Week 4 1/2

I distinctly recall Mike saying something like "hopefully we'll get a couple of weeks of good weather and we can get the house framed." Well consider hope lost. It's been raining alot here in Indy. In fact today there was snow.

The previous photos were from the day before Thanksgiving and since the crew was going to work the Friday and perhaps Saturday, I made it out yesterday and got a couple of photos. I doubt much happened today so we'll see what happens by my next visit on Saturday.

Looking down from garage into in-laws quarters in basement.

In-laws quarters to the right and rough-in bathroom in the foreground. Note the different heights on the far wall where the basement was poured to be contoured to the lot.


Sill plates fully installed around foundation.
I'll have to ask Mike about this. I'm looking directly where there would be a doorway if the basement was finished. Does the unfinished wall get fully studded and cut later?

See the water? I expected to have a swimming pool but it's not too bad. As Holly told me "I'm sure ours isn't the first home to get rain during construction." I'm hoping all the rest turned out alright.

Week #4 - Basement done. Let the framing begin.

Holly and I started our Thanksgiving weekend early and met Mike down at the lot mid-day Wednesday. He's going to be out of town for a week (working on a tan in Mexico) so I think he wanted to review the finished basement before framing starts. Here are photos I took that day.


Sadly for the girls, the big piles of dirt are now gone.




Sump and ejector pits and rough-in for basement bathroom.




It's looking like the next 3 weeks will be all about framing and will result in a fully framed, enclosed home with windows and doors. I'll try to make it out twice a week since the progress should be significant. According to Mike, it should be ready for some walkarounds by Christmas!

Home Exterior Views

I was wrong, I did have one more post to make before the weekly updates start. Holly took the photos of our brick and stone and a few screen captures from other web sites to create two views of our home. Here they are:

Selections

So in building a home it's common practice for a builder to quote the home with "allowances" on certain items. The homeowner then has a budgeted amount to spend on any particular item. If they go over they have to make the difference up at the end of the build. If they go under the allowance, more to spend elsewhere on their house. I've heard stories that some builders will cut the allowances short to make the total price appear low but then the builders go over on everything. Mike has done an excellent job setting up our allowance amounts. We've gone over on some, under on others.

The allowances on our house are: Flooring, cabinets & tops, appliances, lighting fixtures, exterior doors, closet/mirrors/bath fixtures, landscape, patio, brick and stone.

Holly and I have spent A LOT of time on the last two; brick and stone. From the pictures I've attached previously, almost the entire front facade is stone as well as the garage side of the home. Most of the remaining 2 exterior walls are brick with some cement siding up on the second floor. There seems to be two approaches to brick and stone.

1. Go drive around and write down the address of something you like. or
2. Look through these books and at this sample on a wall. If you like it, we'll give you lots of addresses to go look at it.

I suppose I can't fault these approaches. It can me difficult to look at a 1'x2' sample on a board and say "yeah I want that all over my house." This is after all the most permanent decision to be made.

We wanted a brownish brick and were looking for something with brown, earthy colors for the stone. It was more than once that we saw something we liked only to be told that it was a man-made veneer. We were on the hunt for a natural stone and many trips were made from Zionsville through Carmel and Westfield out to Fishers and Noblesville. The girls got to the point of hating the drives even though they had videos to watch.

I've got to say, I was amazed by the vast amounts of beautiful homes in Hamilton County! Here's one that we liked as a sample. Holly liked it on the house actually but I thought it was too busy. That's odd since when we started we both agreed to liking the "dry stack" look. Anyway this was a good example of good color but just too busy for my taste. This is an "Ozark brick" up in Westfield.

Brown County Rubble was the choice until we found our final selection:


Finally we were told about a stone called called Ozark Brick 3-5". Same supplier and color as the chop just a bigger cut. We love it! Here's a few photos of the house that we went to look at it.
Once the stone was picked, we were able to pick a brick rather quickly. Two made the final cut but in the end Brampton Jasper was the winner.


Another feature that we designed into the house with Nathan Weiss were boot lockers at the garage entrance. Strangely, Holly and I both agree that this is probably the feature of the house that we are most excited about. I'm just guessing but it may be due to the enormous pile of shoes in front of our washer/dryer and the pile of coats on our dining room floor. Just guessing! This was going to be part of our cabinetry allowance but when we didn't see anything that we liked, Mike got a quote from his carpentry guy to make them. Here's one of the photos that we gave him to model it after.

Another location that we gave some direction to Mike was the fireplace. We really liked the look of the fireplace at Matt and Mary Snively's home (Holly's sister and her husband). This photo comes from their place. We'll have the stone from above cut to a vener depth and set at the wall for the fireplace. Raised hearth. Horizontal wood mantle. On the sides will be cabinets but not the bookshelves as M&M have.
Well this was the last post I had planned to make outside of my visits to the land. I hope you've enjoyed them. Keep checking back for updates on Casa de Eble.

Week 3. Basement walls have been poured

I made it to the lot around mid-day on Thursday Nov 14th. Mike met me out there and we walked around and talked about the work planned for the shortened next week and the following week. The shortened week will have the basement slab poured, 2 ft of pea gravel over the perimeter drain tiles and backfilling around the exterior of the house. Holly and I will be meeting Mike at the lot on Wednesday for a walkaround review. Following the review, it will be off to Santa Claus for some Turkey! Framing will start the week after Thanksgiving.

Still standing on the same dirt pile. 3 car garage. 1 near and 2 far with a workspace in between.Looking at the basement proper of the house. The green on the outside is a foam that is part of the basement waterproofing.
Looking down the far wall. The stair stepping countours the land and will be bricked from there up and backfilled up to the brick.
Standing in the basement (near the 1 car garage bay) and looking over to the chimney. Tiered window well on the left.
From same stop looking NW toward the "in-law" room.
Standing at bottom of hill looking up at the front door.
Slinging pea gravel into the garage. This will be filled up completely with gravel and a cap poured on top after some settling.

