Small Solar Update

Finally the snow is off the roof, and the sun is shining. I snagged a quick video of the solar panels in action spinning our electric meter backwards!

Were still not collecting our Alternative Energy Credits though until MetEd comes out and installs a bidirectional meter but at least were using all the power we can generate to lower our bill.

Footer frame in place

This morning the footer frame was put in, and we received some infamous construction worker trash, yes! When we walked back there we heard them say "here comes the kids." haha

Snapped a few pictures and this will be inspected tomorrow and then poured on Wednesday. We will also be picking out the exterior siding cover, window trim color, and front door on Wednesday.

Hole for the foundaton is dug!

The hole was dug over this weekend (April 5-6) where the foundation will lay. We even have up some black mesh construction area flagging around the site, its really happening! Tomorrow BVB is coming over with the cement guy, I guess they will get ready to and pour the footers and let them set over the first few days of this week and then the foundation will be poured!

Here are some pictures of the work/celebration from breaking ground this weekend.

Day 1 of construction!

Well today was the first day of actual work for the house!! A machine came in to scrape the top soil off, Larry and I set the markers for exactly where we wanted the house and that was that. Tomorrow or Saturday they will dig for the foundation and I believe our first footer inspection is set for next Tuesday so it should really start moving along now. The only thing that will hold us up at all will be rain.

There are some nice piles of dirt I'd like to use for the track... I am told they may need them to make our yard though :)




Oh yea, Snaps and I dug the first hole last night before it got dark haha

Can't forget about the porta potty..

Just a quick entry to note that we had the closing with the Bank yesterday, so everything with the funds is set to go. There has to be some changes made over the weekend to some of the final plans by BVB, and then the township will approve the building permit for the house! Here's to hoping that there will be a hole in the ground next week and the foundation will get going!!

Flooring and some lights

This past Tuesday Jess and I went shopping with Betty to nail down our flooring choices and move onto lighting selections. We were really eager to see how hard it was going to be to try to update the kitchen and nook flooring to the vertical Bamboo flooring that we really wanted. It ended up that we ditched the french door setup on the nook in exchange for a normal wooden sliding door and took that credit and with it were able to get the Bamboo flooring in the Kitchen, Nook area, and even in the Dining room! We also were able to upgrade our foyer to multi-colored slate in exchange for the pergo style stuff we had in our contract so were really excited that we stepped it up on the flooring downstairs, its going to be make the whole house become a lot nicer. Carpet was also picked out within about 20 minutes on the same day, we got the normal mocha colored carpeting style throughout the house where it gets carpet. Our stairs are Oak, so we wont be getting any carpet on those.



Tile was up next and Betty took us to a new place since we couldn't really pick something at the first place we really liked. Were getting the tile in the master bathroom, on the floor, the jet tub and were getting a tiled walk in shower. The shower tile is a bit darker than the flooring/jet tub tile. The picture of both are here, but they will both have different sized tiles but the same style. They will be bigger on the bottom seperated by a deco tile strip and then smaller on top.



After we picked out the flooring we grabbed a bite to eat and moved on to Stokes electric. The lights actually weren't that difficult to pick out since we (read Jess) knew the style that we were going for. We got some modern lights mixed with Tiffany style lights, should be sweet. I wish I took more pictures while I was there but for some reason I didnt, we looked through some books and saw some of them right in front of us in the showroom. Were basically at our budget on the lighting now but will end up going a bit over because were going to get a bunch of recessed lighting, oh well. The picture below is of the lights we will have hanging over the island where people can sit to eat and chill.




As of today our septic permit is done, our grading plan is approved, the building permit is being reviewed and will hopefully be approved this week (they only have 15 days from the 19th of March to get it done which is nice.) Our construction loan/mortgage closing is scheduled for the 27th of March, so were on schedule for a late March/early April start, cant wait!!

Shopping : Part 1

Today was our first day of "shopping" for the house with our builder. It was intense to say the least, we went to about 4 seperate places between 9-1pm today and started to make the decisions for the things we will be looking at for a long time to come every day in our house!

We went to Blue Mountain Cabinets, or maybe its Blue Mountain Woodworking... anyway we went here first to go over the design of our kitchen and to pick our our c
abinet styles. Styles as in look of the cabinets, color of stain (probably going with this stain called "honey" which is not pictured) and type of wood which is Maple. We did not pick the handles for the cabinets yet but I am guessing they will be black or brushed aluminum looking. We ended up adding some more counter room in the kitchen while we were there, since we needed to for the trash compactor, it didn't cost us anymore for this which is sweet. Were getting a 36" double cabinet under the dual layer island part of the kitchen with slide out racks to store our pots and such, exciting, I know. Were also going to get 1-2 glass faces on the corner cabinets, 2 lazy susan's and some other cool compartments and doodad's. I am pretty pumped up about the kitchen because I enjoy cooking, it relaxes me, same with Jess.

