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: