Basement decisions...

Planning a home build can be challenging. You want to "get it right" the first time, so you don't have regrets down the road, but sometimes decisions are hard to make until you can truly experience the space. We have decided to make some changes to our basement. Here was the plan we originally put together... (click on the picture to see it larger)

After walking the poured basement, we decided we wanted the "rec room" to feel even larger, as this will be used for both a TV area and for a playroom. We will still have a basement bedroom and "office/craft room", but have included french doors that will open up the space without costing us more money. We have decided to change our plan to look like this... (click on the picture to see it larger)

As much as we would love to have the entire basement finished right away, we do have a budget to work in. Our builder will be doing what he calls a "partial finish" of the rec room for us. The HVAC, electrical and drywall will be done, and we will come in and paint, lay flooring and baseboards, install lighting and hang the doors. All things we are comfortable doing ourselves, and can do in our own time. This will allow us to have more finished space for less money. Eventually we'll finish the bathroom and basement bedroom too. Something to look forward to in the future :).

The time has come to select our exterior colors. We had a pretty good idea of what we liked, so it just took some a quick review of swatches to make our final selections.

our siding color:

brick color:

roof:

After playing around with our house on paint, we anticipate it will look similar to this:

We have a basement! Our basement is poured (the black is the waterproofing) and we are thrilled, as it finally is starting to look like a house. We also are excited about our 2 egress windows in the basement - we love all of the natural light they will let in. Here are some of the most recent pictures...

We've Started!

We are so excited! The building on our house has finally begun. The excavating began on July 2nd and our builder thinks that our house could be completed by the end of September if there are no weather complications. While the basement is being poured, we are busy picking out siding, brick, cabinet colors and appliances. We are having so much fun designing our dream house.