A blog/journal about my life and the stuff I like. Popular subjects include music, guitars, gear, books, movies, video games, technology, humor.
The roof is essentially finished, and they have started on the HVAC ducting, some plumbing. They reframed the fireplace as it was originally in the wrong spot, and they framed out the home theater bar although it's smaller than we want. We have asked Ben the builder to frame it two feet wider so it will accommodate three people across. They also gave us some bonus storage space under the bonus room stairs.
More progress on the roof and a few more shots.
Unfortunately we had some muddy terrain and standing water to traverse, but the interior is starting to take shape.
We had heavy rains last night and unfortunately the didn't start roofing in earnest until today. Hopefully things will dry out now. We didn't stick around to see, but we expect they may have been able to finish most of the roofing today.
...on the framing.
A few more in progress shots to include our installed well. The house is beginning to take shape. It's cool how you can see the arch of the living room within the arch of the roof. You can also start to see the shape of my bonus room above the garage. We decided to pass on having a chimney as it would be superfluous with a gas fireplace and just be another maintenance item but with no function. The outdoor fireplace is a regular wood burner but it's self contained and doesn't pass through the roof. 
Below are few more shots of the progress on the framing and we happened to stop by when they were drilling our well. 
Back left corner looking at the home theatre. 
Back patio looking at the master bedroom
Standing on back patio looking through wall at home theatre.
Left side, J&J guest bathroom and 2nd guest bedroom
I don't know what that means precisely, but it usually means something good. And oh yes, my friends, this is good. Here are some pics from the framing. I think they've done this all in one day so far.
House front with office on left, library (dining room) on the right.
House front.
Left side with as yet unframed guest bedroom on the far left.
House front looking towards as yet unframed garage.
Slightly zoomed in from previous shot.
As yet unframed guest bedroom at left front of house.
Guest jack/jill bathroom with home theatre in back.
Ohhhh yeah. Zee Home Theatoooorrrrrr.....
Back side of house looking towards the breakfast nook. We'll be getting 6 more feet of concrete added to the little sliver of porch you see there.
Back patio looking in to living room where worker is cutting wood.
Another shot of the front left.
Looking at the back patio wall where the outdoor kitchen will be placed into the home theater.
I spoke with Ben the Builder and he said it should be possible to get the extension of the back porch like we are requesting. He said they could do it when they pour the driveway. He estimates it will be $5-6 per sq ft, so that should be something we can cover in cash. Since we wanted it to be flush with the existing patio, it may run a bit more since I'm assuming they have to make it thicker, but it should still be feasible. Ben estimated they would have the lumber delivery early this week and our house might starting taking (more) shape by Wednesday. Updates forthcoming.
and empire? (that's a Heinlein reference, in case you were wondering.) (and you were). Read a book, sheesh.
Anywhat,
here are some more photos we took on Saturday after they finished.
Front porch/door.
Looking down the front perimeter from the left side of the house.
From front door looking back left towards home theatre.
Front door looking towards back patio.
Left side with two guest bedrooms and bathroom looking towards home theatre.
Home theatre with sunken front with the intent to create a modest stadium seat arrangement and hopefully get the center of mass of the screen down to eye level at the primary viewing position.
The next few shots are of the back patio which is outlined by the slightly lower margin. That back square is the spot for the fireplace and a current bone of contention. After seeing it in person, this doesn't look like it will adequately accommodate the fireplace I envisioned, so I'm asking the builder what we can do to include extending the slab portion across to the depth of the solitary square. I want to have some low brick or stone walls on the right side for seating and possibly a slot for firewood storage.
As you can see above, by extending the length of the kitchen, we essentially lost porch space outside the breakfast bar area. If we extend the slab out even with the fireplace square, we should have some usable porch area on that side as well.
The two pictures above show the master bath/shower.
Garage.
Aeyong had stopped by during the pour on Friday and snapped some photos in progress.
That's when they're scheduled to pour Le Concrete. That's all.
