Electrical

Our good friend Justin is an electrical engineer by trade, so when he offered to wire our house for us and was super excited about it, we agreed! Matt and Justin have been preparing for the start of the electrical in the house for quite some time and when they finally got to go to Menard's and start buying stuff, it was like Christmas for these two!

Saturday they installed the electrical panel in the basement. Here are a few shots from the day.

Justin focused.

Matt hard at work.

Electrical panel installed!

Houston, we have a house!

Okay, so it might not be done yet, but it's starting to look like a house, finally! You can walk through framed up hallways and tell what rooms are where. It is really quite exciting! Mom and Dad came down to check out the progress. Of course we needed a good DH inspection!

Walls being framed!

The rooms look small right now. I'm not sure if our bed will fit in the bedroom, although I am assured that there will be no problems.

Once the trusses were set, it really started looking more and more like a house. They are in the process of putting the decking on in preparation for the shingles on the roof. Once that is done and the windows are in, we shouldn't be held to mother nature's time line anymore!

Trusses in place.

This pretty much brings you up to date on where we are on the construction side of the house. I have some photos to share of Matt and Justin's adventures in installing the electrical panel and will be sharing some more of the adventures of all the decision making that goes into this. Who knew you had to have an opinion about so many things?!

Decking going on. Looking more and more like our home..

Framing it in

The bad weather over the holidays slowed the framing crew up a little bit on their job prior to ours, so they didn't get as early of a start on our house as we would have liked. But we are quickly learning that mother nature is the boss hog when it comes to deciding when work can and can't be done.

Within a few days, the framers had some walls up in the basement and started putting the floor joist across the house. Before we knew it they were laying plywood over the joist and our basement was closed in and the ground floor was down!

Flooring down over the basement.

In no time they had exterior walls up and you could really start to see a house starting to form.

Rooms being formed!

Me standing in front of the HUGE window in our breakfast nook.

From the Ground Up

I am sure everyone has heard a recent horror story about trying to buy a house and if you haven't heard one lately, you probably have one of your own. To say we were nervous to get our consturction loan, which we were warned is harder than an mortgage, is an understatement. We didn't have time for the run around, we had deadlines to meet! We were told the average going rate for our loan to be processed from start to finish would be 40-60 days.

Trees coming down. We had 12 removed.

So off to the bank Matt and I went the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The loan officer we were working with told us to bring a few things to "get the process started". But we have deadlines remember? So every piece of financial documentation we had to our names we took with us to the bank. To say the loan officer was a little surprise how "prepared" we were might be an understatement. We left the bank having all but 1 paper completed to officially apply for our loan.

Now remember these deadlines? December 10 was the last day the basement company would start a new basement before the holidays and we were scheduled to begin that day. However, we couldn't (technically) start working until we were approved for our loan. Being anxious to get our basement in the ground, I asked our loan office if he thought we could close on the loan in time to make the December 10 deadline - he laughed.

Luckily, our neighbors to the east are building a home 4 sq. feet bigger than ours and we requested the same appraiser. So there was a lot of leg work completed since the comps had already been done. We got word on December 7 that our loan was passed through loan committee and we would be closing on December 12. We also got the green light to go ahead and start digging! We were going to get our basement in before the holidays!

Site prep to start digging the basement.

That's me standing in the driveway with the basement hole in the background.

The completed basement.

The completed basement. You can see walls being framed.

We're Building a House!

As many of you know, we are building a house. But since I just recently decided to start this blog, I feel I must catch you all up to speed as to where we are and how we got to this place! Just a warning, its going to take more than this post to catch you up to date on our progress.

So here we go from the top...

We weren't looking to build a house or even purchase a lot to build, but sometimes God hands you a sign - literally. Matt and I were driving through my favorite subdivision - which NEVER has any homes for sale and although seems like there are lots available for building, they are NEVER for sale either. But on this particular day in April, there was a small auctioneer sign in a lot and we jumped! We called the next day and were signing a purchase agreement by the middle of the week!

Our original lot...see the "sign"?!

So the majority of the summer, we spent time looking at house plans and trying to figure out what we wanted to build. 1 story or 2 story? basement? bonus room? how much garage space? The options were endless, not to mention we "traded" lots with the people who owned the empty lot beside us. We think we got the long end of the stick on that deal! So our current lot (and the one we are building on) is in a different location and the neighbors on BOTH sides of us are building at the same time! It's a busy place in our subdivision right now.

In the meantime, we decided to do a custom house design, combining elements of various plans we liked. After we finalized our plan, we started meeting with builders and ended up hiring Bart, who we met 2 years ago in the Parade of Homes (like a builder's open house). He has lots of great ideas and we really enjoy working with him.

The month of November was filled with finalizing plans and numbers we felt comfortable with. Matt and I had done quite a bit of homework on what things would cost. We were getting pricing on flooring, cabinets, lighting etc. to make sure we borrowed enough money from the bank to have a nice house, not builder grade, but still be able to afford our mortgage. I have earned the title "Budget Nazi" and am trying my best to keep us on track with the budget for this building project. The last thing I want to do is have to owe a bunch of money at the end of it all!

Speaking of a mortgage - the Bank! What an experience! I will save this for the next house catch up!

I have a blog.

I have been thinking of starting a blog for quite some time now. There just seemed to be so much to it and so much I didn't know...but I took the plunge and with some tips from +Kassie O'Driscoll here I am!

There is so much going on in Matt and I's life right now out side of the everyday munition of life, we are selling not 1 but 2 homes, building a home (which has become a second job) of course pinterest projects, friends, family and the list goes on!

I hope this blog becomes a great way not only to keep everyone informed but to document our experiences as well! I have about 2 months of house updates and photos to post so look for that coming soon!