More Land Clearing

Just a few notes since things are slowing down a bit as forms get processed and whatnot.

- We plan on having our color selection meeting next Tuesday, October 2nd.

- 9ft or 8ft ceilings on the main floor?  I don't like space above my cabinets, but the higher ceilings would be great.


My dad and I have spent most of our free time clearing out the property.  There are so many freaking vines that is making the job way harder than it should be.  We have most everything cleared out and now we just need someone to haul the brush/logs away and level the land.  We pinned out the property line and where the house could go and everything looks great.  We should be able to keep the big tree in the front and I even had an idea of creating a turnaround/governors driveway.  I think it would add so much more class to the house, even if it's just gravel for now.  Thoughts?

The view from the back of the lot.

Looking pretttttyyyy prettttyyy pretty good.

Digging And Picking

This week, we also started clearing trees on our property.  We want to get this done ASAP so that there is no delay in building.  We have just under half an acre, but there are so many freaking vines in these trees that it is making clearing them difficult.  Also, it's only my dad and I doing the work, so that'll make the job a lot longer.  Here are some pictures.

The first day of clearing.  We are going to try to leave the tree in front and some others.

We luckily own our own backhoe, which makes life much easier.

The end of day three of work.  Slowly, but surely.

Also, we are going back and forth on a lot of kitchen colors.  We are definitely going with black, most likely Onyx colors if you are looking.  We want a light countertop and are only going to get laminate for now.  The problem lies in the floor.  We feel like having a light floor will be much better since there won't be a lot of light in the kitchen, but we also loved the look of the Distressed Maple Salinas (I say "loved" because freaking Home Depot just stopped carrying it...).  Any suggestions on floor with black cabinets would be awesome!

I see you all reading the blog, so make some comments if you would like!!!!

Signing On Many Dotted Lines

Big day number one happened yesterday!

My parents and I (Becky had class) went to sign papers for our new Jamestown.  When we got there, we first went over any last minute changes to the plan and came to our final price point.  We ended up having Wayne Homes paint for us, simply because we didn't want to go through the hassle and will pick a simple color that will be easy to paint over if need be.  We may just paint over the master bedroom and bath if we aren't happy with the initial color.  A few other things were added and removed, but shockingly, the final price was around $202K!!!!  I could have sworn it was going to be low 190's, and sure enough I found the error.  Liliana accidentally ADDED the incentives to our quote instead of taking them off.  Phew.  We got $6,600 worth of incentives, to swing our price down to $186,000.  I know this price is going to go up with little things, but we hope to reduce some of it initially by doing a lot of the work in the PPI ourselves.

Everyone was satisfied and my parents and I signed all of the papers!


WE ARE NOW OFFICIAL, BABY!!

Questions and Progess

J.J. here.

Yesterday we had our second meeting with Liliana and pushed forward with our plan to build with Wayne Homes.  We didn't get much positive feedback from our independent contractors as it pertains to keeping costs low.  It's unfortunate that we have very little room for movement on price, but it helps keeping things in perspective as to what we really need in our home, what we need now and what we can wait on.

My dad had about four pages of questions for our rep, all of which she had answers for or wrote down to get answers to.  She has been wonderful, to say the least, and has made this process simple and easy to comprehend.  It's also nice having my dad know a fair amount about what is needed for a proper home because I wouldn't have asked 1/10th of these questions and would have been hit blindly during construction.

After all of the questions and adding/subtracting parts of the home, I came away frustrated again, mostly because I don't have a lot of money and EVERYTHING seems to cost so much.  I know that's the nature of construction, but man does it get you down sometimes.  Little things like having a sink in the laundry room, drains in the garage/basement, the type of windows, trim, etc. just drive me nuts because of how much these things cost.  They all aren't necessary for a low budget new home, but they definitely can make a positive difference.  A few hours after the meeting, I settled down and I am still happy with our progress with Wayne.  Liliana is going to redo our price quote and we will meet with her next Monday to hopefully sign papers and get started!  Our quote is going to be close to $200,000, but my dad is quite confident we can get that $25,000 PPI down a very large amount since we will do most of the excavating ourselves.  Nice.

