming pool in our backyard each spring if they simply do that. We will talk to them more tomorrow about that plan.
We took a few pictures while we were out there that day..not too much has changed from prior pictures so nothing too exciting here...
Getting ready to meet the excavator:
Looking east from approximate location of apron in front of garage:
And looking south from same location:
Earlier today, armed with stakes and yellow tape bought at Home Depot, Christina and I went out to the land to take a second look at the house location. We decided to shift it to the west a little bit, and to turn it more square to the south. The day we were there with the excavator we turned it a little to face the incoming driveway. But in retrospect, turning it more square to the south should give us more sun, and the view approaching the house is still great since it sits back pretty far from the driveway. Tomorrow we meet Mark and Chris back out at the land to hopefully make a final decision for an excavation plan.
Some pictures from today:
Looking south at house location...stretch of tape starting on right of picture is the front of the garage:
Looking northwest toward house location from the east end of the side yard:
And same location, except looking more west:
Coffee break:
Looking north from the eventual backyard toward the house:
Cutest measuring assistant:
Just us and the ticks:
And one other critical issue was resovled today. Yes, you can access Facebook from the land location:
Shortly before our construction loan closing date, we decided to do a little investigating into the official easement on which our driveway was built. What started as a simply question about if we could gate off the driveway turned into multiple conversations with the title company, the bank, our builder, our original builder Bob who sold us the land, and eventually a real estate lawyer. It was a little nerve-wracking with a lot of happy thoughts like "why didn't we look into this last fall" and "I can't wait until our house ends up landlocked -- that will really help its value."
Kidding aside, we got some questions answered and feel good about going forward:
Our driveway is on an easement through State owned tax-forfeited land. This means the driveway is open to the public up to the point where it turns onto our 40 acres. We had assumed this and were expecting this, but now we know for sure. This means we can't officially block access with any sort of locking gate. But Bob told us that in all the years he hunted there, he only had one person come down the driveway, and that was the "front 40" neighbor and his dog just to say "hi". Plus, there is really not much of a reason to go down to driveway as the public land is relatively small (about four 40-acre parcels), its surrounded by private parcels, and a lot of it is borderline swampy.
Our lawyer's opinion was that there were some passages in the easement he would change. There were provisions in the easement that the State could cancel it for mining purposes, or if it wasn't maintained properly, both with 30 day notices. He wasn't particularly comfortable with those passages, even though he wasn't too concerned. He's started the process of editing out those sections and is pretty sure we will get it changed. He was fairly sure the State would not be interested in just selling us the strip of land the easement is on. Maybe after all this dust settles we will look into if we can buy a bigger sized parcel that contains the driveway...but until then we will have plenty of other house-related expenses to drain our wallets.
We did go ahead and close our our construction loan on Thursday May 6. Fairly uneventful except for the 5-figure check we had to hand over the the title company. I guess building a house does cost money.
Later than same day, we met our builder, Mark, along with his excavator (Chris) out at the land to have an initial discussion on house location. We tentatively marked out the outline and location of the house. Seems like we can't push the house as far west as we would like because we have to leave lots of space around the septic mound in the NW corner of the cleared land. We also knew we had to clear some more trees to have a nicer backyard, and Chris hinted that he thought the land was already cleared and hadn't planned for that in his bid.. Mark later told us not to worry, he will get Chris to do it. Mark's been pretty good at coming through on things like that.
Another thing that will have to be done is increase the slope in order to accommodate the walk out basement. I'm not quite sure how they are going to do it as I don't want them to just dig out the backyard and move it to the front. I'm envisioning a very muddy swimming pool in our backyard each spring if they simply do that. We will talk to them more tomorrow about that plan.
We took a few pictures while we were out there that day..not too much has changed from prior pictures so nothing too exciting here...
Getting ready to meet the excavator:
Looking east from approximate location of apron in front of garage:
And looking south from same location:
Earlier today, armed with stakes and yellow tape bought at Home Depot, Christina and I went out to the land to take a second look at the house location. We decided to shift it to the west a little bit, and to turn it more square to the south. The day we were there with the excavator we turned it a little to face the incoming driveway. But in retrospect, turning it more square to the south should give us more sun, and the view approaching the house is still great since it sits back pretty far from the driveway. Tomorrow we meet Mark and Chris back out at the land to hopefully make a final decision for an excavation plan.
