First Floor Framed!

Today we went to visit our house, Wednesday Jan 30th. Here are the major updates: The first floor was framed, our up and down stairs are in, and the second floor has the floor down. And I don't care if my dad makes fun of me or not... I took about 50 pictures of the house today!!

 

 

Here is our little shack!  Or at least that's how it looks from the road haha.  The first floor is completely framed and it looks like they are getting ready to start framing the second floor.  Dad told us that he went to our house around two o clock and no one was there working.  That really surprised me, because it was 60 degrees today.  In the morning it was raining, but you'd think that they would want to get the second floor up before temperatures drop back into the 20s tomorrow.

 

 

 

Here is our framed garage.

 

 

On the left you can see where our powder room will be, and on the right you can see where our mud room will be.  This is leading in from the garage.

 

 

 

Here is where our kitchen will be.  It's amazing what a difference the framing makes.  We were really happy with the size of the house today.  It seemed a lot bigger now that it was framed and we were able to properly see where everything was going to be.

 

 

 

Here is our morning room.

 

 

Here is the other side with our sliding glass door that will eventually lead out to our deck.  I'm not sure if you can see it, but Ryan Homes built a temporary gate to prevent anyone from opening this door and falling to the ground.  We will be able to take that off once we move into the house.  Right now, they have to include it because it's a safety risk.

 

 

 

This is another view of the kitchen.

 

 

Here is our living room and office behind it.  You can see the hole in the wall where our fireplace will go.

 

 

Cody checking out the office.

 

 

 

 

Here you can see where our pantry will be.  Also you can see the dining room, and where the stairs are located.  Our basement stairs are right off of our kitchen, and the front stairs are right in front of the front door.

 

 

Here is Cody heading upstairs.

 

 

Here is the view of the pond behind our house.  My dad is already exciting to get a remote control speed boat to play around with in the lake.  He and Cody are already talking about racing them against each other...

 

 

Here is a view of our backyard.  Our property line is behind the pond close the trees in the back.  However, we have something called an "easement" that we are not allowed to build anything past, because it will be too close to the pond.  The easement starts where it is marked off.

 

 

Quick update on our neighbors.  It looks like their basement walls are up.  I'm sure they are going to be starting to frame their house soon.  It was cool to see their walls up, because we missed what our house looked like during this stage.  We were only visiting the lot on Sundays because a lot hadn't really been happening before... so we didn't get to see our basement go up.  That is a reason why I am really excited that we got to go out today in the middle of the week to see what the house looks like.  It will be cool to compare it to our Sunday visit.

 

 

Here is part of our second floor.  This is where our room, bathroom, closets, and main hall bath will be located.

 

 

This will be where our other three rooms will be.  The picture really doesn't do it justice, because they don't look like they would be good room sizes in this picture.  However, when we were there and looking at where the rooms would be, we were really happy with what their size will be.

 

 

 

So remember that hole I was so excited that they filled in with concrete?  Well I was talking with a guy at work and he told me that they did that because they were going to base our foundation poles on top of it.  So sure enough when we went down into our basement I looked and wouldn't you know... the only concrete area in our basement (that patch) had our poles on it.  Haha and here I thought they were just filling in a hole...

 

 

These pictures of our basement are pretty awesome.  When we were in our basement it was really dark, and it was hard to see anything.  My flash on my camera almost makes it look like it was bright down there, but you can see Cody holding a flash light in this picture trying to look at stuff.  It is hard for us to see our basement in person, because it is dark down there.  I swear we learn more about our basement from these pictures than we learn by going down there and walking around.  The area Cody is standing in is going to be the unfinished section of our basement.

 

 

Here I am on one side of our basement, and you can just barely make Cody out on the other side.  You can probably spot his flashlight better than him.  This whole area, and the morning on the left (you can't really see it in this picture) will all be finished.

 

 

 

This is the morning room section.  Our floor plan shows two windows in our basement.  One is towards the area I was standing in and one was supposed to be in our morning room area, but there isn't a window outlined on the morning room side.  We are a little bit confused by this.  We are going to be asking Tim where this window is at.  You can see all of our wood stacked up here!  Yay!

