Home Base

Work at the site is progressing and the foundation is done.

Finally we get to see some inkling of how the first floor of house will look like, if it was drawn on a paper.

A view from the back of the plot shows where the house ends, and the back yard begins.

And they have brought in the frame of the house too. It looks like some three dimensional jigsaw puzzle is going to be built. The pieces are all there. Somebody needs to put them in the right place

Ready, Steady, Go!

After considerable effort, we are done with designing our house. There's just so much you can choose from options and colors. Basically, our non-financial contribution to building our house is finished. Finally, its time to actually get work done. Its time to watch the house get built.
About two weeks back, we had our pre-construction meeting with the project manager who was going to oversee the construction of the house. He walked us through the details of the house, making sure all our options and requirements were in place. It was more like a transition from the sales rep to the project manager, as we move to the next process in our home journey. We went away from that meeting also with a tentative date - Mid July. Seems far off now, but like the project manager said, as we see the house come up, things will move really fast!
So last week, despite some rains, there was considerable activity at the site. Plumbing went in and then the slab was laid.

 A busy construction area. Wonder if the neighbors are disturbed much?

Plumbing work was complete and the work for laying the slab had started

Color on the walls

The final set of options we had to choose were the exterior colors for the Hardieplank siding and the shingles, and the type of stone veneer we wanted. But this was more difficult than most of the interior selections. How can somebody imagine what the house would look like, just by looking at small pieces of wood or a small sample of stone? Adding to the visualization complexity was having to process in our head, multiple combination of allowed colors for each sample of stone and this made finalizing a combination even more difficult. 
So on the first meeting, we spent a lot of time trying out different option of colors next to the stone. One of the main issues was that since we have an elevation which has siding and shingles, there needs to be two colors. So, somehow we chose a set of colors and stone, after we spent an hour and half trying to figure out a combination. In the process, Rhea got frustrated and started taking samples away, thinking we were playing some game, moving samples in and out! After all that effort, our final choices at the end of the meeting seemed to make sense.
But after leaving the place, we decided to drive around in a couple of communities of Ryan Homes to see if we could spot if somebody already had made the combination we had chosen. Well, that drive didn't turn out too good, as we were surprised how the stone veneer we had chosen, actually looked on existing houses. It was not the sort of look, we were aiming for. 
Lekshmi then mailed the Sales Rep and had her send across photos of different stone veneers in existing houses, so we had a better visualization of how each stone sample actually looked. It was another difficult process of selection.
The second time around was faster, since we had narrowed down to one stone veneer, and we just had a couple of color options for the hard.
... And so here are the final color choices

All of the colors together including the garage door color(Natural Almond), the hardieplank siding color (Light Mist), the shingle color (Cobblestone), the door color (Marooned) and the stone veneer (English)

Its all about choices...

“We are our choices.” 
― Jean-Paul Sartre

Building a home is a harrowing and thrilling experience at the same time. Its not just about finalizing a plot. Ryan homes, the builder from whom we are getting our house built, gave us an unbelievably mind numbing list of options to choose from. Of course everything costs money, and so its all about the fine balance of cost vs "we can live without that" method of selection.

Here's some of the selections we made for our flooring and cabinets for the kitchen.

A sample of the cabinet  called Maple Cognac

The granite for the bathroom counter tops

The tile topper in the master bathroom

Bathroom floor and wall tiles for master bath

Granite sample for the kitchen counter tops - Color is Tan Brown

Vinyl flooring in the laundry room

Here's all the samples together - with the carpet selection in the center.

As the plot develops

After much deliberation, searching, finalizing a plot, selecting from a over-sized option list, dealing with a sudden crisis and haggling over price,we finally signed a contract for a house in the US.

So despite the sudden appearance of a speed bump in our path to house ownership, after some more deliberation, and without a safety net, we decided to take the plunge anyway. Somehow the idea of having our own home to stay in seemed more pressing than smaller insignificant things like having a job or staying in Charlotte till the house was actually built! :-)

Indecision became quite crippling. But as always, we were able to draw our strength from family and friends who reassured us with words of encouragement.

The Alchemist said- "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it".  We are definitely about to find out if that is true.

So here is the first photos from the plot as it stands currently. I will try to post the progress regularly on this blog with more photos as it progresses.

Plot 96 - currently empty with soon a home to come

A closer photo of the plot and what looks to be the outline of the house as laid out