I haven't talked to Ben the builder, so I don't know exactly where they're at, but I'm guessing the foundation pour is coming up soon. Here are some pics Aeyong took today showing the moisture barrier, rebar, and further plumbing prep of the foundation.
Master bath drainery plumbage piping thingies...
Le Kitcheone...
Zee guest Jack & Jill configuracione...
I'm out of fake accentish phraseology and that's the half bath with the home theatre behind it.
That's Aeyong's dirty window.
Above is our front elevation, although the dutch gable on the far right front is a regular gable like the others. Below is a home in Bella Ranch with a similar vibe to what we're hoping to achieve. We don't have any copper, and our brick is a bit more reddish. I didn't think I wanted any red whatsoever, but we looked at some sample photos with our stone preference (the same as below) and it actually gave a nice contrast.
Above is the kitchen tile. We compromised on the standard size tile and glazed ceramic, although I definitely envision us going with stone tile that we will install ourselves in the future. We wanted to go with different sizes but the standard options are limited to single size and ceramic or porcelain. Since we feel we can probably replace an existing floor without too much difficulty, this is an upgrade we will perform when the time is right.
This is a basic idea of what we want for the front of the kitchen eating counter. This isn't what the island itself will look like, but we just wanted a reminder that we want wood paneling and not stone or brick facade. We've discovered that while the stone/brick facade looks nice, it also can be hard on knees and toes if you're not paying attention.
This is the basic idea for the cooktop we want to get. We will try to stay within our appliance budget, but I think the cooktop is the one item we may go for a bit higher option.
This is in the zipcode of what we want to do with the outdoor fireplace. We want a ledge that's conducive to sitting, as well as small firewood storage area next to the fireplace itself. We haven't decided on how much brick and/or stone facade will use. The material will be the same as the choices for the house.
Above are the countertop choices. The top left granite with the red flecks and copperish streak will be the kitchen countertops. On the right the slightly darker flecked granite that continues the copper color will be all the other countertops in the bathrooms, home theater, and outdoor kitchen. The white sample on the bottom is cultured marble that will be used only in the laundry room. We managed to get colors we were happy with within our allowable choices.
The stone tile above will be for the kitchen backsplash. We're going to use the darker tiles on top in the larger size with the lighter color in the bottom picture for smaller tiles so it will be sort of the accent color. Many of our finish choices are lighter since the cabinets and hardwood floors will be darker.
I'm also looking at getting a custom painted set of tiles for behind the cooktop. We're trying to see if we can get this asian floral/tree pattern that has similar colors to the countertops and would look nice and understated. We have to see if the company in question will expand the image across multiple tiles.
The Gold tiles (not to scale) are the choice for the bathroom floors and wall/shower tiles. These are ceramic (or maybe porcelain?) but they have a variety of textures as seen above to give them more of a stone feel.
That very descriptive and interesting picture above is the wall color. We ended up settling on a fairly neutral beige that is really similar to the wall colors in our last two houses, but it's a compromise that's unavoidable when you start considering the other colors and the need for some contrast so we're not overwhelmed by dark colors.
The chateau brown (as used in chateaus, apparently) is the choice for the home theater walls. We were given two paint color choices and we could have used them however we wanted, but we decided to go with beige in every other room. It's all flat paint, not counting trim colors. The home theater walls needed to be a bit darker to absorb reflections.
The 3 pictures above show the hardware. This is a pretty standard material & color in home construction now, it's almost identical to what we had in our first Carothers home in Killeen. We like the color & material both, so why fix what isn't broken.
We had multiple options for the interior doors but we ended up liking what Royal Crest had in their office so we chose that, as well as the trim colors.
The old world texture on the right (not the color) is an option for two rooms in the home where they will go ahead and manually apply the texture when painting. We chose the two biggest rooms, the living room and home theater.
