I met with the landscape architect today to go review the lot. He's going to be assisting us with retaining walls, decks, patios, walkways, and driveway designs. (note the plurals)

Framing continues with the framers working on the second floor. The head framer has been working on our porch roof for a long time now. See pictures of today's progress here.

More pics are here. 

More pics are here. 

More pics are here. 

Framing continues with the first floor exterior and interior walls nearly done, a few more pics taken the past couple days are here. 

Lot's has been going on with the house, but there hasn't been much time for updates. You can see lots of pics, but none are described. 

12/24/1 - Framing starts.

I'm in the process of researching radiant heat for all interior slab areas including basement and garage as well as a snow melt application for the front porch, sidewalk, and driveway. I do love to play in the snow, but wouldn't it be cool to have a heated driveway? ;) The cost for material excluding a heat source is about $0.65-0.70 per square foot. (http://www.radiantcompany.com) The rough estimates we received from our plumber are $5-6 per square foot, so I think this will end up being a DIY (do it yourself) project. RIGHT NOW is the time to get this done as the slab hasn't been poured yet.  

We're always on the lookout for new ideas for our new home. We went to see "Behind Enemy Lines" at the theater and they had a cool sparkly concrete sidewalk. I'd like to do this to our concrete driveway, sidewalk, and front porch. It looks really cool, in my opinion. The “concrete sparkles” are aluminum oxide particles. I've asked our builder about this. We'll see what he comes up with.

Not only have we heard that we need 40 rather large and deep piers to hold up our house, but we've found out that the walkout basement level of the home will have an 8 foot drop to grade. This means a cancellation of the garage under the kitchen. That's okay though, because I have a better idea of a much larger "garden" garage on the back the front load garage at grade level. I'll compile some drawings to give you an idea what I'm thinking there... 

Dateline:

Why?

• Desire to start a family in a permanent home.
Jennifer and I would like to settle into a home that we know we'll be perfect in for many years, with maybe many children, and space to support our hobbies. ;) The house that we presently have, was purchased out of emergency. When Jennifer and I married, we found the sum total of all of our stuff was greater than the total area available in my condo. We felt it important to live together once we were married, so we bought a bigger place.

• Not enough room.
The home we presently live in is approximately 2500? square feet of living area, not including the unfinished basement. We have a lot of stuff!

• Not enough garage! 
We currently have a two car garage -  three cars, two motorcycles (and one on the way), 4 mountain bikes, and a large riding lawn mower doesn't add up. With all that stuff, both of our new cars sit outside most all of the time. Add to that the workshop including table saw, compressor, shop vacs, and misc carpentry tools, and you can imagine being short on space! Utilizing my simple math skills, I calculate the requirement for a 4+ car garage. :) 

• Excellent existing property appreciation.
After only 14 months in our new old home, we've watched the homes around us sell for 15-20% higher than when we purchased our home initially.

The basics:

• 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, 4 car garage + 1 bonus garage
• 6363 total square feet!!
• 3591 square feet of living space on the first two floors  - first floor = 1504,  second floor = 2087. 
• 1612 square feet of walkout 9' basement
• 1160 square feet of garage on the first floor - conditioned, split design. An additional 200 square feet of basement bonus garage is available for lawn and garden equipment. 
• Home footprint: 59' deep x 74' 2" wide.

More details:

We enjoy the area of Kansas City where we live now, so we began looking at communities not far from where we presently live. We each had our wish lists of items to look for in a community and lot and what we ended up with will be perfect for our desires. Jennifer wanted a treed lot without being sandwiched around other homes and a friendly community. I wanted a large, corner, walkout lot. 

Our new home is a customized home that started off as a spec home. Our builder showed us the plans for a front elevation that we liked and we started from there as a base plan. Had we built that plan as it was, we could have saved a mere $100K. We started work on the first floor and garage area as soon as we received copies of the plan. My priority, huge garage. Her priority, open and entertaining floor plan. 

In the initial builder introduction meeting, sensing my desire for a cool garage setup, the builder suggested that some homes were doing a split garage with a 1 car front entry and a 2 car side entry. The look is really cool on paper, so we proceeded with that concept making 2 - 2 car garages instead of a 2 and a 1 car garage. This design is perfect for the way I want to use the garage... 1 - 2 car garage for parking and a large garage for toys and hobbies. :) I'll have an 18' x 8' garage door on the front load 24' x 27' garage and a 16' x 8' garage door on the side entry 24' x 21' garage. The side entry garage had to be made smaller to fit on the lot. :( We also added a single garage on the back of the house in the basement for lawn and gardening tools.

For Jennifer's open floor plan, we took out the stairs in the middle of the home and moved it to the outside of the front entry. We also removed walls and added a few columns for a cool look. The home originally had an open center fireplace separating the breakfast area from the great room. We chose to open the space up and move the fireplace to the great room wall and add an additional fireplace in the hearth room.  The entire first floor is now very open for lots of  guests and entertaining.

Drawings:  

Our home, as it will sit on the property, will actually be a mirror image of all the architectural drawings that you will see. From the curb, looking at the home, the garages will be on the right side and not the left.

Empty lot pictures:

The lot is in the Oakbrook of Crimson Ridge subdivision. The community is a Rodrock community, which is a very popular in the Kansas City area for their exceptional amenities, many geared to family life. The lot itself is a walkout, corner lot, with large trees along the rear of the property next to the creek. We only share property lines with one home, which was a very attractive feature. Across the creek on the rear of the lot is a park area maintained by the City of Shawnee, so we know there will not be any homes built there either.

Click on the thumbnail at the left for a larger view and description. The lot starts on the rear left at the bridge and extends to the right near where the large tree is dead center in the image. From that point, the property line extends towards the street between the utility boxes right of the 25 MPH sign.

Timeline:

This page was last update: