-September 2006

Well, we've decided to go for it. We're buying a new house, and this one will be built from the ground up. To start, here's a link to the floor plan:

Floor plan

We've picked "Elevation K". I picked the last one initially, but the girls said it looked like a birdhouse. Luckily Ed, the agent, had no problem changing it.

I'll be adding pictures, starting with the bare lot, and documenting everything all through the buildout.

NOTE: TO VIEW LARGER VERSIONS OF THE PICTURES, JUST CLICK ON THEM. Use the "back" button in your browser to return to the main page.

Stay tuned!!

Oct 3, 06

First appointment at the Home Center today. We'll be making initial selections of our upgrades... granite counters, wood floors, etc. Should be fun...

Oct 04, 06

Appointment went well, got most of our options picked out. Here's a picture of Gie and her friend Minnie in front of the home center.

Oct 5, 2006

We meet with the loan officer(s) today. I really don't forsee any problems, considering we paid off our last house in 8 years :)

Thanks to the Man upstairs for guiding us through all this...

Signed off on a bunch of paperwork yesterday afternoon at the loan office. Right now VA loans are going for 6%, which is a Good Thing. Hopefully the interest rate will remain stable or drop before closing next spring sometime, but things are rolling. Closing will be less than we thought, too, which is another Good Thing.

Oct 13, 06

Second visit at the home center. Nailed down color choices and asked for quotes on expanding the back porch(es). Gie at the home center:

Also have some shots of the dirt that will become our house eventually; finally badgered Jenny into pulling them off her camera. Will try to get those up tomorrow.

Oct 14, 06

Ok, as promised, here are some dirt pictures... aka our lot.

NOTE: Edited this entry in favor of the new post, 2 Dec, below. Since we changed lots, no reason to keep this information here, taking up space.

Oct 17, 06

Forgot to mention it, but the lot is about 1/2 acre (big part of our decision to move here, more space between houses), and is in a gated community - *not* a big part of our decision, but makes the neighborhood quieter as far as traffic goes. Of course, as long as lots are open, the gates are open from 7 in the morning to 7 at night, but in the evenings only residents and guests will be driving around.

Oct 25, 06

Stopped by the dirt yesterday. Looks like they're building the house next to us almost *right* on the property line; not a Good Thing. Dropped an email to our agent complaining about it and seeing if we can move our house over. They're looking at putting us about 10 feet from the line, with 26 feet on the other side. Told him we'd *much* rather have the 26 feet on the master bedroom side than the driveway side! We'll see what happens. If we bail right now we probably lose $2000, but that's better than living in a house we're not happy with.

Nov 3, 06

Bad news. Wife came back from her Korea vacation, and she's as unhappy with the house next door as I am. One of the big reasons we picked this subdivision was the distance between houses, and now we have one 20 feet outside our bedroom windows. Not acceptable. I told the agent about this by email, and we're going to drop by Monday (he's off Wed-Friday, and Gie works on the weekend) and see what we can do. At this point in time, a bigger lot is the only thing that'll work. If they try to gouge us too much for a bigger lot, it's going to be a dealbreaker. :(

Nov 6, 06

Crisis averted! Went over and looked at a bigger lot; better elevation too. Cost us a little but it's well worth it!

Pictures later... just dirt, but it's a little different dirt. :) It's about three or four lots away, slightly different address on the same street. The driveway will be on the other side, too, so we'll have a driveway next to our master bedroom instead of another house's master bedroom right next to ours.

Once I get the new dirt pictures taken and loaded up here, I'm going to delete the ones above. I hate wasting space.

Nov 9, 06

We've done our third appointment at the home center; finalized all our selections and set up the home network and alarm systems. Unfortunately, since we changed lots, they have to redo the estimates for the rear patio extensions, so we'll have *another* third appointment. This one, however, can be done by paperwork alone, so I'll pick up the paperwork on the way home, take it home, look it over, then return it later. Less hassle for Gie since it's quite a drive for her from home. Only about five miles away from work for me, though.