Some pictures from today:
Looking south at house location...stretch of tape starting on right of picture is the front of the garage:
Looking northwest toward house location from the east end of the side yard:
And same location, except looking more west:
Coffee break:
Looking north from the eventual backyard toward the house:
Cutest measuring assistant:
Just us and the ticks:
And one other critical issue was resovled today. Yes, you can access Facebook from the land location:
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Odds 'n' Ends
I haven't updated this for a little while, but we continue to take many tiny steps toward getting this project started.
Last week Christina and I finally got out and visited a couple of the building supply warehouses. Service was hit-and-miss but we were able to get a lot of brochures (too many) and some helpful information.
Shingles should be fairly straightforward. Have a couple brands to choose from, we'll just need to pick a color to match our other choices. For siding we still need to check out the color and texture options for seamless steel. We should get more samples for that this week. We saw some really nice cedar-colored vinyl shakes that we will probably go with.
We finally got a live look at our window choice (Marvin Integrity) and were able to make some minor decisions regarding those. We decided for the windows with grills, we will change our style choice. Instead of the grills that go between the glass, we will go with a style with grills on either side of the glass. This way the interior grills can be stained to match the rest of the window. Otherwise they would be white on the interior. We also concluded that we want to go with double french doors upstairs and downstairs on the deck side of the house. originally we had planed to go with a single door paired with a fixed door.
We visited the place that supplies stone for the exterior stonework. Wow there are just way too many choices.
Our expert color coordinator (Christina's sister Randina) sent us some pictures of some exteriors she liked. We are tentatively using this one as the look we are going for:
On the paperwork front, we are meeting with an insurance agent tomorrow morning to get a policy in place for the construction period. Then, next Thursday (the 29th) we actually close on our loan. That will feel like an important milestone! probably because we have to cut the bank a huge check..yippee!
Our contact on the builder front, Mark Sams, stopped by yesterday to have me sign the paperwork for MN power to fun electric back to the property. We chatted about a bunch of stuff, but the best news is that he expects the road restrictions to come off sometime around mother's day (May 9th)! If that happens, we would expect work to begin on our house sometime that week or the week after. It's getting closer!!!
This past weekend we were able to drive out to the land with the boys and spend a little time there. No sooner had we opened the doors to the truck, our resident daredevil Tommy took off across the dirt covered field in search of adventure. What do you do when you see a big pile of dirt? Well, climb up it and jump off of course! Then don't forget to take your sunglasses off and use them to dig at the ground creating your own little dust cloud!
A couple pictures from our stop:
Here is a side shot of what hopefully will be a good sliding hill on the corner of our backyard. I think the first thing we will need to install is a good old fashioned fire pit:
This is a shot from what is probably the top of the sliding hill back toward the house. Some of the trees on the left will probably get cleared out as we need to clear more trees to make a reasonable backyard:
This is a view from the SE corner of the backyard back toward the driveway entrance. The dirt pile is the remnants of a burn pile from when the land was initially cleared.
What do you do with a dirt pile? Climb it of course:
Jedi Master:
And on a final note for today, I must announce that Christina became the first person in the family to "catch" a wood tick at our land. I was very jealous when she told me she found the little guy making himself cozy buried in her thick hair. Maybe when Andy and I go camp out at the land I can acquire one or two if I am lucky!
Last week Christina and I finally got out and visited a couple of the building supply warehouses. Service was hit-and-miss but we were able to get a lot of brochures (too many) and some helpful information.
Shingles should be fairly straightforward. Have a couple brands to choose from, we'll just need to pick a color to match our other choices. For siding we still need to check out the color and texture options for seamless steel. We should get more samples for that this week. We saw some really nice cedar-colored vinyl shakes that we will probably go with.
