New House, Contract to Start of Construction

So we have a contract to build a new house!  This is a very fun and also sort of scary process!  I suppose the only thing that makes it scary is that we haven't sold our current home yet....but I'm sure that will change as we go into 2013 (prayers for help are welcome!)

We made all of our floor plan choices to write the actual contract.  There are a million things on our "want" list, but we agreed that if we could just get the square footage and layout we wanted, we would just work to save and do all of the other upgrade things in time.  This is however, our final home until we retire, so we have years to keep making it better. 

We are building with Drees Homes and so far, the process has been great!  Our Marketing Manager, Jessica, is fantastic!  She has been so excited for us as we have taken each step and she really makes us feel important!  We chose a 4-bedroom, 2-1/2 bath Colonial in Strongsville.  We'll be living right around the corner from our daycare and it's a great neighborhood with a community pool & clubhouse!  We have lot on a cul-de-sac and really think we'll love it there!  Our lot is much, much smaller than our current home, but we've learned that we don't use our yard quite like we thought we would and the lesser space to maintain is sort of attractive to us. 

We were able to do 2 extensions on the floor plan to give us more square footage and we were also able to do vaulted ceilings in the master suite.  We have several upgrades that we did want so we think we got a pretty good deal - by the way, you can totally negotiate the pricing of a new home just like any other home in case you're wondering.  We ended up getting all that we are getting for over $25k less than what the "actual price" was.

We had our design appointment where we picked the outside materials, flooring, bath fixtures, kitchen options and all that good stuff.  That was fun.  It took almost a whole day and at the point of bathroom countertops, I was overwhelmed!  It's hard to imagine everything finished when you're looking at one sample of something at a time.  Here are the pictures of our design selections.

The outside brick, siding, shingles, shutters and paint

flooring, cabinets, granite, paint, tile, countertops

We went to the granite place to pick our slabs of granite....this was sort of a wasted trip as they all look the same!  But the two slabs in the front of the stacks had our name written all over them when we left!

Then they staked out our lot.  That was fun to see....you could see how the house would sit on the lot and step onto the porch (or where the porch will be).  The lot was pretty muddy, so the pictures are sort of from a distance.

from the street

 

from the back yard

up close porch/front of house

Next, we met with the Construction Manager, Nate.  He's really great too.  We did a full plan review where he asked all sorts of questions to make sure he understood all of our design changes.  He also explained how the entire process would work.  We walked the lot with him and anxiously awaited the start of construction.

They started digging last Thursday, 12/27.  I stopped by at lunch time and there was just s small hole, but deep.  By the end of the first day, they had dug all the way to the back of the property.

noon dig day1

end of dig day 1

I went back mid-day last Friday, and the entire basement was dug out.  It looks huge right now!  The next crew were in getting ready to pour the footers.  I did a coffee run for those guys and they sure appreciated it!  I figure I'll have to be nice to these crews so they don't mind me stopping by to scope things out every day that I can!

our basement, by mid-day of dig day 2

 Nate called for our first week's update and by the end of day 2, the footers were poured.  They will be off for New Year's and then will pour our foundation next Wednesday.  They'll be doing some other undergound stuff, like utilities and waterproofing next week too.