Permits

We are in the process of obtaining our permits! Yay!


My husband went to the county offices and requested our permits.We requested our driveway permit, septic permit, drainage form on Tuesday this week. The septic permit and the drainage permit were issued to him the same day. 
When requesting a driveway permit, they give you three stakes you must place in the ground one at each property line (3 feet from the roadway) and one in the center of where your driveway will be located. A highway department individual will come and check the stakes, to check for 500 or so feet of visibilty coming out of your driveway.  If it passes their checks you are issued the permit. My husband was told it could take anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks for someone to verify the stakes and get your permit approved.  We placed the stakes in the ground last night (Wednesday) and this morning my husband recieved a call that our permit had been issued.  They will mail you the permit or you can pick it up at their office, he is going to pick it up today!

Today he went to City Hall to the building inspector to request our building permit. He had to give the inspector the floorplan, the building permit is based off of square footage of your home.  He paid for the permit, and it should be ready later this afternoon for him to pick up!

Moving right along with permits, we are meeting our contractor this evening to finalize our plans!

Oh so many different flooring choices.....

We have been looking at different flooring choices for months, there are so many choices! We have a sample of the cabinet color and have been carrying it around with us to compare colors. We decided that we wanted to install our own laminate flooring in the Living Room, Kitchen, Dining Room, and Family room. We found a few colors that we liked at Menards, and a few colors at Lumber Liquidators, both were priced closely. We decided on Friday afternoon that we would go to Lumber Liquidators that evening and check out a different color I found online. It just so happened that their annual sale was happening last weekend as well. We found the color that I saw online, and decided that was it! It had to be special order since we needed so much laminate. We also ordered the transition bars, and the quarter round. We were very excited, one thing checked off the list!

Sunday afternoon we decided to go ceiling fan shopping. We will be adding at least two ceiling fans when we receive the house, one in the living room and one in the family room. I picked out 3 fans out of the hundreds that were on display. Then I asked my husband which one out of the 3 was his favorite, of course he picked the most expensive one! So we bought 2 of them (they are going into storage with all of our other things!). My only struggle is I hope they illuminate the rooms, the fans we decided on have one large globe covering the three light bulbs. We had similar fans at our old house, except for the globe was a more "yellowish gold" and they did not show as bright as I would have liked them too. The new fans' globes are white so I have hope - of course the other 2 fans I picked out had the "hanging" globes (one globe on each light) - probably a lot more light, but not the look my husband wanted. We are trying to share all the decisions, so we both love our new house.

After purchasing the fans, we decided to look at Menards for some ceramic tile for our foyer entry. I had the cabinet door sample (which is actually the same color as our trim, and our interior doors) and the sample of the laminate we purchased on Friday evening. We found some tile that we both love, of course it is special order, we need to get the measurements for the foyer, and then we will order the tile. My husband says "let’s just LOOK at the laminate flooring here" - from this moment I knew we were going to be in trouble. Keep in mind I had been here many a times before and picked out two colors that I thought looked great with the cabinet door. My husband walks over the couple of aisles and picks out the exact laminate I had selected twice before, in fact we already had a sample at home, and a picture on my phone of this color. After about an hour or so of deciding what to do now - we called and cancelled our first order of laminate from Lumber Liquidators, and placed a new order at Menards. I sure hope we like this flooring - this has been one of the hardest decisions we have had to make so far....hope the other decisions are not as difficult (and if they are I hope few and far between)!

 

We own land!

Thursday evening we had a meeting with the title company to purchase the land for our home!

My husband went to the bank earlier in the day and did a wire transfer to the title company, when we signed the papers the person representing the land got to accept the check for the land right then. 
The meeting was pretty quick, we had to sign a few papers, and that was it! We own land!  The man from the title company said the information would be passed onto the county surveyor within the next day, and the land would be transferred into our names.  Once the land is in our names, we can start obtaining all of our permits needed to build.  Next week my husband will start to obtain the permits!  Our contractor will meet with us one more time to make sure we have discussed everything, and then we can begin!

I also recieved the prints from the factory.  The prints must be reviewed bu the purchaser (in my case me, in most cases the builder and/or the customer) and then signed off on, stating that this is what you want the home to look like.  Now the prints will be sent to the engineering department for the production prints to be drawn and they will  be submitted to the state for approval. 

Moving right along!

This weekend we are going shopping to buy our laminate flooring! 

Laying out the Land

Yesterday afternoon we went to our "soon to be" property and marked off the dimensions of where things are going to be located. We marked where the house, the garage, the driveway and the porch will all sit.  All of this markings are just temporary guess work until we shoot grade to determine the exact location.   It was fun laying out where our future will be! The house seems so small on such a large piece of land, just marked by stakes in the ground. It was a very windy day, but we got it accomplished.   This Thursday we go to sign the title work for the land and it is ours!

Window Shopping for the New House

On Saturday we went "window" shopping for our new house. We can't exactly buy things for the house, since we have limited storage as it is.  We visited Lumber Liquidators to look at laminate flooring for the home. I omitted the carpet and vinyl from the Living room, Kitchen, Dining room, and Family room, so we can install our own laminate flooring.  Laminate is available from the factory but I was not thrilled with the colors that matched the cabinets, plus it is an expensive option, so we opted to do it ourselves.  We found a couple of selections that we liked and now just need to make the decision. While we were there we were told that this coming week, they start their big spring sale! We will make our decision this week on the color selection and whether we go to this sale this weekend or if we can find a laminate that we like at Menards,since they are also having a sale this week.


