@Trish Walter I can't wait to see your floors. I know it was a hard decision for you so I am so glad you love them!

@Buzz Solo in northeast MI maybe the buyer will come around, hopefully the other house they have in mind won't fall for their low offer either.

@hummingbird678 that is a difficult place to be in and makes you worry when you shouldn't have to! We also did the cash build but ended up having to find a bank 3/4 the way through. That was extremely difficult. Luckily we had a local bank that was easy to work with and we had our workers sign lien waivers just for our own protection early in the build.

We finally have a closing date on our build July 6th! Our appraisal came back at $330,000. I'm not really sure the point of appraisals but we only borrowed ~1/3 of that so I think it's a good thing.

As far as insulation goes, we did spray/blow in cellulose because spray foam was double the cost (16k). They did some spray foam on the rim joists in the basement and then some batt insulation on the basement walls before they were sheet rocked. I love our cellulose insulation because it also has a sound deadening quality and it is environmentally friendly because it is basically recycled material. Our house is so quiet from the outside road noises etc...

@shead I saw this photo on an RTA advertisement and thought of you.

Suggestions on vanity size for our master bathroom? Spec sheet says 60”, but plan shows larger. I’m afraid 60” would appear too small on that wall. It’s a little bit of an awkward layout and wish we had spent a little more time on it.

@Alicia, I’d make the vanity go wall to wall.

@shead that's what I was thinking.. Husband suggested doing 60" in line with the shower and having a large decorative mirror (floor to ceiling sort of) to the left of the vanity

@Alicia I'd go to the wall too - counter surface trumps mirror ;)

not the greatest pic. but progress...

hubby's still there slaving away.

I love it! What kind is it? (Sorry if you’ve mentioned before)

@Alicia no worries. It's Hurst Hardwoods Engineered French Oak 1/2" in Riverstone. Great to work with. $4.99/sf but they often have sales [which I used] 10% off...

2/3 are 73" and 1/3 are 3 different short boards. 7.5" wide.

I struggled with the decision...literally looked at sooooo many...it's hard.

@Trish Walter the floor looks fabulous! @Alicia you could do a 9’ vanity it looks like you have the space? if your worried about it being overly long you could do a linen between the two sinks or if it’s already plumbed you could do a drop down makeup on one side!

@Alicia here is a couple pictures. of course you would want two sinks in the vanity and maybe put the makeup on the left....

Or if plumbing can move...

I am considering having them make the linen closet wider. I’m not sure I’d ever use a make-up counter (especially now that I’m working from home and have put on makeup once in the last 3 months haha!)

@Alicia, 60" is really too tight for two sinks. If you stay with that length, I'd go to one sink since, typically, a sink needs at least a 21" cabinet and that would only leave you with one stack of 18" drawers in the middle. I also don't think I'd make the closet bigger as 36" is pretty big for a bathroom anyway. We are doing a 9'6" vanity in our new bathroom. It is a little big, but we have a window in the middle of it so it kinda worked out to be that size because of that. Our layout will be 18" drawer stack-21" sink base-18" drawer stack-18" drawer stack-21" sink base-18" drawer stack. That gives us plenty of drawer space for each of us and a little extra storage so we can buy in bulk and have a place to store it.

One thing I notice about your bathroom layout is that you don't get any natural light to the vanity area. Are you too far into the build to change the layout?

That’s a good point on lighting. We are just about to have foundation poured, so not too late (though I’m not sure what kind of up-charges there would be for any changes, I’ll have to ask)

Our master bath currently is small and cramped so anything is going to feel so much better haha

Thinking we need to visit some showrooms to look at some cabinetry.

@Trish Walter, love your floors!! If our site finished floors fall through, I may take a look at those! I'm actually a little bit anxious about our floors now because the local hardwood floor plant owner, who was going to give my installer a cut rate deal on flooring, passed away unexpectedly this week so who knows if a) the plant will continue to operate or b) if whoever is now in charge will give us the same deal :( The whole situation has been a bit tragic for our small town this week.