 

 

We had been in our house for a while and I asked Cody if he was ready to go and he told me that he was enjoying standing in his living room.  So I took a picture of him in it.

 

 

 

Then of course we had to turn around and get a picture of me in the kitchen.

 

 

And then in the morning room... because I'm the picture taker and Cody is in plenty of pictures in our house.  I have to make sure that he takes a couple of me while we are there too, or I won't be in any of them!  I was trying to act like I was sitting down at our table, but he laughed at me and made me stand up.

 

 

Here is our floor plan hung up in our living room.

 

 

For the most part we were pleased with the house, but there were a couple of things that annoyed me. Since it's been raining there is mud every where!  And you can see that it is getting tracked through our house.  I'm hoping that this gets cleaned up before they start laying our floors!  You should have seen our shoes as we were leaving... they were gross.  We were trying to find spare pieces of wood to scrap it off our shoes.  They are still super muddy too.

 

 

 

Our windows were not spared either... here I was trying to take a picture of the back of our house from our sliding glass doors in the morning room.  As you can see they had so many mud spots that you can't really make the picture out.  I think that all of my windows are going to need to be scrubbed. 

 

 

I'm not sure how apparent it is in this picture, but it was blatantly obvious when we were in the dark basement.  There is a slight hole next to this beam and the outside foundation!!  When we were in the basement there was light shining in the through the hole, and we'll have to talk to them about that, because that will definitely need to get fixed before they are done.  However, overall we are really excited!!  It was so much fun walking through the house and see where everything is going to be.  Look for another blog on Sunday about any additional updates.  Hopefully these snow storms we are supposed to be getting over the next couple of days won't delay them too badly.

 

 

Foundation is laid getting ready to frame

Here is the most recent update about our house as of Jan 27th.  As we had feared they were not able to frame our house this week.  However, the foundation has been poured!  Check out the differences from last week.

 

 

Our reaction driving up to our house this weekend was Holy Wood!!!  There was wood EVERYWHERE!!  The wood was delivered on Wednesday and I guess it has been sitting outside of our house since.  Cody did not think that they were going to put the wood right out in front of our house.  He was surprised that it was there.  And I was a little worried that it had been snowed on... but I guess that's alright??  I hope...

 

 

Here is the wood for the pitch of our house.

 

 

Here is Cody standing in what will be our garage.  Today I was able to visualize everything a little bit better.  The garage actually seemed like it would be a good size garage.  Last week I was a little skeptical... I really didn't think that it would be big enough, but today I can see how two cars could easily fit into it.  You can see the base of the house behind Cody.  I'll show some better pictures below.
 

 

 

 

 We could tell that they were working on our basement on Friday, because it didn't snow on Thursday and it did snow on Friday.  So I don't think that they had the top/wood part on the house until later on Friday.  It stopped snowing around noon on Friday, and you can tell that top of our house didn't have any snow on it.  I was a little alarmed at seeing this much snow in our basement.  My first reaction was isn't moisture/snow that will melt bad for basements??  I'm going to call Tim later on this week and ask him about it.  Cody doesn't think that they have poured the concrete in our basement yet, and that the snow won't affect anything...  I hope he's right!  In this picture you can see our snow, windows, and what our basement/foundation looks like.

 

 

 

This picture shows the size of our basement a little bit better than the other picture.  We have a reverse floor plan than what the drawings show so it makes it a little bit confusing as to where everything will be.  We also did not think to bring our drawings of the house with us, or a tape measure so that made it even harder...  But we think that where the windows are now will be our media room.  And we think that our unfinished area of the basement will be where those posts are in the back, but we aren't 100% sure.  Mind you there was only a small window that we were crawling down in the mud to look into the house at. Cody and I actually didn't get a good look at the basement until we came home and looked at these pictures on a big screen.  It was so hard to squat down and really see in... plus it was pretty cold out!  But we can't wait until we can tell where everything will be.  It sure will make a huge difference once everything is framed!