We also shopped for furniture for our daughters room.  I have an idea in my head of what I want her room to look like, and have not been able to find exactly what I am looking for.  While looking at the bedroom furniture I found a table I really like for the the Dining room. 

Overall a good "window" shopping sort of day. Now we need to make a couple of decisions and wait for the house to be able to buy the things we need!

Handed Over the Keys

This afternoon my husband took the keys and garage door openers to the realtors' office where we completed our paperwork.  The house is no longer ours. :(  A bittersweet day. 

This evening my husband insisted that we drive past to see if they are moving in yet.  I would prefer to not know, but we drove past anyways.  The couple who bought our home, was actually renting a home about a block away from our house, when we drove past they were packing up a trailer, looked as though they would be moving very soon. 

Meeting with the Contractor

Monday evening we met with our Contractor and he provided us with a breakdown of numbers for the completion of our home.  This will include: Basement, Garage, Porch, Well, Septic, Driveway, Sidewalk, and hooking up the home. 

We have to obtain our permits before we start anything, to obtain permits the land must be in our name.  Our meeting for the land is Thursday April 18th.  Once the land is in our name, we get the permits we need, and give the contractor the go ahead to start lining up the work.  It is getting very real, exciting and stressful at the same time!

A breakdown of what the contractor will be doing.

Basement 
Excavating, back fill, final grade, concrete, insulated interior, egress windows, drain tile, sewage basin and pump, plumbing in floor for future bath, sump pit, tar exterior walls, stairs, and lights.

Well
Septic

Garage
Fireproofing wall connected to home, building attached garage, pouring garage floors, and a pad in front of garage, garage door, and two exterior doors.

Driveway
Sidewalk from garage pad to front door

Porch
Concrete porch floor, vinyl posts, vinyl railing, building entire porch structure attached to home, and shingling entire front of home.

Gutters


This is the just of what the contractor will be doing to finish our home.  We have very specific details from him, as I would suggest everyone ask for so you understand what your contractor will be doing for you and how much it is going to cost. 

Moved Out!

This weekend consisted of lots of boxes and lots of cleaning! We need to be out of our house by the 13th, so this past weekend we had to move out. We have been packing up boxes for the past few weeks, however this weekend was it. Everything had to have a place it either went to storage or went into our vehicles to be transported to my parents house where we will be staying until our home is complete.  Last night was the first time I visited the storage, wow it is very full! I knew we had a lot of stuff, but to see it in boxes piled to the ceiling is a diferent story.  Our house is completely empty besides a box of cleaning supplies that we couldn't fit into the car, and a couple of things left in the garage that my husband will pick up this week. 

The emotional part of this is hard for me, it was our first house, where our first child was born and had so many of her firsts, I am an emotional person and this house is hard to say goodbye to.

The transition is going pretty well so far, we just hope to be in our new house by the time the baby comes!

Placed the Order!

We placed our order on Tuesday of this week! All of the choices have been made and we can only hope that we didn't miss anyting! Colors, light placement, 3-way switches, all decision that were difficult for this process are complete.

We had our contractor meeting on Monday night and hope to have his numbers back next Monday so we can establish what we can afford for our budget, and set up a timeline as to how we are going to complete this process.  The meeting with the contractor went very well, he asked questions that we hadn't even thought about, and brought some good points up about some of our ideas.  We have a pretty standard list of things that will need to be completed, with a couple of additional wants added in.

We are pouring a 9' basement, adding a garage (size not determined yet), driveway, septic, well, and a porch.  When the numbers come back we can better establish the size of the garage, the type of porch, and the size and type of the driveway.

There are a lot of phone calles to be made for obtaining permits, but before this can happen the land must be put in our name.  We are currently waiting on the title company so we can sign the papers to make the land ours.  This should also happen early next week.

As soon as the numbers come back from our contractor, we will set up a meeting with the mortgage broker and get our loan started. 

Easter Weekend!

This past weekend was a busy one! Celebrating Easter and packing a house with company equals an eventful weekend and one tired momma!

In between Easter Egg hunts we managed to pack up almost the whole office, and my daughters bedroom, the kitchen, and the utility room, the whole shed and all our outside furntiure, bicylces, etc. It always feels like we are getting a lot accomplished until you walk around in the house and realize we have sooo much stuff! Next weekend will be the "big move" we are hoping for nice weather to move our furniture out.

We had one meltdown last night when a book that my daughter loves to read at night was missing! I told her we would go to the storage and find the box of books and get her book out! - Hopefully the "missing" toys are at a minimum for the next couple of months!

 I am visiting the facotory today to place our home order! This experience is a little bit different for me since I work in the industry, but still all of the home buyers' experiences are definately the same!

We have a meeting tonight with our contractor to go over pricing. We recieved a quote today for the basement, things are progressing! I will elaborate on the process more tomorrow after our contractor meeting.