A new adventure

After renting for the past 10+ years, we figured it'd be nice to get a house someday. Ironically, the bank was more willing to finance a construction loan sooner than a pre-existing home purchase.

                                     

So we bought a lot in a neighborhood. And we started looking at house plans online.

 None of them was quite right. We also thought about the homes we'd been in that we liked. And we piggybacked off those ideas and began designing our own. With his eye for detail and meticulousness (is that a word?), Michael really enjoyed this process. I weighed in on things as well but left the drawing to him.

 Here are some of my own drawing attempts for the kitchen, trying to make sure there would be enough space for the kitchen stuff I actually own and use. The kitchen design is still a work in progress.

 And then we met with a great draftsman, who turned those ideas into this.

 So the trees started to get knocked down.

 And a gravel driveway and culvert was added (culvert = drainpipe--you learn all sorts of cool words when you build a house).

 A really big hole began to be dug.

 A huge mountain of dirt appeared.

 Nifty machines that any three-year-old boy would love to watch were hard at work. (Who am I kidding? I would love to be out there and watch them, too.)

 I have been impressed by the intricacies of the process. Construction workers and contractors really have to know their stuff.

 The floor plan began to take shape. The incline over in the upper corner will be the steps to the future (unfinished) walk-out basement.

A view from the edge.

 Lots of gravel was piled in.

And a drain was put in.

And that's where we stand so far. I apologize if this is uninteresting/annoying to some of you folks--we wanted to document the experience and figured this was the best place. It will definitely be a learning experience . . . and we will have room for visitors, too.

ETA: Summer 2013.