Cabinets - oh, the choices!

We've been looking at cabinets for at least a month. Now, I don't mean looking at catalogs. We've spent several hours every Friday and Saturday consulting with specialists to design our kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry rooms. I had no idea how many options were available to me! do I want a spice drawer, a spice rack in a cabinet, or no special space at all? Do I need a cutlery drawer or pullout cutting board? How about a built-in message center in the wall? A special cabinet for baking sheets? How about self-closing hardware options?? Door styles and wood choices and stain color and special finishes galore! Don't even get me going about drawer mechanisms, construction details, or knobs and pulls!

We've received at least eight different quotes and designs from five different vendors. We finally decided to buy our cabinets from Marlings Homeworks... natural maple cabinets with cherry crown molding. You don't need to know all of the other details, just that they will look absolutely fabulous! :)

May 9th - I'm getting a feel for the space

It may not look like much progress this week, but the foundation needed to "cure". The contractors "backfilled the lot", or moved all of the dirt back up against the foundation. They hauled 15 loads of dirt off of our lot when it was all done. (OK, but truth be told, they had dumped some extra on our lot before they ever started digging.)

When I walked the perimeter, I definately got a feel for the size of our yard-to-be. Wow, it will be great to mow the lawn in 30 minutes compared to the 60 minutes it takes me today!

You can see that we have a full walk-out lower level in the back of the house. Not sure why, but we have a bunch of gravel in the basement... must be for the drainage system. The more I see the back, I'm feeling the pine trees will have to go! I HATE white pine trees in my yard. They are messy, messy, messy!!

Hold onto your socks... they begin framing the house on Monday!!! It's now a race to frame it and put on the roof to keep the rain out.

May 1st: Foundation is poured...

in a single day! And then the rains came again....

The foundation as to "cure" for a few days, and then the contractors can backfill the earth up against the foundation walls. I didn't get to the lot before sunset, so the pictures are a little dark. Kinda looks like ancient ruins. :)

And this is the streetlight at the corner of our lot.

Construction is Underway!

Construction began on April 24th!

This is a view from the roundabout in front of our new house.

It didn't take long to create a hole in the ground.... It seems like a really, really big hole. I'm told not to worry, because it's normal to worry about size during the different construction phases. Let's see if the advice is true. I'm told the hole will look really big, and once the rooms are framed that everything will look small.

Cool that we have a water line already run into our mud pit. (It rained for the two days after digging.) If we crank it on, we can fill up our "swimming hole" real quick!

A view from the corner of our lot. Note: We are NOT part of the Parade of Homes. We are the house next door. :) Lee is checking out the neighbor's house construction while he waits for me to take oodles of photos.

We Wauna Be in Waunakee

April 24, 2008:

It's official!!!

Lee and I closed on our new lot in Waunakee this morning! We are proud owners of a piece of mud in suburpia. :) We also are the proud owners of a big piece of debt, disguised to consumers under the name of a "construction loan".

Construction began today too!!! That's right, contractors began digging in our piece of mud. And then the rain came. And it's supposed to keep raining for a few days. Anyone want to make mudpies?