See-through no more

Well you can no longer see into the master bathroom from the kitchen. Drywall is up throughout the house. They really moved on it this week. The whole house is taped, mudded and sanded (save for a couple small touch-up areas). Below is the view from living room into kitchen, the inset is the pre-drywall picture.

And here is the kitchen from the back wall of the house, again the inset is the pre-drywall.

I was really shocked to see how far they had gotten. But, I guess when it's 6 weeks until close, stuff needs to get done. Keep your eyes posted early next week for the first video to come out of 1017 Prairie Lane. Merry Christmas!

Closing time

We have a tentative closing date. As it sits right now, we'll close on Friday, Jan. 27 at 10 a.m. We'll have a final walkthrough the week before on Jan. 20 to make sure all is well and then closing.

New items in the house since last time:

• Insulation is in, preparing for drywall. All outer walls and the initial layer in the attic. They blow more into the attic after drywall is in.
• Drywall is sitting in a stack on the living room floor.
• Counters sitting in the garage.
• Pretty sure the heat is on in the house, the last time I went by there was steam coming from the chimney.
• We've also been told there's some boxes in the kitchen, but not sure what those are (maybe flooring?).

Think that's it for now. More to come.

Wrapping our Christmas present

New development Sunday... the house is sided. The area you can see that has no siding is waiting for stone work, which could happen this week. Also possibly happening this week is the start of the drywall period. Once they get drywall on, we should have a good idea of when we'll get in the house.

We are the only ranch of the six houses that are being built right now, so I think that has led to things getting done on our place first. It's happened with roof, siding, and framing. Maybe because it's easier to work on the ranch? Whatever it is, we're not complaining. It's very exciting.

We put up the Christmas tree at the VB's this weekend, so now the Christmas spirit is really alive and well!

The waiting game

Amy and I had our pre-drywall meeting with the site manager today. Basically we stood in the house in the cold for 45 minutes going through all the electrical, plumbing, etc. before the drywall starts to go up. Everything looked to be in good shape. The builder is very upfront, pointing out a couple of places that they still had to do work or repair that we wouldn't have even noticed, so that made us feel good.

Nothing really exciting to show pictures of, but latest developments include:

• The furnace is in, not running, but close.
• Hot water heater delivered and waiting to be installed
• Siding sitting in the garage
• Stone in front yard waiting to be put up

So what's next? Well Accoring to Jim (not the ABC show, our site manager is Jim), they should start drywalling in the next week. They have to get heat into the house first, but he thinks that should happen soon. Once drywall is up, they should be able to give us a pretty solid end date, but today he said we're on schedule for our original date of mid-to-late January. So really, that could mean only six more weeks.

Doesn't seem like a long time, but let me tell you, Amy and I are so excited to move in. We're loving the time we're having at the VBs and so thankful for their hospitality, but we really can't wait to get in the house.

Our friends Jesse and Ronni just moved into a house in the same area, so everytime we see their place and how they are getting settled in, it gets us thinking about our place.

Oh well, patience is rewarded in the end, mid-January will be here soon enough.

BTW, special shout-out to Rich for being one of the few non-Amy people to comment on my blog. Thanks buddy.

Baby's First Snow

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!! Wednesday came with the first snow of the year, and the first snow for our house. Thankfully we don't own the house yet so I don't have to shovel the DRIVEWAY yet. That's right, the only thing we weren't sure was going to go in before the winter really came is done. The driveway got poured Monday afternoon. Garage floor was in last weekend, and the basement floor is done as well. I'm pretty sure that means all the concrete work is done. And you can also see the garage door is in.


Other new pieces include wiring, gas line for the dryer, and light fixtures.

Also of note, we bought our fridge, washer and dryer Sunday. Hadn't really planned to but Lowes has 10% off all appliances, plus $100 gift card and free delivery. We got everything for well less than we planned on.

I think the stonework is the next to happen, and pretty sure the interior drywall work will begin shortly.

Close the door, it's cold out!