I'm having a horrible time deciding on stone for our fireplace and which Onyx Collection pattern to go with for our shower. Both have to be decided ASAP since Covid has made lead times be 30+ days. Have I mentioned that I hate decision making?!?! LOL.

@shead which patterns are you looking at? I love our onyx collection shower it is so easy to clean! We went with alabaster walls and Granada floor/bench/caddy

@K H, I’d love to see your shower! I’m thinking lighter walls and a darker floor. The salesperson wasn’t very helpful in looking at samples and they only had one display in Tiramisu, which isn’t the color scheme we want at all. I did look at Alabaster. I don’t recall the Granada color but will look online at it.

@Alicia, if not too costly, maybe consider just flipping your bathroom layout vertically so that the toilet is nearer the bedroom (great for middle-of-the-night pee runs) and then both the shower and vanity area would get natural light from the window. Depending on the sun‘s position in the morning, you might even flip horizontally as well as vertically to get the best light to the vanity area when the sun is rising.

Good suggestion!

Is a 30" sconce on a 5' wide wall too big?

@snowcountry seems a tad big for the space. But give more details where is it going? what does it look like?

oh my...we are on day 3 of laying the wood...I am exhausted...and we are not quite done with the main living area...[kitchen/dining/great]...holy cow. Hubby always overestimates how quickly things will go...we had planned to be done by Monday. Not gonna happen...

still have to finish main area, entry, pantry, guest room/ mud area master bed bath and giant closet and upstairs hall... hahahaha

@shead Shower and vanity

Still no mirrors yet lol!

Alabaster and Granada for the shower. Alabaster and white for the vanity tops and our floor is Adura Cascade Sea Mist. The Granada looks like little pebbles and pulls the darker color from our flooring. My husband has a separate vanity on the same wall as the shower. We are still considering a glass door. Xtra long Shower curtain works fine for now

Also we thought about doing a stripe at the top but I thought it wasn’t worth the extra cost and it made the shower seem shorter

@Trish Walter You are amazing doing that your self - kudos!

@K H, it looks great! We want something a little more on the gray side but those pics are VERY helpful in seeing how a lighter wall and darker floor play well together :)

@Trish Walter, that sounds like an exhausting job! It'll be worth it when it's all finished, though :) (That's what I keep telling myself anyway...lol).

Does anyone here have their refrigerator next to a wall? Ours will be next to a short wall between our kitchen and dining room and I'm now realizing I had the framers frame it too short so now I have to ask them to lengthen it. The problem is that I'm not sure exactly how far to lengthen it for the doors of the fridge to be able to open past 90 degrees and not dent the front of the fridge. There will be a filler between the door and the wall as well but I'd like to minimize it as much as possible. If yours is like this, how long is your wall?

@shead if I recall some new colors came out. Alaska is a more gray version of Alabaster. We almost went with Dolphin because I liked the gray so much but I ended up going with the warmer colors instead. And of course Alaska didn’t exist when we ordered

@shead Mine has 3.5". It could depend on the refrigerator. Does the spec sheet show anything?

@shead we also have a standard depth fridge cabinet. Similar to a wall... I went off the specs of my standard depth fridge our cabinet wall is 30” deep. The fridge still sticks out a bit because of the water line and required breathing room.

Here is the spec sheet that helped us determine our dimensions. Shead do you have a standard depth or counter depth fridge?

FINALLY starting with insulation today! Hoping it only takes a week or so, then the sheetrockers are lined up to begin right behind the insulators. Very excited that this phase is finally beginning.

https://www.houzz.com/user/shead

We have a counter depth fridge & had to put a 2inch wood strip along the inside/back of cabinet area, as the cabinet was to deep for the fridge to open the doors without hitting the side of the cabinet, so ours sticks out same as KH's.

We are having a regular depth fridge so therein lies the dilemma :) I have until 7:30 am tomorrow to tell him my decision....lol. I was hoping to find that sweet spot in length so that it wasn't too long or too short but not having chosen a fridge really kinda prohibits that :/

On a brighter note, insulation is finished and they started hanging drywall today....yay! The builder and I met today and went over and settled quite a few things. We have decided to do the screened in porch instead of the retractable screens as they'd be close to $15K and he can do the screen porch for $2200 so that's a no brainer.