We finally got a live look at our window choice (Marvin Integrity) and were able to make some minor decisions regarding those. We decided for the windows with grills, we will change our style choice. Instead of the grills that go between the glass, we will go with a style with grills on either side of the glass. This way the interior grills can be stained to match the rest of the window. Otherwise they would be white on the interior. We also concluded that we want to go with double french doors upstairs and downstairs on the deck side of the house. originally we had planed to go with a single door paired with a fixed door.
We visited the place that supplies stone for the exterior stonework. Wow there are just way too many choices.
Our expert color coordinator (Christina's sister Randina) sent us some pictures of some exteriors she liked. We are tentatively using this one as the look we are going for:
On the paperwork front, we are meeting with an insurance agent tomorrow morning to get a policy in place for the construction period. Then, next Thursday (the 29th) we actually close on our loan. That will feel like an important milestone! probably because we have to cut the bank a huge check..yippee!
Our contact on the builder front, Mark Sams, stopped by yesterday to have me sign the paperwork for MN power to fun electric back to the property. We chatted about a bunch of stuff, but the best news is that he expects the road restrictions to come off sometime around mother's day (May 9th)! If that happens, we would expect work to begin on our house sometime that week or the week after. It's getting closer!!!
This past weekend we were able to drive out to the land with the boys and spend a little time there. No sooner had we opened the doors to the truck, our resident daredevil Tommy took off across the dirt covered field in search of adventure. What do you do when you see a big pile of dirt? Well, climb up it and jump off of course! Then don't forget to take your sunglasses off and use them to dig at the ground creating your own little dust cloud!
A couple pictures from our stop:
Here is a side shot of what hopefully will be a good sliding hill on the corner of our backyard. I think the first thing we will need to install is a good old fashioned fire pit:
This is a shot from what is probably the top of the sliding hill back toward the house. Some of the trees on the left will probably get cleared out as we need to clear more trees to make a reasonable backyard:
This is a view from the SE corner of the backyard back toward the driveway entrance. The dirt pile is the remnants of a burn pile from when the land was initially cleared.
What do you do with a dirt pile? Climb it of course:
Jedi Master:
And on a final note for today, I must announce that Christina became the first person in the family to "catch" a wood tick at our land. I was very jealous when she told me she found the little guy making himself cozy buried in her thick hair. Maybe when Andy and I go camp out at the land I can acquire one or two if I am lucky!
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Spring is here
It's been an unseasonably warm early spring, which has contributed to me being lax in updating this blog. Well, that and having a toddler around, having Christina gone for board exams, beginning to fret about exterior colors, attending to other important things (such as hobbies) and just general laziness.
So what has been going on since the last update?
The ball continues to roll with the bank. The appraisal came back a little lower due to the square footage dropping, but nothing that will stop our progress. Seems like every 2-3 days something new comes from the bank that we need to sign. But so far, so good!
Jamie has provided us with a selection sheet, and some sample materials and catalogs. Top priority right now is exterior stuff (siding color, stone, gutters, fascia, shingles, windows, etc). We've done a little bit of reading, and Christina stopped by the stone contractors store too. But most of this selection stuff will begin in earnest after we get back form our spring break mini-vacation next week.
The boys and I picked up Subways and drove out to the land yesterday for a little picnic. We walked around a little bit and I think we are going to have a decent sliding hill just off the back of our backyard. Mark says we might have to clear some more trees from the south of the lot (the backyard) to get the grade to where he wants it for a walkout basement. If so, we'll end up with a bigger backyard (good) that should border up against the top of the sliding hill! First priority will be to build a fit pit right at the top of that hill for sure!
The time is nearing that we will be closing on the construction loan and officially beginning work. Can't wait!
Here's some pictures form the picnic day:
Picnic in the truck (ground still a little muddy):
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Looking SE from approximately the location of the garage apron. Cleared area is the side yard to the east of the house:
.jpg)
A couple shots looking east from approximate garage apron location, showing the final driveway approach after it turns onto the land:
.jpg)
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Dad! The sun is too bright!
.jpg)
So what has been going on since the last update?
The ball continues to roll with the bank. The appraisal came back a little lower due to the square footage dropping, but nothing that will stop our progress. Seems like every 2-3 days something new comes from the bank that we need to sign. But so far, so good!