Truthfully, even if the door was closed, there's still a gaping hole in the front of the house where the garage door will be. However, as of a week ago we didn't have doors, or windows for that matter, and we do now!


We also have two bathtubs and some very rough plumbing in. Gone from the inside are the support beams that you could see in the last set of pics, which in my untrained opinion means either the house is now stable or soon to fall down.

No new news on a complete timeline, however we think drywall might be up this month. Once drywall is up, they should be able to give us a pretty solid timeline. We have a meeting next Monday to meet some of the other people who have bought houses on the street. I think it's nice that the builder puts this together to try to get everyone to meet before we become neighbors.

Anyhow, just wanted to get a couple more new pics up. We've never put one of the back of the house up before, so here you go. The back faces west so until they build more houses behind us, we should get some pretty cool sunsets over the field.

It's a House

I don't know much about building, let's get that out of the way right up front. I do know that when I saw our lot on Monday, just 6 days ago, it was a hole with a couple of 2x6s sitcking up in the air.

Here's what it is today:

I mean, that's our house!!! Walls, stairs, studs (not just me), rooms, window openings. It's all there. I got to walk into my house, and you could tell where all the rooms of the house were. I really didn't expect this much to get done in one week. That's why I'm not a builder. When I turned the corner and saw this, I was amazed.

It's been a big weekend, Amy's cousin Beth was in town. She is an interior designer and we spent some time talking color with her on Saturday. We came to some decisions and she had some great ideas, hopefully she'll be willing to help us along the way. We also picked some light fixtures that Amy and I both like a lot, and that's not easy to do. And with the house being up, it was a lot easier to start picturing the finished product.

This is looking into the house from the front door. To the left are the two smaller bedrooms and a bathroom. Straight ahead is the living room (both windows are in the living room), the opening you see to the left is the doorwall off the kithen, and to the right is the windows in the bedroom.

This is Amy standing in our living room, kitchen to the left, our room to the right. So needless to say, we're pretty fired up. Not sure what the next step is (feel free to guess, the winner gets to help paint the room of their choice).

Oh, just a follow up from the previous, the new Third Day is awesome! Their site (www.thirdday.com) has some clips of the songs, well worth it.

New walls and a new home

Two things to report this time. First, the basement walls are in. You can see in the image below that the beginning of the frame has been put in as well. In the center of the image you can see the egress window in the corner of the basement. Off the picture to the right, or front of the house, is where the basement bathroom will be, eventually.

Also, we officially moved out of the apartment and into our friend's house. We have a nice room, it's cozy but we've got all we need to survive, that is to say we have our TiVo in the room. As of right now, everything we own is in two 10x10 rooms. It will be nice to save the 3-4 months worth of rent for moving into the house and buying appliances and the like.

On that note, we recently helped our friends move into their new house in Milan, built by the same builder. Seeing them put in new light fixtures, paint their rooms, and start to get settled has gotten us pretty fired up for our place. We'll use the next couple months to slowly buy the items we need (towel racks, light fixtures, speaker wire, flat panel monitors, etc.) That will help lessen the blow come end of Jan.

Couple random notes: Third Day's new album comes out tomorrow. If you haven't heard them, check them out (www.thirdday.com). They're a great Christian band, somewhat akin to Black Crowes, I guess. Southern rock sound. I think they have a preview of the album on the site. I'm pretty anxious to see "Jarhead" when it comes out. Amy's busy most of this week so I might try to catch it Saturday night.

The first guy that did this died...

I have to take time out from the house news (more to come on that shortly, we have basement walls!) to brag about my wife for a day.

On Sunday Amy and my brother-in-law Al ran and finished the Detroit Free Press Marathon in downtown Detroit. For those of you that don't know, that's 26.2 miles (or as we found out on our way down there, the distance from our apartment in Ann Arbor to Melvindale). And for a bit of history, the first guy to run that distance was named Pheidippides. He ran from the plain of Marathon to Athens to tell of the Greek army's victory over the Persian army. Then he died.