After we spoke, my parents, Becky and I looked through there gallery of options for flooring, cabinets, etc.  Yuck.  We really really want laminate flooring in our great room, but we know we need to save some money at the start and just go with the cheapest vinyl.  I loathe vinyl.  I think it looks awful and even though they had dozens of options, they all looked equally gross to me.  I know I'm being harsh, but that's how I feel.  We thought about looking at their laminates and maybe doing an upgrade with something they have, but it doesn't seem wise as far as price goes.  I think we will just get the cheapest vinyl and rip it all out immediately or in a year and put in laminate.  I can get the distressed maple from Home Depot for about $1,400, which is less than their medium range laminates.  Becky posted a picture of the maple, but here is a picture of it from in the store.

We love the black and red in this wood since we wanted a black/white/red theme in our first floor open area.

We would like solid black/onyx style cabinets with eventual white backsplash.  I think we are also leaning towards grey walls.

For our family room, we wanted black couches and found some deals from cheaper retailers, but this setup at Ikea gave us the inspiration (note: we do NOT like the white cabinets in here).

We also want a grey rug and that giant ass city canvas on the wall.


We have other ideas and pictures to post, but I'll save that for another day.

Another note- have any of you done whole house audio/video over Cat5/6?  I plan on doing it with a central media rack and switcher.  This stuff can get insanely costly, but luckily my cousin, Michael, has done it before and is helping.  Any advice for that would be awesome.

Being Optimistic

Hello out there!

This is Becky. I figured I could mention to you guys what we had hoped to get color wise for the kitchen/family room/sun room. I/we won't be talking prices yet, just discussing our ideas. I'll also be mentioning a few of our flooring ideas. These are just what we've got in mind, we havent actually gone to speak to Liliana, as JJ has so nicely decided to call her, yet about swatches and their color schemes and things. JJ and his parents are planning on going back to Liliana's to talk this coming Sunday, though I work then, so sadly I won't be able to attend the meeting. I'm sure afterwards JJ will come on and post about how the meeting went.  

At this time, we're only worrying about completely finishing the main rooms of our house, the one's our family members will see when they visit, so the Family Room/Kitchen, Sunroom, and also the half Bathroom that's to the side of the Kitchen.

So, for the Family Room/Kitchen/Sunroom walls, JJ and I were thinking of have the walls painted a smokey gray. The walls of his bedroom are the exact color we're thinking of. Sadly, I don't have the swatches I pulled with me, so I can't give an exact name, but i'm looking online as I type this and I think this matches somewhat closely. 

Once I get the swatches, I'll come back and fix this so everyone knows for sure. 

We also discussed the idea of having an accent wall, just one wall painted a different color than the rest. I think we've decided on the very back wall of the house as the accent wall. We wanted it a deep red. Also don't have those swatches with me, but here's what I thought of when we talked of "deep red".

(Cherry Tart)

or

(Red Velvet)

The first one seems a bit more brown to me, but those are the two I thought could work. 

Moving along, we'd like our cabinets to be black. Straight black. Pretty sure that we said we wanted raised fronts. I'm not a fan of flat fronts or anything set inward. 

For the flooring, we can't decide on a Distressed Maple (Black with hints of red), or Alpine Elm (white). We figured the white would look very nice with the dark walls and black cabinets. Personally, I think it could end up looking really great. But I'm also drawn to the Distressed Maple. I think the lighting would make the floor really pop, make it more eye catching. I'm also a tad concerned that the black cabinets would get, oh what's the word, lost (?) against the Maple flooring. It's kind of hard to picture either option, though, you know? 

Here's the Alpine Elm,

And here's the Distressed Maple (the internet really does it ZERO justice) I promise it isn't brownish like shown here,

Not a monumental post, but I really just wanted to share with you all! We're still, like JJ said before, in the VERY early stages of building our home, and we're both just really excited for this! I can't wait! And, if anyone out there has any opinions or thoughts on anything, please give us any and all the feedback you can! Maybe something that worked for you in your home, or something that ended up not working?

Thanks so much for taking the time to read, and hopefully you'll stick with us as this process really gets moving!

-Becky :)

Let's Go

Hi everyone (or anyone???).

My names is J.J. and I am in the early stages of building my own home.  I've never been a fan of old construction and I always felt I would be way more satisfied if I was able to build a home to my liking and also so I would know exactly where everything is and how it all got there.  When doing a little research online, I felt that it was worth giving Wayne Homes a shot, despite some negative comments on various message boards.  I know it can be questionable working with a big name builder, but I feel that if their work can be monitored along the way by people who know construction, then there shouldn't be many problems or surprises.  My mom and dad built their own home themselves 30 years ago, so they have a good idea how the process should go.  Along with them, I have numerous relatives who know electric and plumbing and whatnot.