Jamie has provided us with a selection sheet, and some sample materials and catalogs. Top priority right now is exterior stuff (siding color, stone, gutters, fascia, shingles, windows, etc). We've done a little bit of reading, and Christina stopped by the stone contractors store too. But most of this selection stuff will begin in earnest after we get back form our spring break mini-vacation next week.
The boys and I picked up Subways and drove out to the land yesterday for a little picnic. We walked around a little bit and I think we are going to have a decent sliding hill just off the back of our backyard. Mark says we might have to clear some more trees from the south of the lot (the backyard) to get the grade to where he wants it for a walkout basement. If so, we'll end up with a bigger backyard (good) that should border up against the top of the sliding hill! First priority will be to build a fit pit right at the top of that hill for sure!
The time is nearing that we will be closing on the construction loan and officially beginning work. Can't wait!
Here's some pictures form the picnic day:
Picnic in the truck (ground still a little muddy):
.jpg)
Looking SE from approximately the location of the garage apron. Cleared area is the side yard to the east of the house:
.jpg)
A couple shots looking east from approximate garage apron location, showing the final driveway approach after it turns onto the land:
.jpg)
.jpg)
Dad! The sun is too bright!
.jpg)
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Under contract once again!
Three months after our original plans fell apart, we are under contract again!
After some final tweaking of the contract to drop the bid to a more "friendly" amount, the Sams stopped by today and we made it official! We moved some of the expenses to an "addendum" so that the official bank bid was lower...therfore lessening the amount we will have to come up with to put the loan in place. I gathered up (again!) all the financial information the bank needed to go through this process (again!) and e-mailed it on its merry way today. Hope no snags come up!
The things we moved out of the official bid were the great room ceiling beams, appliances, some of the hardwood floor allowance, and some of the stone allowance. This is all stuff we will pay for out of pocket as we go, but now we don't have to give that money to the bank before the project even starts. The appliances and flooring we could even put on no-interest financing with the stores if we want. The beams we will definitely still do. The stone allowance was going to drop anyway since we are pulling back on how much we are putting on the exterior of the house. We are going to be paying for this stuff out of pocket either way, but this way we can do it over the next 12 months instead of in April.
Mark or Jamie will be dropping off selection materials soon for the choices we need to make first (siding, shingles, etc). They also suggested meeting with their cabinet guy soon. He's the one they are suggesting does all the cabinetry work in the house (kitchen, built-ins, bar, etc). We also told Heather to go ahead and produce real full size blueprints.
Feels good to be at this point!
After some final tweaking of the contract to drop the bid to a more "friendly" amount, the Sams stopped by today and we made it official! We moved some of the expenses to an "addendum" so that the official bank bid was lower...therfore lessening the amount we will have to come up with to put the loan in place. I gathered up (again!) all the financial information the bank needed to go through this process (again!) and e-mailed it on its merry way today. Hope no snags come up!
The things we moved out of the official bid were the great room ceiling beams, appliances, some of the hardwood floor allowance, and some of the stone allowance. This is all stuff we will pay for out of pocket as we go, but now we don't have to give that money to the bank before the project even starts. The appliances and flooring we could even put on no-interest financing with the stores if we want. The beams we will definitely still do. The stone allowance was going to drop anyway since we are pulling back on how much we are putting on the exterior of the house. We are going to be paying for this stuff out of pocket either way, but this way we can do it over the next 12 months instead of in April.
Mark or Jamie will be dropping off selection materials soon for the choices we need to make first (siding, shingles, etc). They also suggested meeting with their cabinet guy soon. He's the one they are suggesting does all the cabinetry work in the house (kitchen, built-ins, bar, etc). We also told Heather to go ahead and produce real full size blueprints.
Feels good to be at this point!
Monday, March 1, 2010
Quick turnaround again on revised plans
Well that took just a couple hours...already have revised plans in my email. Here they are:
Main Floor:
Lower Floor:
Garage:
Front Elevation:
Rear Elevation:
Side Elevation 1 (part of approaching view from driveway):
Side Elevation 2:
Main Floor:
Lower Floor:
Garage:
Front Elevation:
Rear Elevation:
Side Elevation 1 (part of approaching view from driveway):
Side Elevation 2:
A new bid, and yet more proposed changes
Been a little while since I posted but it feels like a lot has happened.