So armed with that knowledge we headed to the Ren Cen Saturday night to meet with the other people running for Team in Training. Team in Training is a group that supports the Lukemia and Lymphoma Society and Amy was able to raise more than $1,300 prior to the marathon. In all, 191 runners raised $350,000 for the society. See her blog for more on who she was running for and his story.

There was a pasta dinner that night at the hotel and we headed to bed early. Ok, so we watched the Pistons first, but still asleep by 11, we were after all getting up at 5:40 a.m.

The alarm came early, but Amy was really fired up when we got up. She had been training for this for months, and faced lots of setbacks (couple of illnesses, a broken foot, etc.) that limited her in how much she could train. She had never ran more than 13 miles prior to Sunday. Heading into the day, she wasn't even sure she how much she could run. She was determined to finish, however.

Fast forward a bit to 7:30 a.m. outside of Comerica Park. The horn sounded and 13,000 people ran past me as I waited to see Al and Amy run by. About 12 minutes after the official "start" here they came (the MC of the race was kind enough to note that by the time Amy and Al went by the start line, the lead pack was already at mile 2).

For those of you who have watched cross country races before, being a spectator for a distance race is somewhat of a challenge. But I was amazed how much fun I had wandering around downtown trying to find Amy and Al. I was able to see them four times in the first 14 miles. The course took them away from downtown to Old Tiger Stadium and Corktown, over the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, through the tunnel back into the US (the only underwater marathon in the world), back up toward Ford Field, then away from downtown again to Belle Isle, around Belle Isle and back to the finish through the tunnel and onto the turf at Ford Field.

Amy finished in just over five hours and was able to run the entire 26.2 miles. Al came in about 20 minutes later. Both of them were running in their first marathons and both finished, an amazing accomplishment. Special thanks from Amy to my sister and her kids Matt and Jacob who staked out the Belle Isle bridge to watch from. They made a flag with a pig and a cross on it (see her blog for more race photos and some random pics of Jennifer Garner running). They got to see their dad and Amy at miles 17 and 20, and Amy has remarked that seeing them twice made it possible for her to finish.

She was amazingly sore, still is. But I couldn't be more proud of her. She's taking the soreness like a trooper, with a little help from me. For all those who called with encouragement, prayed, donated, thought of her on Sunday, or helped in any way, I want to say thank you. Amy is so thankful to have friends and family like you around her. Al especially, having someone to train with, complain about soreness with, and run with made this such a more rewarding experience for her. You guys are the best.



Amy on Woodward at mile 13.5 with Compuware in the background.

The future home theater

We have a basement. As you can see in the image below, our basement has been dug. We're really fired up to see things moving along. As you can see, the footings for the outer walls are in, the pads for the support beams are in, and the general shape of the house is taking form.

What might be harder to see in this picture is the eventual state-of-the-art home theatre that will grace our basement (please note the fancy, "re" spelling of theatre, no it's not because I'm Canadian). Movie night in Milan, baby! We're talking 100-inch screen, projecter in the ceiling, totally wired together. Donations will be accepted in return for free screenings. I'm working on a deal with Lucasfilm as we speak.

Anyhow, next up should be basement walls. The forms for the concrete walls were sitting right next to the hole, so I'm guessing that's coming pretty soon.

By the way, for any State fans reading this, your football team is now 4-2 instead of 6-0 strictly because of coacing. The players on that team are 6-0. Stupid game...

It has begun...

A hole, we have a hole! Well, a small one right now, the've only dug for sewage, but it's something. Anyhow, tomorrow we're supposed to have a bigger hole. That's right, the building of the house has begun. Our basement is scheduled to be dug tomorrow, and the basement floor and walls poured on Monday. Footings to follow shortly thereafter.

Today we met with the construction manager to go over site plan, floor plan and make final choices on cable outlets, etc. It's really starting to happen. Last week we got the official letter from our lender telling us we had indeed been approved (confirming what the pre-approval told us). We'll meet with the construction manager again in later Nov., when the house should be framed. He also hopes to have the driveway and sidewalks poured before winter really hits, so let's hope we have a tame early winter season.

