We're still here.....

Lots of Things going on but we're still workin' away. Our driveway approach will be done soon (required when developing property). We have signed on with a local contractor to widen and pave our driveway approach (where the main road meets our driveway). About two days after we signed with a contractor we noticed the county trucks going up the road replacing culverts, widening driveway approaches, and paving them....Hmmm. I called all around trying to get the scoop on what was happening. Turns out they are resurfacing a section of the road and we are about 1 mile away from that project... I tried to get them to expand their project...not happening, Crap!! We could have had it done for FREE. Project to cost about $1,200 (I'm foreseeing the realities of the home building process flash before me...).

Zach is getting all fancy with the Auto Cad. 3D drawings, roof trusses, wall studs. He's almost done. I'll post another picture soon. We have also rearranged our bathroom upstairs (master bathroom) again, I think it is a better layout AND we managed to have room for a washer and dryer upstairs in the walk in closet. No walking up and downstairs for clean clothes. Good Stuff.

17 Door Knobs, 10 Interior Doors, 2 Sliding Doors, and 1 much needed visit to IKEA

I have a few more things added to the list. Not the purchased list, but the yes we're sure list. The front door will be a hard decision. And yes, Red is an option, or natural wood. I'll post some options. The door knob type for all interior doors is in the photo to the right ; second row, middle, black-ish (semi-aged bronze), oval shaped. I like it. I kept turning that one at the store (and no, I had no disinfectant wipes with me)...

The above doors are Therma tru brand.

We like both styles and may find more...

Bamboo Hardwood Flooring is a pretty sure.

All the windows/sliding doors will be the low E Viking Brand.

IKEA Kitchen is a for sure. I have a model on my IKEA Kitchen Planner that I'll try to post but I need to try and keep three Base cabinets from floating up the wall. They really want to be wall cabinets. I'll work on that.

Zach has all of the structural calculations done except for the roof. The floor studs are drawn in. He is now drawing in the wall studs, and the window framing. Next will be to plan out the plumbing and electrical.

I'm still moving around the master bathroom to ensure a good layout with the newly decided bathtub addition. Something like this one, but still looking.

Construction Specs spreadsheet

I've been avoiding this spreadsheet. I'm an end results kinda gal...and this spreadsheet is never ending. One of the critical pieces of information needed in planning, bidding, and constructing a home is a detailed construction specifications sheet. I've been putting it off for too long and this is the weekend to tackle it (I think). I'm not saying it will be done in a weekend, but a lot of it could be.
This spec sheet covers everything going on inside the home (ceiling height, closet sizes, door hardware, electrical outlet locations, sink fixtures, lighting fixtures, windows, insullation, EVERYTHING...). At least it's a rainy weekend. A four day weekend even. I took today off work (Monday - Holiday - no workee). I got a massage yesterday, have food stocked up, downloaded more tunes, and the treadmill is in the dining room... I'm ready... for the spreadsheet.
Some helpful websites: Saybuild.com - very good info. They also have a sample spec sheet you can download. Building Cost estimator - very rough estimates but some good information on what makes a house cost more.

Like Running for Chocolate...

Busy weekend. Zach and I started out pouring beer at our local Micro Brew Festival. Pretty fun; however, the next night was better since we got to taste some beers. One of my favorites was the 100 Meter Ale (Eugene City Brewery), and the Dry Irish Stout Collaboration Brew (Ninkasi Brewing Co.). People's Choice winners: 1st: Calapooia Brewing Co. Albany, OR (Chili Pepper IPA) 2nd: Ninkasi Brewing Co., Eugene, OR (I forget which of their beers won) and 3rd: Wakonda Brewing Co., Florence, OR (Beachcomber's Ale).

Today....I ran in the Truffle Shuffle (2 and 4 mile Run/Walk). It is a good fundraiser AND it comes with a dark chocolate Truffle at the end. I ate mine much later, after MUCH stretching. My training consisted of signing up Friday afternoon and drinking beer Saturday.

My niece's husband, Dave, inspired me to torture myself, I mean run. He recently completed two half-marathons! I would love to be able to do that. My god, that is 13 miles!! I chose the 2 mile version today and ended up finishing at 28 and something minutes. My first mile was 11 minutes and then my right leg went kinda numb (I think it was the 100 Meter Ale's fault), so I had to walk for a while. Next time, I will be better prepared.

House Progress: Zach is still plugging away at the "calculations" to verify that the house won't blow down, fall over, or lift off in the event of heavy winds/snow loads/etc. (my understanding)...

Well, 160 trees later

Weekend of planting....Okay, well, Zach was busy this weekend. I had all the intensions of helping him... I just got distracted. He loves it, really... He planted some western red cedar, ponderosa pine, giant sequoia, douglas fir, and grand fir. Most of them were planted by the creek, river, and along a certain fence line (to help block some neighbors).


Then my sister calls, who was on her way to town with "something to show us". I knew. She had a new addition to the family. Her first real vehicle....It is a sweet ride, Jeep Liberty. We took a couple rides, ate lots of food, laughed, watched a couple of superbowl commercials, drank....great weekend.

Change is good

I have always liked change. I proceded with my quarterly office remodel today followed by a small change to this site. You may see more changes in the future, so don't get attached to any specific layout or color. There are many template options from Blogger that are available at the click of a button. I could easily see myself changing the fonts, colors, and templates often.

I've been trying to fit more onto my site like small spreadsheets on the sides. There is a good blog that I've been following, savvy saver, which is pretty interesting.

I'm going to try and keep a log of the associated costs for building a house for a couple of reasons. For one, it is a good record of what we spent our money on. Two, I hope to help educate others because after searching for months and months I found it nearly impossible to get an idea of what it costs to build a house. I realize there are many unknowns, but something would be helpful.

Tomorrow, we get up at 6:00 a.m. to get in line to buy seedling trees at the annual tree seedling sale. They have good trees and they are reasonably pricesd. We usually end up buying 50 - 300 (Ughh, then we have to plant them!).

House Images

We just went to our local Home show to look around and get a feel of what else might be out there in the building world. We met a couple of contractors who build in the area. I wanted to talk to some of the contractors that work with the ICF's (Insulating Concrete Forms - styrofoam legos). You can use the ICF pieces for footings and or the entire structure shell. Essentially they are styrofoam blocks with some type of netting in between that concrete gets poured into. They are supposed to be very efficient but they do cost more (kept hearing 5% more - but I'm sure it is more than that) I'll do more research on it and do another posting on it later, it may be overkill for our design.

Okay, so I played around with AutoCad and I got some images. This is our design that we are working with. Zach is still finishing the structural calculations and some other details, but this is what we are working of of now. The first picture is a floorplan of the 1st floor (1554 sq.ft.).

Next, is a floorplan of the 2nd Story with an outline of the 1st floor underneath (we both try to shrink this master bedroom down - its hard!). The last picture is a 3 D image.