On Wednesday 2/24, we met with Mark and Jamie to go over the revised bid based on the changes we made. We had really hoped that the changes we made would reduce the cost quite a bit (dropping the vault size, reducing the beamwork, dropping tongue-and-groove, squaring up the garage, etc). However, some other things crept in that pretty much canceled out that gain.
For one thing, they did a detailed look at the site and realized we were going to need some more excavation that we thought to pull off the walkout. Also, with the changes we made, we actually ended up with a little more foundation, and more deck than the original bid. So when it boils down to it, we are at about the same number. We can make it work, and there are some things we can tweak to bring down the cost.
OK enough of that talk...we spent some time pouring over the plans and making changes. Feels like we have done this 100 times over the last few months. At first it was fun, but we are really ready to move on to the next step of actually building this thing and picking stuff out. This will be long, but its easiest for me just to cut-and-paste the email I sent the designer explaining our proposed changes. If you see anything stupid, please say so!
MAIN LEVEL:
1. Bedroom 2 & “Hers” Office: Move the small south facing windows “in” toward the east slightly. Enough to leave about 2’ of space on the south walls between the windows and the corner. Reason here is that opens up the corner for something like a bookcase or toy chest.
2. Bedroom 3: Instead of 2 smaller closets, make one large 8’ closet and move the door east to the corner. (unless you have a better idea for this room, we couldn’t come up with anything else) We thought the double closet was more that needed and reducing it and moving the door over opened up just a little more room space.
3. Master Bath: We’ve been debating shower size and arrangement and here is what we have come up with. not sure how feasible this is. Want to end up with a fairly “enclosed” shower of about 3 ½ by 4 ft. Want to move the north wall of the toilet area more south. In my drawing I’ve taken away a some of the wall “jutting” out to the north of the fireplace, allowing the toilet area to shift south a foot or so. That gives us more room to play with for the shower, and would allow the arrangement pictured in attached plan sketch. Entrances would be narrow (I was thinking 20 inches?) to help hold in the heat (we are planning no shower door). This also puts a small linen closet back in the bathroom.
4. All non-walk-in closets need to have 2’ interior depth (applies to lower level too). From the look of the plans this is probably true.
LOWER LEVEL:
1. Rec Room: move the window to the west in order to center it on the exposed interior wall. Think this will look better from the inside. Realize this will result in window not being centered on the exterior, but its under the deck and rear facing anyway.
2. Bedroom 4: Move door east to corner of room
3. “His” Office: move closet to north end of room, recessed into mech room. Lengthen to 8 feet. Flip entrance door to office to open into the south wall.
4. Put a utility sink the Mech room
5. “Hers” office move window over (as mentioned above)
GARAGE:
1. Return the storage stairs back to previous design. This also moves the entrance to the house back to previous location, and puts mud room back to the prior configuration as well. Place the stairs as far right (west) as possible while avoiding having the two doors (storage access and back door) conflict with each other. Have them open as pictured in diagram.
2. Change stairs leading from house to garage to simply step down walking northward, instead of having the large platform.
3. Move the east door on the garage back to its location nearer to the house entrance. Leave 3 feet of space between the door and the south garage wall to accommodate garbage/recycling cans in that corner.
4. leave utility sink under the storage stairs…close to the entry door for enough clearance.
5. Place a window centered on the south wall of the workshop. We are thinking a rectangular awning window about head-high so you can see out of it. Nothing huge…enough to let in some light on the south facing wall. Maybe 3 feet wide or so.
6. Move the door leading from the main garage to the workshop a little further north…far enough so there is 3 feet of wall space on the diving wall between the door and the south end of the garage. This will allow for ample storage area on that south wall.
7. Still talking about that same door to the workshop. Is there such thing as a slider and/or pocket door we could put here? If not, I would have the door open as pictured in attached sketch.
8. Clarification on the workshop big garage door…the plans say “9’x10’ door, but it’s actually 10 feet wide, 8’ tall right?
