Holy Drywall, Batman!!

So, since the last time we saw the house (and the plumbing was nearly finished), the crews have been hard at work doing the following:

• finishing up the plumbing
• electrical, including a few things we added (outlets in the soffits for Christmas lights, 220 outlet in the garage, some extra outlets in closets and master bath, as well as the laundry room....)
• Insulation
• Septic system is in and finished!
• and yes, we have DRYWALL!!!

All in the last 2 weeks. The drywall guy will be back today to tape and mud, etc.

The monkeys didn't want to go: MiniMe whined "it's too far to drive" (it is two hours from our current house, after all). We promised to bring the portable DVD player, and our latest Netflix loaner - The Bridge to Terabithia (awesome movie, btw). When I plugged the car adapter into the car, after we were on the road..... it blew the fuse. My wonderful and handsome hubby stopped at a hardware store for more fuses - and they strangely didn't have the one we needed. So we drove onward, and the monkeys surprised us by being happy anyway. (they aren't used to movies in the car, so we worried that the promise, and then reneging of such a special treat, would cause anarchy - not so!!)

In the end, they had so much fun walking through the house (and picking their bedrooms, lol), that even after an hour, they didn't want to leave!!

Our real estate agent (who is wonderful, btw - anyone in P-town need one?) wanted to see the house too, so we had him meet us there.

The house looks great, aside from the requisite dust and mess of drywalling!!!

My bathroom:
Living room:
Master bedroom:
secondary bedrooms:
Handsome Buffalo in the garage:


And here's our ginormous garage, in all it's glory - well, MOST, anyway - I forgot my camera (yes, I know, how dumb is that???), and my phone only records 10 seconds of video.

Yes, folks, this is a 1200 square foot garage. That's bigger than the whole house we are living in now. Insane? Well, it was the cheapest thing we added, actually! And we certainly won't need anything bigger......ever.

How Firm a Foundation

We had to register MiniMe for school. So we went down to NewTown, to submit all the required documents. Turned out, her pediatrician hadn't yet had time to fax her immunization records (and I couldn't find my copy before we left town), so we had to wait. We decided to go see our "house", and discover what (if anything) had been done.

We were pleasantly surprised to find the foundation done and cured, and the floor trusses in!!

We have a CONTRACT

We signed a contract a couple weeks ago. Those "similar floor plans" I mentioned earlier? Well, I decided to contact the builder, just for grins, to see what a new build would cost. I wanted to have some negotiating room, if I ended up putting an offer on one of those houses.

Turns out, the cost to build is less than these sellers are asking for a resale! We took the stock plan, and customized it: bigger kitchen, large covered patio, larger garage, third bathroom on the main floor, separate laundry room (instead of the washer and dryer in a hall closet - the large laundry closet is now an over-sized coat closet), and slightly larger master bath, to accommodate a special-order tub I want (More in another post).

So we found a lot (These are not building tracts - you have to find a lot somewhere, then hire a builder to put a house on it. Suits us fine - then we aren't living in cookie-cutter land!), and signed a contract with the builder. He negotiated the lot price, for what we were willing to pay for it, and added it as a line item to our house contract (with no markup on land). We cut out a few things we could do later (namely solid-surface counter tops), in favor of keeping things we want NOW (you can't change the size of a kitchen after it's built, unless you REALLY like throwing money away).

We're so excited! 2400 square feet, all on one level. 4bed/3ba/4car garage. On a full acre. And still less than what the re-sale house would have cost.

The best part? We have not had to compromise ANYTHING on our "needs" list. It has seperate living and family rooms, etc....

Our builder closed on the lot last week, and is ready to break ground! I'll be down there in a couple of weeks, to register MiniMe for school. I promise to take pictures of the progress!

So, we're hosting Thanksgiving this year. And you're all invited.