taking shape

the framers have been working their tails off!  we cannot believe how much progress has been made in such a short period of time.  we have a house now!  walking through this for the first time was such an unreal experience.  to see everything in 3 dimension and feel the size of the rooms has been a great thing.  when everything is on paper its hard to visualize and you wonder how big a room will be.  well let me tell you this place is going be huge compared to what we are used to living in.

here is the latest picture from last night.  pretty cool huh?!?!

exterior finalized and framing the house!

i know it has been a couple of weeks since our last update. kurt and i were out of town last week in NOLA! we had a great time, but come sunday morning, we were ready to see two things. of course our #1 was to see jack!! he stayed with kurt's parents while mom, dad, charlie, nichole, kurt and i were gone from tuesday-sunday. our #2 thing to see was the progress of the house!

before we left, they were starting to put the floor in for the first floor. we couldn't believe the changes when we got home! they were framing and you could really see the outline of the house and rooms inside. so exciting!! 

today, kurt and i met with our builder and the stone/brick guy. we have made some changes from our original exterior plans and we feel really good about the changes.  i think in the long run, our changes will be way less expensive and low maintenance.  we originally were going to put cement board & batten siding all around the house and use stone along the base.  well, we didn't want to be "that house" that stands out amoung all the rest of the brick houses in our neighbood. so we decided that we will go brick on the base of the house in front and brick all around the house. we will still use the shake and fiber cement siding in the front and in some areas around the peeks and in the back, but for the most part, it will be a brick craftsman style house. the picture of the house below is very similar in color of the shake/fiber siding and the brick.

now, we know this is a lot different than our vision house that i posted a while back, but we are very happy with our new vision house.  we will be using a tan/ivory color windows instead of the dark ones in the picture above. the  picture below is the actual brick, the mortar color is the darker of the two and the color of the fiber siding and shake is the color swatch, natural clay. 

so now, i'm sure you are wanting to see pictures of the actual house. i had the opportunity to "walk" through our house on tuesday after work. it is really coming up! curtis, our builder, said that he will have it framed by end of next week. he also told us that we need to get our current home up for sale by mid-march. and he said plan on being ready to close on our new house mid-june!! omg!!!!! 

this picture was taken on sunday when we got home.

and these two were taken today!

we have basement walls!

after the few snowy days, we were really surprised to see that our basement walls have been poured. kurt drove by the lot on thursday, jan 31 and was again very shocked to see progress had been made. i drove by yesterday to see it myself!

while i was standing there taking pictures, our new neighbor drove up. tara was her name and she was very nice. she told me that she, her husband and two girls, 8 and 11, love the neighborhood. she said they are practically family and support each other. i told her that is what i had heard and that it really sealed the deal when we made the final decision to build in ash landing.  tara introduced me to her youngest daughter and then proceeded to tell me that her oldest daughter is getting ready to prepare for the babysitter courses. so exciting- we could have our future babysitter living next door!! yippe!!!

my visit to our lot was short, but indeed sweet! i am getting more and more excited about moving to our new home in ash landing!