Finally - some exterior pictures!

So I finally got some exterior pics of the house! I know it's about time.. Here's the elevation. Notice we don't have a permanent walkway or stairway yet. Those will come in the spring. Along with the driveway and patio/landscaping hopefully.

Another view

Head on..

Partial walk-out basement

Retaining wall of boulders

That's all for now!

Paint

We painted the front windows to match the exterior trim because we found the white to be too shocking:


They also painted the garage doors this week


Hardwood floors are in and our master closet is done. I CAN'T wait to go see them!! Carpeting begins tomorrow. One more week until the house is complete! Can't believe it!

What a difference interior trim makes!

Elevation is mostly done, we cancelled the shutters so nothing much left to do on the exterior. As for inside, however, interior trim work has begun!!! Tons of pictures for you today. Enjoy! =)


Kitchen cabinets are almost done! Island counter yet to come...



Ceramic tile has begun as well, here's the kids' bathroom.

And the master bathroom:

The shelf in the master shower for shampoo, conditioner, etc...

We did crown molding in the family, living and dining room. Has yet to be painted, but here is the family room. Notice the walls have been primed for paint. Makes the house look a lot brighter!

The creative trim the trimmer did above the entry to the dining and to the living rooms. This is the dining room.

The wainscott-esque trim in the dining room. I love it!

Working on the stairs! Here is the handrail and newels. Balusters to come..

We decided to do false treads after all.

Thanks for coming, hope you like!!

Moving along...

Forgot the camera today (unfortunately!) but the cultured stone is in, cabinets are halfway done, and trim has begun!

Here are two pix from my phone.

What do you think of the stone?


LOVE my cabinets!

Cultured stone

The cultured stone we chose is Cobblestone, color: Ohio. This is for the entryway. What do you think?

Pictures - Finally!

Framing is almost complete! Just one-two more days... Here are pix:

The lot/driveway

The elevation and rear:

The front door I ended up choosing:

My favorite part of the house--the nook!

The master bedroom:

The walkout basement

Yay! Finally chose a brick!

Score! Finally, a brick that is available in our price range that I actually like! Take a look at the pictures and let me know what you think!

The roof shingles are "weathered wood," which is what we were leaning towards anyway, it matches quite well with the brick, right? I think we'll do the same trim color too. Three birds with one stone - Great! Success!

I just need to choose a shutter color... Any ideas?? I'm so confused!

Choosing a front door

Been thinking a lot about our front door. Our builder told us to start thinking about the kind of front door we want. He guided us to the Therma-tru website to help us design the door we want. We knew a steel door was out of the question for us. At first, I designed this beautiful mahogany door, and had our builder get us a quote--it was almost $4000!!!

We had to decide what was most important to us. Three factors affect the cost: How close it is to wood (real wood is most expensive of course, then fiber-classic that can be stained like wood, then smooth-star that can only be painted); How much glass; And the glass detail (the more intricate the more expensive).

For us, having glass was most important, as well as privacy. For this reason, we are leaning towards the Smooth-Star line; it's cheaper in general and so we'd be able to get a lot of glass while staying within our budget ($1000-2000). Smooth-Star can't be stained like the Fiber-Classic line to look like wood, but it can be painted. We also would have liked a transom (the arched glass above the door), but our budget wouldn't allow it.

I really liked the Thermatru website because it lets you design the door you like, then you can also check how much privacy the glass you chose can afford you. The only thing I don't like is that you can't get the price estimate from the site.

The door above is the one I am leaning towards now. It's exactly in our price range and I love it! On the privacy scale rating (where ten is most private) it rates a 8. It's important for us that we have a lot of privacy, but don't need blinds on it, because I think that's ugly. What do you think? What color should I paint it? Do you like the glass design or should I choose a different one?

I'm just a little worried that the door we chose might not match with our red-brick theme. I am considering getting the same door but in Fiber-Classic if we can get it at a decent cost. That way it can be stained to look more like wood.

Brick and stone

So I've been doing some research on brick colors. We know that we like the reddish tones more than others, and we especially don't like the very light brick. I did some searching online and came to some websites that helped, that show the brick color, and when clicked, show a house with that brick. We also drove around and took some pictures of houses whose brick we liked. In the end, we liked this house's brick the most!

What do you think - do you like this color??

We are also trying to decide about whether or not we want to use any stone. Stone is A LOT more expensive than brick. Check out the stone to the left! Beautiful, I know... But expensive.

Whereas, the house above, if you see, above the windows there is a white arch, that is made from limestone. We've decided we want to do the same thing, that way the house has stone but it's not too costly.

Our builder also suggested having the front door be surrounded by cultured stone. Cultured stone is basically fake stone, so it's a lot cheaper, but still looks pretty nice. It comes in a lot of different shapes and colors, but we haven't yet decided exactly what we want. We are going to do like the picture to the left with cultured stone around the front door, but we need help choosing a style!

Also, we decided to have a boxed window in the dining room, which would be the front of the house. Unlike the bay window, it doesn't come out as much so it's cheaper, but it still gives the house some character from the outside.

Preliminary plans

Let the fun begin!! As we were waiting for permits to come in, our builder told us to start thinking about plans, both for the elevation and the interior. We looked through tons and tons of those books filled with hundreds of elevations and site plans. Some good ones are Impressions of home and Homes of Grandeur by Design Basics Inc. It also helped to go to Realtor and check out the houses currently on the market.

Elevation. For the time being, we only had to have a general idea of the elevation we were going after. Did we want brick? (yes) Stone? (maybe) Cultured stone? (hmmm..) Drivet? (no) What colors did we like? (red, traditional colors) What sort of roof were we going to have? (no idea)

(There are two kinds, a gable roof and a hip roof. A gable roof is two-dimensional, while a gable is three or four. Here is a house with a gable roof (top) and one with a hip roof (bottom). Notice the gable roof is two pieces of roof, while the hip has three or four "faces," which gives it a more aesthetic look. A hip roof is a LOT more expensive than a gable. Before understanding the difference between the two, I would never have noticed! But once they explained it to me, I couldn't see a house without realizing what type of roof it had, and how all the "nice" houses had hip roofs! We were on a budget, though, and a hip roof was out of the question. We decided to go with the gable... but we asked if we could have a small part of the roof be hip. The answer: yes. Success!

The house with the hip roof also has what are known as "coins," those rectangles on the edges of the exterior walls. Coins give a house flair and pizazz. We decided against them, however. With the color of brick we wanted (red), we thought they were unnecessary.

Plans. It's important that you sketch a general idea of the layout you want for your house. Even if it's done on a dinner napkin. I chose the Paint application on my computer and came up with the following drawing.
We took the cardinal directions into consideration. Southern and Eastern exposures are better than Northern and Western (South is best). You want the rooms you use the most (which for us are family room, kitchen/nook, and master bedroom) to have the best exposure to keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Most of our decisions were made based on that, as well as trying to stay away from the house to our north that's pretty close.

We also had a little "problem." The lot is not level, the original house was set on ground which dipped four feet about 5 feet from the house. The driveway as I had drawn it below would require a retaining wall to keep the driveway from sloping downward. A retaining wall, if done properly, is very costly, and if not done properly could settle over the years. My dad, who had done one for the pergola he had built, did not recommend it! So we decided against it.

Preliminary plans are helpful, especially when meeting with the architect. The more information you include, the better. By the time we met with ours, we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted our house to be!

Next: Meeting with the architect!