Knowing all of these people may make it seem like I am primed to build myself, but we still feel more comfortable having a figurehead (Wayne Homes) in charge so that the process would go smoother than if we tried to set up each contractor ourselves.  My dad is retired, so he would be on site every day monitoring and I would be there every single day after work, making sure everything is to code and to our standards.  While I do not have a lot of money to spend, I still feel we don't have to pay out of our butts for a quality home.

When looking through various floor plans, we actually liked a model by Ryan Homes called the "Milan".  It was a huge home, but the layout was exactly what we wanted. (I say we, because my girlfriend, Becky, will eventually be moving in with me.  She will also be posting here from time to time.)  We were basically looking for a kitchen/family room that is open, a sunroom/dining area off the kitchen, a room on the first floor that will be closed off and used as a media room (actually, it's our geek room with video games, an eventual home theater and walls covered in posters, Legos, storage for my Magic: The Gathering cards and old toys), a garage on the first floor, laundry room upstairs and a good sized master bedroom with walk-in-closets through the master bathroom.

Jamestown model PDF

The Jamestown model through Wayne Homes allowed for all of this, so we contacted them and had a meeting a few weeks ago.  We drove out to their Greensburg site, where we were able to see a few models and spoke to a lovely woman, who would be our guide along the way.  I don't know if she wants her name to be used here, so I'll call her Liliana (it makes sense if you play Magic).  My parents, Becky and I went out and talked to her for quite a while about what we wanted in our home.  My dad had a million questions, but she answered them all and gave us some piece of mind that she had a firm understanding as to what went into the homes.  We gave her all of our little ideas and she said she would send us a quote within a week.

Some of the things we wanted changed from the basic Jamestown model:
- Craftsman elevation
- Removing the front bathroom and closet, to expand the side room into a larger media room
- No fireplace
- Make sunroom run long ways from the back door (now open) to the end of the kitchen on the right
- Remove the upper cabinet and window in the kitchen on the left to open up into the sunroom
- Put the first floor bathroom behind the kitchen where the laundry room is
- Close off a wall on the second floor open area to create a large laundry room
- Use more of the open space to create a second walk-in-closet in the master bedroom
- Luxury bathroom with larger tub and shower
- Man door leading outside from the garage
- Double man door leading from the basement outside

There were some other minor things and things along the way that I am sure we will want changed.  We also wanted a credit for doing the floors and painting ourselves.

She came back a week later in an e-mail with a quote.  She also said we could get $5,400 in incentives that would go towards the upgraded banister and luxury master bathroom.  Cool.  Her quote came in at $192,000.  Yikes.  I expected it to be that much, but it's still a shock.  The one thing in the quote we were confused about was the PPIs and how much we would actual spend from that.  It was listed at $25,000, but she said most people do not use all of that (for things like excavating) and any we don't use would be credited back to us.  I was a little bummed out from the price, because I firmly believe no one should spend so much money without seriously being able to pay it off reasonably.

Over the next week or so, Becky and I went to Home Depot and Lowes and looked at various flooring and paint.  The credit for the flooring was for the entire house, but only $3,800.  We wanted laminate flooring in the kitchen, sunroom and family room, with tile in the back bathroom/mudroom and the main foyer.  Carpet will be in the media room for now.  This credit seemed OK, but the price of labor and crappy carpeting upstairs would be way more than the $3,800 credit we got.  We are still bouncing back-and-forth between letting them install stuff that we like, letting them install junk and we rip it out, or just doing it all ourselves.  Same goes with painting.

This last week, we've been really bouncing between thoughts of Wayne doing it and getting our own contractor.  We have an estimate being made by a friend of my dads, but until that comes back, we still are leaning towards Wayne.  We have a ton more questions for Liliana, specifically about the foundation and any problems that might occur down the line.  We really want to see a home that is 5-7 years old and see any problems it might have.

That's all for now!  I hope you will enjoy reading this blog and that maybe it'll help others like the few I read helped me.  There will be a buttload of pictures along the way, once we get going.  ANY help or feedback would be massively appreciated.  I wanted to start the blog today because we got the call from the bank that we were approved for a construction loan.  We own our own property, so the price of that will go towards the down payment of the loan.  Also, it should be noted our property needs major tree removal and is also slightly on a slope (thus the basement doors being feasible).

So, again, Becky and I will keep this updated for paint/floor samples and anything else along the way.  I AM SO FREAKING EXCITED FOR MY GEEK ROOM.


-J.J.