A Firm Foundation

Fooled you!  I bet you thought there was going to be a foundation picture.  Nope!  Getting closer, though.

I am sure the two men in this picture were thrilled when we came by at lunch time and took pictures of the work they were doing.  They probably would have liked to work in peace, but they were polite and nicely waved. Now they are famous with my millions thousands hundreds family and a few close friends who read my blog.


*As an aside, I have been waiting to use the "strike through" feature.  Everyone uses it in case you hadn't noticed.  Just trying to be like my cool blogger friends :)


Here is a picture from tonight with the foundation frame (whatever you call it) all in place.  It is so true that the house looks tiny when you look at the foundation (or the foundation frame).  The backyard looked bigger than I thought, though, so that was a good surprise.  I am guessing they won't pour the foundation until next week, but we will see.

In the Interest of Full Disclosure

I know that I haven't written in awhile (how many times have I seen that on a blog post?), but life has been super busy and house building has not.  Things are moving slowly right now, but I know that they will start going much faster soon before they slow down again.  There are a few exciting developments and here is one:

No, everyone who is building a house doesn't get a hard hat.  Just people who work there :)

No, I did not take on a second job (I can barely keep up with my first one!)

My husband starting working for Stylecraft Builders about two weeks ago.  He is working in the home warranty area and learning so much about how the building process works.  The great thing for us is that he is much better informed and works right next door to the superintendent on our house.  It doesn't speed things along, but it does keep us in the loop.  So far he loves what he is doing and the people are awesome.  We will certainly learn what to do and what not to do to take care of our house once we get the keys!

Closing date!

Our closing date is set for October 5, 2012!!!  

Now if we can just find a place to live from 8/1/2012-10/5/2012.  No stress!

Delay

I am sure all three of you who read my blog are anxiously awaiting my next exciting post about our home.  Hopefully you have figured out from the title one of the reasons I haven't posted in a few days.  Delay!  Already.  We haven't even started yet :(


Actually, this time, the delay is a good thing for us.  We are moving into a neighborhood with a Home Owner's Association.  Before we could start building, our plans had to be approved by the HOA.  Stylecraft has built many homes in the neighborhood and although I don't think any of them are the same plans as ours, they have the same specifications.  The difference is that because of the way our home is situated, you can see the back of the home from the main drive into the neighborhood.  Most of the homes in the neighborhood have three sides with brick and stone (and a little Hardiplank) with Hardiplank on the back of the home like so: 

This house has Hardiplank covering the back

 
Because of the way our home is situated, the HOA requested brick and stone on all four sides.  So, at no extra cost to us, we will have brick and stone on all four sides!

Although not our floorplan or brick or stone, the idea is similar to what we will have on all four sides of our house

We are excited because our home will be started soon and we can't wait to see the progression.

*And a disclaimer... I would have been fine with the home the way it originally was going to be.  The back of our home will have a fence around it and it really doesn't matter what it looks like.  No putting down Hardiplank here, just excited for our home in whatever shape it ends up being.  

Our Splurges

Our builder (Stylecraft homes) has many features that come standard with each home. The standard features vary depending on the floorplan and neighborhood that you are building in.When we started this venture, we thought that we would stick with all the standard features of our home.  As you can guess (and I alluded to in another post), that was not the case.  So what did we splurge on?

 Mandatory (at least in our minds) splurges:

Ceiling fans are standard in the master bedroom, game room, and living room.  Since we have 3 upstairs bedrooms with girls who will be sleeping in them who use a ceiling fan pretty much 365 days a year, this was a no-brainer. 

Not very expensive, but super helpful splurge:

 Back door with the blinds in the glass.  Too many children and dogs going in and out to have blinds hanging on the door.  This is the back door in our house now and we love this feature!

Big Time Splurge:

Isn't it beautiful?  Six burner gas stove with double ovens.  Sigh!  We love to cook and try to eat at home almost every day.  We have dinner as a family every night and this was the one splurge that made the most sense to us.  We hope to entertain more at our new house and being able to cook many things at one time will be awesome.  It ended up costing more than we thought it would, but I don't think we will ever be sorry!

Splurge we decided to do without :(

See the fact that the little porch is covered?  We won't be having that.  The cost is several thousand dollars and we decided that we can do something else later for a porch covering if we want to.  And just in case you are wondering, the floorplan of the house above is the same as ours!  More to come in a future post.  Stay tuned to see more pictures of this house that looks very similar to ours...

Progress!

We had a busy weekend so we only went to the lot once (or maybe twice) to check on the house (I know, I know... it was the weekend, what did we expect?)  So today we went to the lot after dinner and look what we found:

We thought nothing had been done.  But wait!  Look closer...

 And closer...

 Okay, you probably can't see them.  Here is what we have around the front of our lot:

My Secret Obsession

I don't know if I should publish this blog post.  Do I really know you well enough?  I feel pretty exposed putting this on the World Wide Web for everyone to read.  Strangers may read it. Friends might read it.  Family surely will read it.

Okay.  Here is goes.  I am obsessed with my blog stats.  If you are not a blogger, that probably won't mean anything to you.  I just realized a couple of days ago that I can see how many page views that I have every day and for every post.  I can see whether you read my blog on Windows, an Android phone, or an iPhone.  I can tell if you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer.  I can see whether you are in Turkey (hi, Heather!), the United States (almost all of you), Qatar (hi, TAMUQ friends), or Russia (do I know someone in Russia right now?)

The bad thing about my obsession is that I think it comes from my need to be liked.  I check to see how many views I have for each post and wonder if maybe you didn't like my post one day so I lost you forever as a reader.  Just in case that just struck fear in your heart, I can't see whether YOU personally read my post or not just whether YOU collectively read my post.  I know that it shouldn't matter and this isn't a popularity contest, but...

So, just in case you are wondering, the blog post with the most views so far is "The Dilemma."  Surely by now you realize that the reason the title of this post is "My Secret Obsession" is that I was pretty sure that would give me my highest numbers yet :)