MAIN FLOOR CHANGES:
LOWER LEVEL CHANGES:
GARAGE CHANGES:
On Wednesday 2/24, we met with Mark and Jamie to go over the revised bid based on the changes we made. We had really hoped that the changes we made would reduce the cost quite a bit (dropping the vault size, reducing the beamwork, dropping tongue-and-groove, squaring up the garage, etc). However, some other things crept in that pretty much canceled out that gain.
For one thing, they did a detailed look at the site and realized we were going to need some more excavation that we thought to pull off the walkout. Also, with the changes we made, we actually ended up with a little more foundation, and more deck than the original bid. So when it boils down to it, we are at about the same number. We can make it work, and there are some things we can tweak to bring down the cost.
OK enough of that talk...we spent some time pouring over the plans and making changes. Feels like we have done this 100 times over the last few months. At first it was fun, but we are really ready to move on to the next step of actually building this thing and picking stuff out. This will be long, but its easiest for me just to cut-and-paste the email I sent the designer explaining our proposed changes. If you see anything stupid, please say so!
MAIN LEVEL:
1. Bedroom 2 & “Hers” Office: Move the small south facing windows “in” toward the east slightly. Enough to leave about 2’ of space on the south walls between the windows and the corner. Reason here is that opens up the corner for something like a bookcase or toy chest.
2. Bedroom 3: Instead of 2 smaller closets, make one large 8’ closet and move the door east to the corner. (unless you have a better idea for this room, we couldn’t come up with anything else) We thought the double closet was more that needed and reducing it and moving the door over opened up just a little more room space.
3. Master Bath: We’ve been debating shower size and arrangement and here is what we have come up with. not sure how feasible this is. Want to end up with a fairly “enclosed” shower of about 3 ½ by 4 ft. Want to move the north wall of the toilet area more south. In my drawing I’ve taken away a some of the wall “jutting” out to the north of the fireplace, allowing the toilet area to shift south a foot or so. That gives us more room to play with for the shower, and would allow the arrangement pictured in attached plan sketch. Entrances would be narrow (I was thinking 20 inches?) to help hold in the heat (we are planning no shower door). This also puts a small linen closet back in the bathroom.
4. All non-walk-in closets need to have 2’ interior depth (applies to lower level too). From the look of the plans this is probably true.
LOWER LEVEL:
1. Rec Room: move the window to the west in order to center it on the exposed interior wall. Think this will look better from the inside. Realize this will result in window not being centered on the exterior, but its under the deck and rear facing anyway.
2. Bedroom 4: Move door east to corner of room
3. “His” Office: move closet to north end of room, recessed into mech room. Lengthen to 8 feet. Flip entrance door to office to open into the south wall.
4. Put a utility sink the Mech room
5. “Hers” office move window over (as mentioned above)
GARAGE:
1. Return the storage stairs back to previous design. This also moves the entrance to the house back to previous location, and puts mud room back to the prior configuration as well. Place the stairs as far right (west) as possible while avoiding having the two doors (storage access and back door) conflict with each other. Have them open as pictured in diagram.
2. Change stairs leading from house to garage to simply step down walking northward, instead of having the large platform.
3. Move the east door on the garage back to its location nearer to the house entrance. Leave 3 feet of space between the door and the south garage wall to accommodate garbage/recycling cans in that corner.
4. leave utility sink under the storage stairs…close to the entry door for enough clearance.
5. Place a window centered on the south wall of the workshop. We are thinking a rectangular awning window about head-high so you can see out of it. Nothing huge…enough to let in some light on the south facing wall. Maybe 3 feet wide or so.
6. Move the door leading from the main garage to the workshop a little further north…far enough so there is 3 feet of wall space on the diving wall between the door and the south end of the garage. This will allow for ample storage area on that south wall.
7. Still talking about that same door to the workshop. Is there such thing as a slider and/or pocket door we could put here? If not, I would have the door open as pictured in attached sketch.
8. Clarification on the workshop big garage door…the plans say “9’x10’ door, but it’s actually 10 feet wide, 8’ tall right?
MAIN FLOOR CHANGES:
LOWER LEVEL CHANGES:
GARAGE CHANGES:
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