Second stop was the plumbing type store, faucets, tubs, toilets, oh my. I got to sit in our whirpool tub which is sick, its like 4' deep, its really deep, which is awesome and has 6 jets for my sore from minibike riding back and Jess's sore from cubicle working back. We picked out a really sweet thing for the kitchen sink which is just going to be Stainless Steel. For trading in an elongated toilet for a round toilet we got $150 credit and got some sweet handles and miniature hydrant type things for our master bathroom. A pedestal sink will be going into the powder room in exchange for a normal sink with small vanity, its pretty sweet. Our master bathroom tiled walk in shower is getting a sweet shower head + another one of those things thats on the big hose coming off the wall, so 2 watering devices in all in that one shower, cant wait for that thing to be done!





Next stop was the flooring store for basically everything except tile for the master bath and carpet we did not get to, we must be going to another place for the carpet or something. Flooring was super stressful, there is about 100 things that look almost the same, you have no idea exactly how its going to make the room look or how your stuff will look against it... we ended up picking out a few different samples we wanted for different parts of the house. We aren't really feeling the pergo as its just fake wood and we would prefer using Bamboo or that new cork flooring which I really liked so we might be able to get the Bamboo in a few spots (foyer or something) but not as much as we would like, oh well, I am happy for what we can have, its more than enough. Snaps will destroy it anyway.. and so will I haha

Stop 4 and the last place we made it to was the tile showroom. Tile will be going in our master bathroom on the floors, tiled shower, and tiled whirpool surround = sweet. I had this sweet orange mineral counter top picked out I wanted to use somewhere but I think I got outvoted. Were trying to go with some kind of earthy/slate kinda look in there I guess, just look at the pictures. One more note about the bathroom, were going to get heating floors, its only like $300-400 with digital controller!

In conclusion today was fun but sort of rushed, we did not make too many final decisions, maybe like 3-5 things total are final and everything else is kinda just up in the air for us to think about over the next few days. I was also waiting to hear back from Kevin Benner today on our mortgage because we thought interest rates may drop overnight, but could not reach him today.

One more good thing that happened today in our quest for home ownership is our septic design was approved and our permit was issued!! The only things left before we can break ground is finalize the bank stuff, get the grading plan signed off on (this is in progress since Feb 19th) and then the building permit will be in for hopefully a March start.

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Super House Specs

We did some sweet modifying of our house plan as we were going through it. Here are some key features we added in that we hope will make it stand out and be really nice for us and our guests:

• 3 car garage - 2 for cars and 1 for my wonderful toys.
• Extended laundry room so we can put a "folding station" in it, I wont be using this. ha
• Threw a door in the laundry room at the last minute so we can install a doggy door.
• Kitchen is getting a gas range and a sweet trash compactor and a closed soffet.
• Gas fireplace in the living room with stone harth thing up to ceiling.
  
• Basement will have big double doors with an enclosed entrance leading in.
  
• French doors are going in the nook area.
• Long living room was split into 2 rooms with the smaller being a game room with all wooden built in book cases that are 3' wide and 1' deep, should be really nice. We will store books and games in here.
• Bumped out that game room an extra 2'.
• Stone on front of the house under the porch roof area.
  
• Closed foyer, this gives us more living space upstairs for a family style computer space and a chill zone up there.
• Oak steps going upstairs.
• Solid wood doors downstairs with brushed aluminum hardware, so sick of that gold colored stuff.
  
• Master bath is getting a bling bling tiled walk in shower, about 5'x5' and a jacuzzi tub with a tiled and heated floor. This is where the money is going, we will be living in our bathroom.
• Big bonus room above the garage will give us plenty of space to grow into, will be really nice when its finished up. Pretty sure its about 23' long in this room!

Basic specs on the house:

• 2200 sq feet
• 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 1 unfinished bonus room
• 3 car garage
• Is not on wheels like Grandma's house haha

Some interiorshots of the plans courtesy the iPhone

First floor:



Second Floor:

Catching up.

Well here is what has happened so far, and by so far I mean it's taken about 1.75 years to get to the point of me typing this today.

1 - Township has finalized the DeLorenzo subdivision to provide us with a flag lot of 2.02 acres, this only took 1.5 years....apparently, record time according to the township zoning officer. Go speed racers go! This was the biggest hassle to date... of my life.. that I can remember anyway.

2 - Driveway permit and such has been paid and driveway construction is done until the final grade. Here is a few pictures to show the stages, only took about 2 days total so far to complete, final grade should take another day once the house is set.

3 - Deed has been recorded by township and then switched to our names courtesy of my parents (thank you very very much!)

4 - House contract has been finalized with Blue Valley Builders, biggest purchase of our lives thus far. I will post another blog detailing the house specs.



5 - This past Tuesday we met with Kevin Benner at KNBT to sign the paperwork for our construction loan/mortgage. These guys had the best rates without any lock penalties and the best closing costs as well. They also provided us with a 1/2 point towards our one point purchase for free. Points are just things you buy from the lender to lower your interest rate and this saved us well over $1000 since our builders are in a special program with them. Kevin was very helpful and I hope everything works out for us with them.

6 - Friday Feb. 29th we will be meeting with Betty from Blue Valley Builders to start "shopping" for our custom cabinets (which are made locally not in China haha) and then we move on to flooring and then plumbing type things after that. We will see how far we get as of tomorrow and I will post pictures up and a new blog tomorrow.