We Have a Slab!

Took a ride by the lot Saturday evening and was happy to see that they had poured our concrete slab!  They must have done quite a bit of work on Friday afternoon to get to this point.  Hopefully framing will start on Monday, it's going to be nice to see a fully framed house in about a week or a week and a half.

Groundbreaking stuff

Well it's finally time to get started!  Had our pre-construction meeting on Monday, and we were told that next Wednesday things will actually begin to happen.  I was pleasantly surprised to see this when I drove by the lot

Big pile of dirt and the driveway has been started!  I feel like a house might actually be built soon now...

Colors, Surfaces & Cables!

Busy week... had appointments to pick exterior colors, pre-wire all electrical and cable stuff, and pick out flooring and bathroom options.

First the exterior:
The brick I posted before, and to go with it we picked "Pebble Clay" for the siding (kind of a dark beige/grey color).  Trim for it is Almond, shutters are Black, and the door is "Fiery Brown."

The interior colors and selections are shown here:

The full square of carpet is the color we are going with for upstairs, and it was placed with the hardwood and downstairs tile to see how the colors all match at the bottom of the staircase.

Here's a shot of all the bathroom selections (Cabinets, Master Bath on top left, Guest Bathroom shower tile on top right)

 Here's the hardwood for the Family Room, hallway, and Living Room downstairs (Turlington Gunstock 3"), the tile for the downstairs Powder Room, the Morning Room and the Kitchen/Mud Room (Beige with a textured feel).  The stone is the for the granite countertops.

This is the floor tile and the shower tile (with the small stone accents) for the Master Bath.

This Cafe tile is what will be on the floor in the Laundry Room and the Guest Bathroom upstairs.

 

 

The real exciting part (for Bill) was the pre-wiring for everything electrical.  Here's what we had done on top of the normal outlets and other boring things:

- Cable drops in Family Room, Garage (where the pool table will be), Master Bedroom, and Bedroom 4 (man room).

- A high-outlet on the wall in the man room for future wall-mounting of the TV.  Didn't prewire for HDMI, but after build I'm going to run an HDMI cable up through the wall, into the attic, and down into the closet in the bedroom for hiding of all the media equipment on the shelf in there.

- In the family room, there will be pre-wiring and plates up high in the corners for the surround sound speakers (and high on the center of the wall where the TV will be), and a pre-wire in the back corner of the family room for the sub (for bass that feels like it comes from behind you).

- From the media center in the family room there will be two outdoor speakers (Klipsch) wired that will probably be placed right above the windows outside on the patio side of the backyard.  They will have an independent volume control knob placed next to the sliding glass door from the Morning Room to the patio, so that someone can be watching TV in the Family Room while there's a backyard patio party going on with music!

 

 

That's all for now, will probably be signing the final change order sometime this weekend or early next week, and then the permits will be submitted and we play the waiting game until the Pre-Construction meeting in early March.

Elevation and Stone

Here's the rendering of our Elevation with the full brick front we are getting, except that ours will be reversed (garage on the left).  This is good because the lot to our left will have the normal layout, so that there is a sense of separation between us and the neighbors.  I also took a shot of one of the neighbors' home that has the type of brick we are going to use.

The Beginning

Brittany and I have decided to start building our first house with Ryan Homes. We're going with the Venice model: Turtle Creek - Venice. We've already picked our lot, did the loan application, and finished (we think) selecting all of our options. We're meeting to pick our exterior colors on Tuesday the 29th, and meeting with Advanced Flooring to select all of our interior surfaces this coming Friday. I'm excited and ready for them to start building, even though it's probably going to be a month or two before they break ground. Here's a few pictures of the wooded lot with the good size back yard!

This is where the house will sit

 A view from about where the front door will be

 

A view of the back yard from where the patio will be