The windows have been installed on our townhouse. Once the rough plumbing, electrical, structures wiring and HVAC are installed we will do a, “dusty shoes” tour with the construction superintendent.

Hello!!! I’ve been waiting what feels like forever to be able to join one of these posts. My husband and I have spent YEARS planning for this. We’ve had set backs, delays, a terrible experience with an architect that lead to us basically designing the house ourselves, a builder who bailed, more delays, more planning....Well TODAY WAS THE DAY!! We broke ground on our new build today and I’m over the moon excited! And my little boys are over the moon excited about their new dirt piles! We are getting ready to build a “country” house (I can’t say farmhouse here right?!) on our (drumroll....) farm. I cannot wait to start following this thread more closely! Attached is some shenanigans from today and a rendering of our build! Woooohoooo!

Looks wonderful! Enjoy this thread! We will love to follow your progress! We are starting to build soon! We are in the permit stage. I love your house, and especially your son is adorable! Keep posting!

@M R, that's wonderful! How exciting!

And YES, you get to say farmhouse on this thread :)

Just barely, we're able to actually participate in the June thread. Over a year after first trying to buy this land, and 6 months of house plans...we finally broke ground yesterday.

@M R absolutely love your FARMHOUSE! Beautiful!

Congrats @TXLab

@TXLab, woohoo! Looking forward to seeing lots of your progress on the July thread :)

We are away on vacation but a neighbor sent this pic of progress on our siding. Insulation is done and they should be starting drywall soon.

Congrats @TXLab

My daughter taking in the view from the build location. And footers and basement wall forms going up....

@doc5md Beautiful view!

@K H Apparently there was a miscommunication between our realtors. Mine received the rejection of our counter offer but not their counter-counter which we did accept last Friday! It's not too bad for what's going on around here market-wise, less than we paid for this place 20 years ago, these guys are getting a good deal with the improvements we made. All we have to worry about now is the inspections, because it's a VA loan and those are notorious for falling through because they ask for the moon. Fingers crossed we can deal with whatever they don't like without breaking the bank.

In the meantime, just in case it all works out, we're sorting and packing and moving things into storage that we won't need should the deal fail. If it all works out we have to be out of here before Labor day, and will be paying $50/day rent for every day past closing.

@Buzz Solo in northeast MI thats great news!

@doc5md looks like things going smoothly!

@SBDRH I love your home it is so beautiful!

@TXLab so wonderful to finally see dirt moving!

@M R we would love to see your floor plan, the outside looks like perfection! We also built a southern style “country home“ with some colonial flair on our farm!

Yesterday I finished oiling&polying my laundry room shelves; found the wood sitting in the sheep shed. Not hung yet but they look awesome!

@K H Looks great!

@Buzz Solo in northeast MI Your comment about VA makes me a little nervous! So we're lucky in that we've found a couple that wants to buy our current house, and they were even super patient and are even in a rent house until we're ready to move out. All done without a realtor, which will be a nice savings. However, he's going through the VA and I'm a little nervous about the appraisal/inspection process. Crossing my fingers all goes well for you.

@M R Looks great, welcome! Glad to see some other new starts around here.

Loving all the updates.

We have a driveway. Woo Hoo.

Main area of house wood floor is done. Starting on the back wing. He has a friend helping today since I've exceeded my usefulness ha ha. Fingers crossed they are close to done... tile floors will be started Thursday...no word from the company that's doing our tile showers [really annoyed with them and wish I could pull job]....plumber is 2 weeks out...still waiting to see when I can go to the template meeting for granite. Hopefully by next week...

so looks like won't be closing mid July as hoped. sigh.

this pic shows how hubby tranisitioning direction change in floor. looks good.

@TXLab Didn't want to make anyone nervous. We had the first inspection tonight, but it was the buyer's inspection, no idea when the VA sends their people. This inspector's biggest thing, AFAIK is the deck railings not being to code. He said the VA will not approve a loan till that is fixed. With a wrap around deck, that's not going to fun or cheap. Guess we just wait for his report and the VA to show up.