Foot Prints!

Not the touching poem or anything figurative--well, I guess kinda, but in this case, I'm referring to the foot print of our future home!

My grandfather and I just concluded an hour and a half long session this evening going over layout of the foundation, and designing a cross-section of the footer, etc to better illustrate what all the foundation and crawlspace would entail. 

I found myself in a rather whimsical state at one point when I remembered sitting high on his drafting table as he drew up plans for hundreds upon thousands of septic systems and various civil engineering jobs.  I would use his "stencils" ever so carefully and "trace" the shapes to put down on paper whatever I was "designing" that day.  I feel so fortunate to have those memories as well as build on them as we're building our own forever home, now.  So thank you, Boppa, for all your help and guidance on this journey!

And a premature mention of thanks going out to T&C for all the handy excavation work I know you'll be doing and he'll probably just nod his head and say "No problem" even after he work 8 days a week 27 hours a day as it is in their business, because that's the kinda guy he is! Also, my bro because I know, once Honey gets transferred down, they'll probably be inseparable and constantly on site getting things clicked off!  So yeah, thanks again!

Anyhow, here's what we came up with tonight!

This will let us know how far down the excavation is going to be, the large "channel" is actually going to be a 24-30 inch pipe which will allow air to travel from our solar plenum into the crawl space and heat the floors of the house, since solar is a huge energy source where we are building. 

Everything else is pretty much labelled there, and yet again, here's another moment where I can't believe it's actually happening (the fact we get the opportunity to actually build our own house, is still so surreal) and at the same time, I'm so eager for those moments of breaking ground to get here!

Thanks for stopping by!

Engineering and Permits!

Planning...CHECK!

Some of the hardest and most important choices you make are during planning.  Some of the most important things to even get the process moving are permits.

Cue: ENGINEERS!

Thanks to Harold Donnelly and Pence Engineering, LLC!  These masterminds have enabled us to have a pretty painless planning stage of this amazing journey.  Hal Donnelly has helped us with the foundation, lot excavation plans, and septic plans.  Without him and his brilliant mind, I would say we definitely wouldn't have faith and confidence on where we are setting our house, what we are setting it on, and how our house would function with the delicacies like running water and flushing toilets, haha! And thanks to David Pence for working so hard to accommodate all our requests!

After coordinating where we'd like windows, doors, and our entire floor plan we can up with these :)

And the exterior

These plans are Copyright: Pence Engineering, LLC 2013

Our master bedroom is in the top left corner of the main floor plan, with a guest bedroom on the right side.  We have a 3-piece bathroom with a stand-up shower in the corner.  Next to that, is the utility/laundry room with our stacked Whirlpool Duet washer/dryer, an upright freezer, and the water heater.  Across the hall is a 1/2 bath and storage room for all of Rick's work necessities. The kitchen, dining room and great room are all open concept from there down, with a fireplace in the bottom left corner.  We will be putting our couch and TV in the lower right area.  The first floor plan you see on the left side of the first picture is the upper level/loft.  From the stairs back to the bedrooms will be open for the children to have a play area.  Lillie picked the room above ours to be hers, they'll share the bathroom and of course Landon gets the bedroom on the right.  So hopefully this gives you a little better idea of how we are planning our home!  It's all so exciting and I have to say thank you again for all the support of our family and friends, because without them, this definitely would not be possible!

Contract signed...check!

Yesterday, my family and I drove to Bailey, CO to sign the contract for the log home shell we are purchasing from TJ's Wood Products.  We paid our deposit (1/3 of the entire cost) on August 2, and that started the process for the plans, construction, etc.  Turns out we are a few people/projects down on the list to get the construction started, but after talking to Mike, with how helpful he was with narrowing down a time of completion as to when the house would be fully erect, and when the next step of this process can commence.

The perfect home for us!

 

 After looking up numerous floor plans and options for various floor plans we finally had it narrowed down to two options.  The Homestead and The Weston.  And once we knew an approximate budget for out entire home, including appliances, kitchen cabinets, flooring, interior walls, insulation, plumbing and lighting fixtures, etc, it was easy to determine what we could spend on the log exterior we would be purchasing from TJ's. Seems backwards, but we did get the quote on each plan before we decided and then we could get the guesstimate of what the cost of total completion would be.

