House plans and the beginnings of all the choices to be made

Since the last post, David and I have decided on a set of floor plans for the house. We have been working with David Patton of the Home Plan Center (www.homeplancenter.com)  to modify the plans. We took the Bella Catherine III plan (http://www.homeplancenter.com/HomePlanCenter-1123110PHD-BellaCatherineIII.htm) and are making changes from there.

Some of our changes from the Bella Catherine III plan include the following:

• Close an opening in the kitchen that leads to the family room and put the oven there
• Move the breakfast nook over towards the pantry so we can have an open and a covered deck
• Add one foot to the bathroom so the shower would accommodate two shower heads
• Square off the sitting area in the master bedroom and avoid that three-sided window on the front of the house
• Eliminate all curved windows and elliptical transoms (anything curved costs more!)
• Make the pantry/desk/laundry area one space, just a big ole laundry room/pantry in one
• Add bench seating in the breakfast nook for a bench.

Those are just a few of the changes for the first floor! You get into really nit picky things like the changing the openings between rooms to six feet instead of seven feet, changing the fireplace opening to 42 inches so that the TV we'll put above the fireplace won't be bigger than the fireplace itself. Details!

Here are a couple pics of us looking at house plans and with Mr. Patton in his work room:

We are trying to keep the plans under 3,000 square feet. I am afraid that we are getting a little over budget based on the square footage - and I'd rather skimp a little on the square footage here or there and have more budget to spend in the kitchen and master bath. We just don't know until we estimate the whole thing out, though.

That leads me to my next topic: the order for how things go at this point. Right now we are working on getting the final house plans drawn up. We have met with Mr. Patton twice already, and we should have one more meeting to go until all details of the plans are finalized. After we get the final plans, we have to have the architectural committee at Ballantrae to approve them, as well as the City of Pelham to approve the plans to get the building permit and the water hook-up. Then, we go to the various subcontractors and vendors to get estimates on all the parts of the house: kitchen cabinets, granite countertops, bath fixtures, hardwoods, brick, plumbing, framing, etc. Then, my dad can put together our master estimate (and hopefully this won't exceed our budget, or we have to do some heavy revisions!!). After we have the master estimate, we then go to the banks to get our construction loan financing. Once you have your financing set up, then you can start building. So, you really have to pick everything out (fixtures, countertops, cabinets, windows, doors, appliances, EVERYTHING) before you start so that you have a good estimate of the total cost.

Today I went with my dad to several vendors to begin the looking and choosing process. We visited the following places, all between 12 - 4 pm:

• Jenkins Brick & Tile (outside brick, inside tile for bathroom and kitchen)
• Southern Window Supply (windows and doors)
• Inline Lighting (lighting fixtures)
• V & W Supply Comany (faucets, tubs, sinks, toilets)
• and some appliance store to look at ovens, fridges, range tops, dishwashers, etc.

I learned a lot today about brick sizes (modular, queen, and engineer are the sizes), keystones (rock face vs smooth), window varieties (vinyl, wood, wood/vinyl clad combo, tempered/non-tempered glass), doors (wood, fiberglass, double vs. single doors), faucets (did you know a kitchen faucet can cost $900!!!), and toilets (comfort height is a must, and you can get an automatic bidet thingy to top your toilet that blow dries your bottom...yeah, no thanks). It was a lot of fun! I got lots of look books to thumb through and mark up.

Here are a few pics from today's excursions with my pops:

Last week, I went with my dad to Counter Dimensions to an open house they were having for their new showroom. It was a lot of fun; they had professional chefs cooking dinner and you could look at all kinds of kitchen stuff like cabinets and hardware! A few days ago, I went back to Counter Dimensions to speak with Sandra about the kitchen design. Apparently, kitchen work stations are designed in triangles to keep the work stations flowing, and our current design is not very "flow-y." Sandra made copies of the house plans and is going to work on that to see what changes she can make to increase the flow. I also looked at kitchen cabinets and colors and woods, so she'll give us an estimate for kitchen cabinets, too.

Here are a few photos from the open house:

We won't really start building until after January 7, 2010. This is the date at which the original owner's one year right of redemption expires. We did get a great price on this forclosure lot, but we must wait to build until the land is totally in the clear, just to be safe. So, I have some time to mull over the many choices that must be made. Mine and David's decision making process is for me to wade through the hundreds of initial choices and find about five or so choices of whatever and then bring him the five choices and we will then decide together what we want from among the list of narrowed choices. He isn't much of a details person when it comes to some things, and I am, for just about everything. :) Satisficer decision maker vs maximizer decision maker....and I think that this works well together for us.

Once we get our final house plans drawn up, I will post images. For now, I am going to be busy thumbing through the various books and getting ideas for what types of lighting, faucets, doors, windows, etc. that we want (and that we can afford!).