End of week 2. Kind of looks like a basement.

Holly and I packed up the kids in the minivan late on the morning of Saturday Nov 12th and drove down to check out progress. From the vantage point of a LARGE pile of dirt, I was able to capture some of these shots. I think the walls would have been poured by now but the county inspector wouldn't come out on the 8th to view the footers since it was election day. Some rain delayed things as well. Shown are the steel forms that the concrete will be poured within to form the basement walls.

The square is the back porch. A couple of curious girls check out the big hole.

I'm starting to get the idea that the house is going to loom over Olive Branch.
Garage.
View from NW corner (future in-laws room). See the big pile of dirt back there? Where I stood in previous photos.
For those that care, I think all homes with basements require a perimeter drain as seen here. Following the pouring of the concrete, the bottom couple of feet will be filled with pea gravel to allow drainage into the black pipe. I'd prefer that the piping dump down to the stream but per code it must go INTO THE BASEMENT and then be pumped out. How crazy is that?
Girls playing "Queen of the Hill" I suppose. This is a view of the back porch and the terraced window well to let light into the basement.

End of Week 1. Big hole? Check!

The first week of November was a busy one for the Eble House! Mike was working to finalize all of the building permits with Johnson County and get the signed copy of the HOA approval to build. As I mentioned earlier, we were signing our construction loan from the National Bank of Indianapolis.

Mike had a hardscape plan from the Landscape Architect placing and shaping the driveway on the lot. The driveway was cut earlier in the week as well as bringing down a few trees. Two out at the street were dead and coming down. Unfortunately a third up near the house didn’t make it. A bit too close to the foundation I believe.

On Friday Nov 4 I stopped by on my way home from work to discuss some things with Mike and took these photos.

Looking from the NW corner of the home diagonally to the 3rd car garage:


From the SW corner of the home looking at my VW in the driveway:

Standing in the 3rd car garage. Workshop directly in foreground and basement off to the left.

Same location looking across back of hole.


One of these days I'm going to figure out how to keep a consistent font size and style on Blogger. Until then, sorry.

Views of our lot

Here’s some photos of our lot in Center Grove.

A view from the NE corner. The big tree next to my VW was dying and is now gone. Drive way will be right where my car is.

View from the NW corner. See the big trees? We’re going to try to keep as many as possible and put the house up on top of the hill.

Another view from the NW corner. It's Highland Park common area up to the 3 smaller trees. Beyond them is ours. See the creek? Our girls have already been down playing near it! I’m wondering if they’ll go out to catch craw-dads like Daddy did when he was a kid?

A look from approximately where the house will sit back to the NW corner.

From where the house will sit looking directly North.


From house looking directly South at the back yard.

Looking toward the SE corner of the lot.
Looking East at the neighbor's house.

From the far SE corner looking north to where the house will sit

Casa de Eble moves to Center Grove.

With Pulte coming into RFW we started to look for land again. We had previously been looking in Franklin and Perry townships (SE and S central Indianapolis) so this time Holly set her search up for northern Johnson County. This would include Greenwood, some of Whiteland and the unincorporated area known as Center Grove.

It was there that a couple pieces of land looked promising. There were two for sale in Highland Park off of Olive Branch Road and several scattered throughout the area. Also, another within Highland Park was undeveloped but had been sitting for 10+ years. On the Friday September 9^th on our way down to Santa Claus (the USA's only Santa Claus and Holly's hometown!) we stopped by and looked at the lots. Lots 178 and 179 were adjacent and 143 was the undeveloped one.

178 was less than ideal. A side section of the lot had been incorporated into the neighbor’s back yard (we later found out that the section of the land had been surrendered to that owner) and the only two trees on it were right smack in the middle of the only obvious place to put a house. Lot 179 looked much better. It was somewhat “L” shaped, had high ground from about the middle to rear. The entire front is on Olive Branch and drops off to a creek. The downside was that it exited out onto Olive Branch and not actually into the neighborhood. OB is a rather busy street and this had us concerned with young children. Lot 143 was Holly's preferred. The home would have to be rather close to the cul-de-sac but the back yard would be long and sloping down to a nice creek at the rear.

Yet another plot plan that was not to be: HighLand Park lot 143:

Mike Gorman walked the lots with me one day after work and followed up with a surveyor to get plot plans drawn up with our home. In the mean time we tried to contact the owners of 143 via mail and phone to no avail. The realtor on lots 178 and 179 (Sandi Finlinson: http://www.landhawkrealestate.com) kept contacting us on our interest in those lots and we told her they were our plan B and expressed our interest in 143. She attempted to contact the owners at their work and through the developer of the neighborhood. The developer laughed; apparently there had been 10+ folks over the years attempting to get the lot and none had been successful. Sandi had no luck with getting a call back so we began to center in on 179.

We positioned the house up on the crest of the hill facing North over the front yard and Olive Branch Road. It was behind the existing trees and left a nice backyard for the children to play in. Mike reviewed any sewer, utility, easement issues and with the all clear we put an offer in on 179.

Here it is! Casa de Eble on Highland Park lot 179:

On October 9th Holly and I signed an updated contract with Mike to change the address and sign off on the new plot plan. An hour later we bought the land. NBofI had to modify the loan appraisal from RFW-30 to Lot 179 in Highland Park. On November 1st (our 8th wedding anniversary!) we closed the construction loan at NBofI. Oh yeah!!!!