 

 

 

Speaking of being framed... remember that house that they started 3 days before ours??  Well... there she is!!!!!  It looks like they are getting ready to put the roof on it.  But for the most part it looks like it's framed... at least on the outside. I'm not sure how much of the inside is framed yet, but Cody and I have a good feeling that we are going to see something resembling a house next Sunday on our lot!!

 

 

The neighbors next door are getting some progress too.  We noticed that their lot was dug this week.  We thought that there was a lot of dirt around last week... you should see it now with the dirt from both houses everywhere!!!  I guess I was wrong in thinking that our dirt would be smoothed out this week.  As we were looking at their houses it looks like their garage will be next to our house, and we should have some good separation from them.

 

 

 

 

 

I have to say that going there today made me feel alot better about the size of our house.  Last week when the house was being dug... it really was an optical illusion.  The house felt much bigger once we were able to walk on top of it!  Here is a picture of the morning room.  The next two pictures are taken from me standing inside of it and looking each direction.

 

 

This is where our kitchen, dining room, front entrance, stairs, and powder room will be.  You can kind of see the area that is chalked out in red.  We think that will be where our stairs are going to be.

 

 

 

In this direction you can see where our living room and office will be.  You can see the edge of our morning room in this picture.  We think that our living room is going to start right where the morning room ends.  Cody is standing in front of where our fireplace will be.

 

 

Here is a close up of the fireplace area.

 

 

Here I am standing in what will be our office.

 

 

Here is the angle of our house from the office.

 

 

This is where our garage will be.

 

 

Here you can see the wall of the garage.

 

 

Here Cody is standing in what will be our front entrance.

 

 

 

Here is our front entrance step.

 

 

 

 

This is the wood that will be framing our house.  There were some large crate things too that you can see behind the wood.  We weren't exactly sure what they were.  Cody thinks that it involves our plumbing, but we weren't sure.  I hope that you enjoyed this update!  I can't to see what pictures I can take next week! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Christmas 2012

I know I am about a month behind for posting about Christmas... but none the less... here is my post.

 

 

Christmas changed for me this year, because for the first time in my life I did not do two things during Christmas that I have done every year prior my entire life.  Every year prior to this I have gone to Aunt Karen's house on Christmas Eve.  But this year, we all met at my mom's house and celebrated Christmas there.  Also another BIG change is that for the first time in my life I did not wake up on Christmas morning at my dad's house.  Every Christmas before this I was always living there during the holiday time.  This year, I was living in a house with Cody.  So for the first time on Christmas I spent Christmas morning unwrapping my presents with Cody and not my parents.  A little bit strange, but at the same time it was kind of nice.  We woke up and made cinnabons, and then traded presents with each other.  After that we went over to my dad's and then to my aunt Sherry's house to see the family.

 

 

Here is some of the decorations in my living room.  These pictures were taken after Christmas so it's all scattered around a bit.

 

 

 

Here is Cody's favorite Christmas present... his 55 inch 3D TV.  We bought this together with all of the Christmas money that we had received.  We are super nerdy... we have two pairs of 3D glasses and we have 2 or 3 channels on our TV that come in on 3D, and those are very basic channels.  So we sit there and watch fish swim in the ocean, and we are like ohhhhhhhhhh so cool!!!!   Haha.

 

 

 

Here are some of my decorations in my kitchen.  This is Cracker Barrel favorite of mine.  I have a plate that matches it that is super cute, but I didn't really have a place to put it this year.

 

 

Here is the bane of Cody's existence.  He hated these three little pieces on our counter.  I can't wait to move into our new house and have a pantry!!!!  Then I will have all the counter space I want to put out my Christmas decorations!  Muhahaha.

 

 

 

 

Here is my kitchen table.  I thought it was cute.

 

 

 

We had these little guys up in our hallway.

