The house is going up faster than I can keep up with this blog! My in-laws came over to celebrate Steve's birthday and were eager to see our "hole in the ground." It was fun showing then that there is much more than just a hole.
Despite the little mishap of locating the house in the wrong place, the builder has been able to continue without stopping. The drawing has been revised to reflect the changes which are pretty subtle. The municipality let them continue with the changes to the house to move the back part of it west 2 feet. They had to re-pour a few footers and basement walls, but it appears that they only lost about a day or two for rework. Progress is fast and evident every day and the construction work appears to be of high quality so far. The basement is finished, the garage floor, the concrete steps to the basement, and front and back porches have all been poured. The first floor beams, floor joists and sub-floor are all installed and much of the first floor is framed. They accomplish a lot of work every day it seems--I wish my days at work were so productive.
We've made preliminary selections for lighting and flooring. It is not easy to stay within the "allowances" for various selections. The "Dummies" book I read on custom home building discourages using allowances in your contract as you almost always go over budget. On the other hand, until you pick out every little fixture, cabinet, flooring type, etc. you don't know exactly what the whole thing will cost. Our builder has the owner pay for any upgrades beyond the allowances directly to the supplier so our builder doesn't have any vested interest in selling upgrades. I think having an understanding of what is included in the allowance and how much typical upgrades cost (e.g wood flooring adds about $1000/room) works pretty well a as long as you keep some money available to pay for them as they come up. I have been trying to stay within allowances except that I knew we would exceed the kitchen allowance by several thousand. We should meet or slightly exceed some of the other allowances.
Picking out lighting was almost overwhelming. There are so many fixtures in this house. The lighting supplier was very easy to work with and very pleasant. After a while I was getting lighting fixture fatigue. I kept thinking "how many more rooms do we have to go through?" I have not made a final selection for the two most expensive light fixtures for the house--the foyer and dining room chandeliers, but there is still some room left in the lighting allowance for them. I was happy to find out that we get a real doorbell. Our current home doesn't have one so we have this "sorry ass" electronic one that sounds pretty pathetic--sometimes the little things bring joy!
Choosing flooring took time but seemed to be easier than choosing lighting--there are just fewer things to pick from. Of course the tile I really liked for the master bath was way over budget, so we'll skip that (see Steve, expense actually does matter to me!) We are getting hardwood in the living and dining rooms, so that is an extra cost and Tania is pleased to be getting the upgraded shag carpeting she picked out for her bedroom. The biggest additional expense will be installing a geo-thermal heating and cooling system. But that will be a subject of a future entry.
In the meantime, it is really starting to look like a house!