We didn't find the specific door we wanted. The two doors above represent what we hope to combine. The door on the left is a bit too "prison doory" to use Aeyong's real estate jargon, and I agreed. The door on the right's glass insert was bigger than we wanted. We're asking RC to give us the door on the left with the upper pane all glass so we have a half door sized glass insert (with a pattern to be chosen later). We really like how the wooden planks in the door evoke the hardwood floors we hope to get. That's another finish you won't see yet, because we're trying to find out if it will cost us more for our preference. We were quoted for scrubbed hardwood floors in the office, dining (library), and living room, but that was for 3 inch planks. We definitely prefer the 5 inch, so we're going to try and get them to change to those. We originally envisioned those being a really dark stain, but we're starting to think a little less stain will be preferable since we have dark furniture.
Yes, we actually got to choose the roof color. We went wild and chose the weathered wood, which is apparently what every other home in Mustang Creek already has (or close to it). We just couldn't see having some bizarre roof color that would call attention to itself. We figured the pink elephants and flamingoes next to the car on blocks would take care of that.
Just in case you were curious, here's the basic layout. The media room was actually smaller than requested so they tweaked the dimensions so it's 15x25 "in the clear" as they say in buildspeak. In other words, the interior dimensions are 15x25.
...or perhaps the demesne? The seat of House Hightower? The Dominion of House Hightower. Adequately pompous and douchey if I do say so myself. And I do be do be do.
Now that we have that out of the way (for today, at least) on to updates. This part will be really short. There aren't any to speak of, not really. We did have a meeting with Ben the Builder on Monday to discuss changes to the back patio. Our original request was based on the home theater extending towards the backyard and thereby providing a longer wall to put the outdoor kitchen/fireplace against. When we changed the direction of the home theater towards the left side of the house, we lost about 10 feet of wall. Unfortunately no one (including RC) thought to have another look at the outdoor kitchen and what affect the shorter wall would have.
With only about 10 feet of wall to work with now (there's a door in the corner), it would have been ridiculously tight to have the countertop, sink, barbecue top, and fireplace all in that space. We settled on having RC create a square pad at the outer border of the covered patio to place the fireplace, giving us 10 feet of space for the sink, countertop, and barbecue grill. That way we will maintain the view (for what it's worth) out of the living room and keep everything flush (ish) against the left wall. The fire place angles out at 45 degrees to cover the main seating/table area that we intend. Our porch isn't overly spacious at the moment, but it will be adequate for us two and the dogs, and it should be okay for entertaining.
We envision expanding the patio size outwards and adding some landscaping features over time. These are mostly upgrades that we intend to tackle ourselves. If we do expand the patio with concrete or equivalent, that is one exception where we might hire someone because we hear it's more cost effective if you are going to pour a large amount of concrete. I'm not sure how expansive we will want to go at this point. We will definitely want more space, and we're thinking about a hot tub at some point in the future as well. I don't see a pool happening, neither one of us would use it enough to justify the expense.
That is one nice element of having the one acre plot and well water. We can see eventually adding a koi pond and some japanese/asian influenced landscaping (I'm especially fond of their minimalist approach that engenders multiple interpretations) but still being able to maintain a big enough yard for the dogs to do their thing.
The other "update" is that we will meet with RC on Saturday morning to discuss finishes/colors (brick, flooring, countertops, cabinets, paints, orangutans, breakfast cereals, etc.). We have a good idea of what we want, now we just need to find out if we can afford it. Our price already includes granite countertops in all areas except the laundry room, and hardwood floors in the office, library (dining room), and living room. The relative quality level of the finishes will affect the price however. I don't think we necessarily care about the fu fu level (real estate term) on the cabinets, but we do want nice countertops and ideally we would like one of the more visually striking very light (almost white) colors to offset our dark cabinets & floors. I have a feeling that won't be available in the level 1 list. As I understand it there are 3 levels of granite countertops (at least for RC) and we were quoted the price for level 1s as part of our overall home price. Hopefully we can find something we like without adding to the budget.