 

 

Here is one of my Christmas presents that I love!!  Cody and I went to Big Lots and they had a sale on these soft, wonderful, memory foam rugs...  well when we were at Big Lots Cody decided that he was going to sneak and buy these for me.  He told me to wait in the back of the store while he did some shopping.  At the same time I had been desperately trying to find him a robe that he wanted from Christmas, and I found a REALLY nice once (that he loves and wears everyday by the way) so I tried to sneak up to the register to buy it for him... and I'll be darned if he wasn't up there in the other lane buying these rugs for me.  He was SO mad at me for catching him buying them.  He wanted it to be a surprise.  Whoops.  But I DO love them.  I like to take my slippers off right before I go into the bathroom so that I can feel how soft and comfortable they are.  We actually have gone back to Big Lots since and bought more of these for the other bathrooms in our new house.

 

 

This is too cool of a story to not write about. As most people know years ago I used to love playing basketball. So about ten years ago , my mom went out and bought me a Santa holding a basketball.  Somehow he was long forgotten in our attic, until my mom went up there this year to pack up some things and to bring my Christmas stuff to my bungalow.  Well... I was flabbergasted when I saw this guy, because Cody loves North Carolina basketball.  It is his all time favorite team, and last year we watched just about every North Carolina basketball game together.  Can you believe that I found a Santa wearing a North Carolina sweater and holding a basketball up in my attic??  Talk about a sign...  I'm sure this guy will be finding a spot to be put out in our new house.

 

 

 

Here is my coffee stand.  I love the Thomas Kincaid snowman on the left.  He is so gorgeous.  My mom got him for me a couple of Christmas's ago and I've loved him every since.  The globe on the right side is a new find this year that was in my attic.  It used to be my mom's but she gave it to me to put out this year.

 

 

 

Here are my snow man guys that my mom got me a few years ago.

 

 

 

I wanted to take a picture of some of my favorite ornaments.  This one has always been a favorite of mine.  It was my parents that they bought together, and it was always my favorite one to put up on the tree.  I love the way that the Christmas lights reflect off of it.

 

 

 

I got this ornament at Cracker Barrel about 5 years ago.  I think she is gorgeous.  She is so pretty that she usually puts my Angel on top of the tree to shame.

 

 

 

My aunt Karen bought this ornament for Cody and me this year, and I absolutely thought it was great.  I love the idea.  I can't wait to get one of these made every year from now on.  I also can't wait to put up a "New House 2013" ornament up on the tree next year!!

 

 

 

Ugh.  These guys.  These have always been my dad's favorite ornaments.  He always wanted them hung up on the tree. So somehow they made it on mine this year too... even though I've always thought they were so ugly!

 

 

 

 

On Christmas night we left my aunt Sherry's this year around 7 pm (also a new occurence) and started to head out to Hancock New York to see Cody's family (we were trying to beat a large snow storm that was coming in the morning).  I think that is a good compromise for us.  We get to see my family on Christmas Eve and Christmas and then we spend a week with Cody's family over his birthday and New Years.  We hadn't seen anyone (besides his mom) since last Christmas.  I was excited that we got to spend a lot of time with his niece and nephew, and of course the rest of his family.   This was the first time that the kids started to me Aunt Melanie, and it was really sweet.  I don't have any brothers or sisters so these are really going to be the only nieces and nephews that I'm going to have.  While we were there we went to visit Cody's dads house for the first time, and I met his girlfriend.  They had a nice house, and really sweet dogs!  He had three poodles.  One was a large poodle and the other two were small, and while they were all nice dogs the little female dog was a sweet little snuggler.  It made me miss my grandma's dogs, Katie and Puppup.  Cody and I were fighting over which one of us got to snuggle and kiss her while we were there.  We've pretty much sworn off dogs for anytime in the near future because we want to travel and dogs are high maintenance, but maybe... just maybe someday we will get a little poodle.  We were also with Kelsie the night when she lost her second front tooth.  Now she is missing both of her front teeth as you can see in the picture above.  It was so cute.  She was really scared at first when her tooth was bleeding, but then she quickly became excited and giggly showing us her two front teeth missing.   Overall it was a good Christmas.  I can't wait to wake up next Christmas morning in my own house!