Oh, and incidentally, the link in the upper right corner is still valid... the new lot is three away from the old one, plus a side street inbetween. If/when they update that location shot, I'll get a more accurate link in there.

Nov 17, 06

Got a call last night that the new paperwork should be ready. Going to stop by after work today and get it, then we'lll see what the damage is for our porch(es). If I get real ambitious, I might take the floor plans off the web site and hack em up to show what we're planning to change.

Nov 20, 06

Paperwork is done, going to pick it up for signatures after work today. Looks like we'll be joining the two porches (patios) and calling it good for now; you can see the porches at the builder web site. We're thinking about adding awnings to protect the rear windows of the bedrooms and probably wrapping a deck around the patios down the road. Will try to get dirt pictures up before too much longer.

Dec 2, 06

Ok, as promised, here are new dirt shots. 

 Decided to remove these 26 Dec.  You can see the original look of the lot in the shots posted on the next page, and this will save space. Some shot descriptions left, since they give you an idea of layout and lot information.

You can see the property is pretty flat; there might be a coupla foot drop in elevation from the right side to the left side of the lot.

The brush in the back of the lot will probably go away,  I plan on stopping by the lot almost every day after work and taking a picture when building starts - that way when it's done I can stitch them all together and make a cool stop-action kinda movie of the house "growing". Should be pretty neat if I can pull it off. The road you can see in the background is one lot farther down from us and will eventually be a side entrance to the community (with a gate). You can see how the property slopes toward where I am; that'll be good during heavy rains, as the drainage will be away from the house and into the street. The street is just behind the fence and about a three foot drop down from the level of the property. You can see a coupla chunks of the rock that San Antonio sits on in this shot... make for nice stable foundations.

Vital stats: House is 3899 square feet. Altitude is about 974 feet, give or take a foot or two depending on where you're standing. Lot is 115 feet wide by 120 feet deep, which works out to a hair over a half acre (.58 acre according to the blueprints).

Ok, that's it for now. They say they normally start the foundation three to four weeks after all the preliminary contracts are signed, which we did Monday, so this will probably be the last entry for a while. Of course as soon as they start laying the foundation forms, there will be updates quite often!

14 Dec 06

Got word that the house should be released to construction today, which means the foundation should be started tomorrow... pics soon!

19 Dec 06

Ok, so "released to construction" doesn't necessarily mean an immediate start. Going to stop by after work with my new digital camera and see if they've done *anything* yet!

(Later) The fun never ends. Got an email from Ed (the agent) saying he needed me to call him. Gave him a call, and the builders started laying out our foundation on the wrong lot! Ran out there after work and the new lot is actually better... it's the highest lot in the entire subdivision in elevation. Told him we'd take it, no extra charge. He's checking with the company to make sure it's ok. I took lots of dirt pictures, with the foundation forms laying on the ground; will post them up here *after* we're sure we're going to get that lot!!!

Apparently what happened is that the builders laid out the lots and numbered them as they thought they should be, but when the county came along to fix the exact property lines, they numbered the lots differently. The agent and the construction guys don't communicate in diagrams, they communicate with numbers, so the agent did all our paperwork for lot 41 (or whatever it was) and that's not the same lot 41 that the construction guys knew.

So be it, like I said above, this lot is the same size as the one above, but a little higher in elevation, which is cool. Only possible problem is that there's a house in front of ours with the same floor plan and face. In this neighborhood, that's a no-no (you don't want your neighbor's house looking the same as yours), but our house sits at a T intersection, so the other house is facing a different direction than ours. Ed's going to find out if that's ok (should be in my book).

As I said above, going to post the new pictures as soon as things get firmed up. Hopefully won't be more than a day or so.

21 Dec 06

Notice I refined the link way up in the upper right hand corner to better reflect the location of our new lot.

Time to start another page. Since there are/will be lots of pictures, this will help the pages to load faster. Here's the next page:

New house construction