The Homestead

We loved the way this one had the attached garage and the storage area and extra room in that "wing" of the house.  We figured the study could be turned into an extra room and the game room--yeah, totally awesome space to have for raising kids.  

The Weston

We loved this one for it's open loft area, I grew up in a house with a loft so this was especially appealing to me.  We also figured that 4th bedroom would be especially handy for family and guests, plus the kitchen/dining room/great room common area brings a whole new meaning to an "open floor plan"

The model we chose was....

Since we are building on the banks (out of the 100 year flood plane, of course) of the majestic Rio Grande River, the option of a basement was out, a crawlspace is totally possible--a basement, not so much!

So, after finding out the Homestead model has two floors, one is a main floor and the other a...basement we though we could modify the plans and just flip the floors making the main floor the lower and the upper floor would then be the one with the two bedrooms, etc.  Until we found out that flipping the floors would mean the log shell would almost double, thus increasing the price and totally blowing our budget, the Weston became that much more desirable not only for price but the view of the front of the house had us sold!  And the more I thought about the house I could see being our "forever home" this is the one that came to mind immediately. 

Photos courtesy of TJ's Wood Products

Our first home!

Our First Steps

The Introductions: 

Hello all, I'm from a small town of about 4,800 people in Southern Colorado.  It's a rural area where the fast pace of life in the metro area has definitely not affected.  The only "traffic jams" are those behind tractors or miscellaneous farm equipment, you don't dare go out without makeup on because you're definitely bound to see people you know.  My husband, (for the sake of this blog, I'll refer to him as "Honey") grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania before his mother and siblings moved to a small and rural, outlying town southeast of the Denver Metro area.  We have two incredibly wonderful children, a little girl (we'll call her "Little Miss") who is about to turn 6, and a wild boy who (we'll call him "Crash") will be 3 this fall. Little Miss is a caring and free spirit, wise beyond her years and oh, so intelligent.  Crash, yeah, he's our energetic, "likes to pretend he's shy," and absolutely fearless little guy.  I also like to say he's our "walking hospital bill" and is totally "boy" in every sense of the word.  We have lived in the Denver Metro area since 2010, which has consisted of apartments and townhomes where we have shared 3 walls and paid an arm and a leg to rent them.  But hey, that's "city life" right?!?  So, when Honey and I traveled down to my hometown the first time, he fell in love with the area.  A quick 20 minute drive to be deep in the woods and the heart of the Rockies, just east of the continental divide with the views and scenery that will take your breath away.  Since then, he's been eager to settle down in the rustic "backwoods" of this high mountain valley.

The Backstory:

So, when our extended family gathered for my cousin's high school graduation we got to discussing the home my sister and her husband (in this blog I'll call em "T&C") are purchasing, which my grandparents put on the market in 2004.  It's an elegant home, right on the peaceful and tranquil Rio Grande River.  And with four 5-acre lots lined up, and the generosity of two phenomenal maternal grandparents of mine, we jumped at the opportunity to put a house on one of them.  We started looking at options, off-site stick built, modulars, log home kit, hiring contractors, etc.  And since there aren't the builders that are available in the city, we couldn't go through a major company that handles the subdivisions that pop up all over the "front range."

You can see the well sticking up in the middle, and the gorgeous aged trees in the background.

The Decision:

We decided upon a log home kit.  It's beautiful, relevant to it's surroundings, rustic, and pretty much my dream home.  Plus, what is more comforting on those rainy days than sitting in a log home, curled in a blanket, sitting in the comfy chair, with a cup of warm coffee and a good book, with the patter of raindrops on a tin roof?   Yeah, I can think of a few things, but as far as places go....not many can compare.  So then came the fork in the road where we had to choose a company to go through with a floor plan we would love all in our budget.  We chose a Colorado company, TJ's Wood Products, and a 4 bedroom plan with a loft.  The home I grew up in had a loft which included two of the bedrooms over the Great Room, so being able to have a loft in my "forever home" is a dream come true.