Due to the building taking place in winter, it's hard to pinpoint a exact finish date, but we're still hoping for mid-Jan. Poor weather could push that in early Feb.

We'll be going by the site later tonight so I'll post some pics then.

It's Official

We went by our homesite after church today (excellent sermon/worship time BTW) and the picture below tells the whole story.

That's right, it's a big ol' SOLD sign on our homesite. Still haven't dug any holes yet on our site, but across the street there was a bulldozer that looked like it had moved some earth this past week. I guess that's progress. The pic below shows our curb and the cutout where our driveway will be. As our garage is on the right, the house will sit to the left outside the edge of this picture. The lot also goes back 144 feet. While I've never owned a home before, I do know that is nearly 50 yards, and that seems like a pretty big yard to me. It's also 60-some feet wide. I think that means cutting the lawn will be a good workout. Maybe homeowners in Arizona have it right, 15 square feet of lawn and then rocks for a yard. Of course the 100 degree heat may be more of a reason for that than laziness. At least it's a dry heat.

But I digress. Anyhow, Amy's got a post on her blog as well with a different pic. Oh by the way, new address will be 1017 Prairie Lane, Milan, MI 48160.

Which leads me to this: why can't I ever live someplace with a nice, easy address? Check out some of these previous novels disguised as addresses:

• 5537 Cambridge Club Cir #xxx
• 10960 Lighthouse Drive # 535
• And my personal favorite - 48571 South I-94 Service Dr #307 (which led most people to believe I lived in a box on the side of I-94 in Belleville. I mean really, couldn't the apartment complex come up with something better than I-94 Service Drive?)

And now its 1017 Prairie Lane. Why the Lane? Couldn't it just be Prairie? Or for that matter, would it be asking too much to live at 123 Green? That's short, sweet and too the point. Does the fact that I live on a "Lane" mean anything for my home value? Is a potential buyer in the future going to have this conversation with himself?

"I'm not sure I want a ranch, and I don't like hardwood floors, but man, they live on Prairie Lane. It's a LANE. I've gotta have that house."

*Editor's Note - This 400-word piece is an example of what happens when someone with a blog is bored at 11:30 on a Sunday night and the only thing on TV is Arizona-SF from Mexico City. Was the location of this game supposed to make us forget it was Arizona-SF?

Owning 1.13239% of a home

Today Amy and I signed our purchase agreement and put down our final deposit. That means we officially own 1.13239% of our house. I think that translates into about one doorknob and three drywall screws.

The signing came at a great time, as I needed the excitement following an early morning loss in church league basketball. Ok loss might be too nice a word, but that's not the point. Let's just say we felt better than Illinois did today against MSU, but not by too much.

Anyhow, we officially have nine business days to freak out and back out of the deal, but that's not likely to happen. On our way to the signing we drove through another new neighborhood right by ours and ran into friends of ours who are closing on their house in October. Not even a hole in the ground and we know the neighboors.

Construction should start sometime in the next couple weeks. We found out that six of the 11 homes for sale in the first row of homes they opened are sold, so they're going pretty quick.

Amy and I still walk around saying things to each other like "Are we really buying a house?" It seems too good to be true, but God has really led us through this home buying process the whole way, and it's led to great things.

Anyhow, more to come later. Go Green!

There won't be cats in the yard

Hello, and welcome to my blog. My wife, Amy, and I are just starting the process of buying a new home in Milan. I'll be using this blog to update the construction process, post pictures, and every once in a while talk about things non-house related.

For now, here's the scoop. We are in the process of buying a home in Milan, about 20 minutes south of Ann Arbor. The neighborhood hasn't yet been built, but it's called the Enclave at Milan. It's being built by Centex Homes. We are looking at the ranch style, called the Tamerack.

The home will be completed sometime in mid-January, so family, be prepared for a cold moving day.