Charles’ whirlwind of traveling for work has finally dwindled down to a soft breeze, and I am so grateful to have him home for longer than 2 days at a time for the foreseeable future.
His work slowed down at the perfect time, because getting things together for the house has become increasingly more important. We closed on the house on 4/9 in a quick and painless 30 min paper-signing frenzy. As a first time home buyer, I had assumed it would be much more complicated. But it was pleasantly quick and painless. Because we are renting the house back to the owner until July, it was an unusual closing. Charles and I can access the house at any time, but don’t really see the need because their is a family living there, and at the end of the day we arenot keeping the structure in place. So while it is officially ours, it didn’t really feel like much had changed.
Things became more “real” to us on Friday when we met with the builder and architect to get our first set on conceptual plans. I have to say, I am impressed by how much the architect listened to what we wanted and fit it into the conceptual drawings. However, there were a few small misses, and one major problem with the conceptual draft. As you can see, the plans have a huge garage sticking off the front of the house creating an “L shape” to the structure. In a statement: this is not okay 🙂 The architect is quite literally going back to the drawing board to get the garage in-line with the rest of the house. We appreciate that this will be a challenge for him, but what is that saying?!?! If you are going to do it, do it right?
Other fixes are much smaller, like rearranging the linen closet in the master bath, adding french doors to the master bedroom for a walk out to the back yard, and incorporating a prep sink to the kitchen lay out, Etc. I could go on, but then you wouldn’t be surprised when you see the finalized floor plan when it is ready in two weeks. On 5/2 we will meet with the builder again, get the final floor plan and the first pass at the house elevation. Hopefully from here we will be able to move out of the “Concept” phase into “Design and Development”. This is when we will begin to select things like flooring, tiles, vanities, light fixtures, plumbing, pait, etc. This is the part that I am equally excited and anxious about. I know it is going to be fun, but when I think back on how long it took me to select finishes for a 45 sq ft bathroom, I get a bit queazy thinking about doing this for a 2100 sq ft house! But we have a GREAT team lined up, and they will be there to help and support us the whole time.
Speaking of the bathroom – I bet you are wondering how that turned out… Stay tuned, there is more to come on that project.