Roof of Purchase

Okay, not much to report really. So here are the newest photos of the house.



The shingles have been placed. They are light in color, sort of like a sandy beach. But not a white sand beach. Or a black sand beach. Just a regular, sandy beach.



(Covered patio, from above)


(Cover over front porch)

The Frame Walk is this Friday. We'll be sure to update the blog again after the frame walk. We expect everything to go fine... there've been no challenges with the house so far.

More to come...

One Ringy-Dingy... Two Ringy-Dingy... NO RINGY DINGY!

PLEASE HELP!

Our home phone service, the Voice Over Internet Phone (VOIP) from Sunrocket.com, is no more. The Sunrocket company has gone out of business. Noel and I are pretty sure we want to still have a home phone, and still feel that VOIP is the most cost efficient way to do so.

But, once we move, there will be no cable modem in our home, as the city of St. Cloud is completely Wi-Fi enabled as a public service. We aren't sure if there is a way we can create a landline internet signal from a Wi-Fi network. I know most people look to take the wired internet and turn it into a wireless network... we're looking for the opposite.

If anyone has any ideas that could help us, please share them!!!!

Thanks!

Lofty Ambitions

Another weekend has come and gone, which mean Noel and I made another trip out to St. Cloud to see the progress on our new home. Here's what we saw on Saturday morning:



It almost seems like KB is woking on getting this home up even faster than the previous one we purchased. That's great, too!

The framework is almost complete on the interior. This week they even had the stairs installed, so we could go up there and grab some pictures.


This is the loft area. The half wall is the bannister around the stairs. It will really open up this (already) large space. Noel and I spend lots of time trying to figure out what furniture we can put up here!


This is the view from the loft of the Master Bedroom. There will be a set of double doors that lead into he Master Suite. Very nice!

I think, though, the coolest part about having stairs is that we get a small closet area underneath them. Noel and I have taken to calling this space the 'Harry Potter Room,' since this would be the space at 4 Privet Drive where the boy lived.

Speaking of Harry Potter, I finished Book 7 this weekend. Couldn't believe that the two characters Rowling killed off were Spiderman and Optimus Prime! I didn't think you were allowed to kill off characters that didn't belong to you!

Goin' Once... Goin' Twice... SOLD!

Yeah! My in-laws sold their house today!

They will be closing on their new home in St. Cloud sometime in early to mid-August. The housing market is terrible right now, and they've had their house on the market for only 3 weeks or so! While it is a bit sad to say goodbye to the home in which they've lived since Noel was 12, it is an exciting positive step towards the new home!

They got the price they were hoping to get, too! So this is all very exciting news.

Yeah!

Block Party? No, No, No... We Were Framed!

This is our (new) plot of land. I know what you are thinking... how could they possibly change in that gorgeous home for a piece of dirt. Easy! Less to clean! But then you have the whole, 'how do I know if dirt is clean cunundrum!' This is going to be a very gorgeous home, too... with much more to offer Noel and me, and all of our guests!



This photo was taken on July 7th, just 3 days after the previous photo. I've marked the spot where I was standing when I took this photo. The plan is to continue to take photos from this same exact spot. I hope that someone much more talented than I can help me organize those photos into an online slideshow to illustrate a 'time-elapsed' type construction show.



This photo, too, was taken from the same spot. This was taken today, July 15th. It doesn't take long to get to framing, huh? The house has some really awesome features that you can already start to see. The front door area has a nice porch (where the ladders are stacked just to the left of the door). It has a side entry garage, entering on the right side of the front door, as you face it.



This, too, was taken today. This is the back of the home. There's a 10x10 covered patio. We plan on building the typical Florida screen room off the back of the house. But that's much later...



Standing in the front door, you can see the half wall. On this side of the half wall will be the formal Dining room and Living room. On the other side is the Family room. That's where we'll put the nice Lazy Boy sofas and the big screen TV!



Standing in the aforementioned Family Room, you can see back to the Nook and Kitchen. Nice big space. You can tell from the half hieght wall that the Kitchen counters will wrap all the way around. The Kitchen will be a gourmet kitchen, which I think just means it has different appliances.

I apologize for the delay in posting, but I think this whopper of a post makes up for it! And this is how it all is today!

A Tale of Two Stories

Everything you think you knew about our new home is wrong.

Noel and I made a BIG change in our new home this afternoon. It actually started a few days ago...

KB started building the home on lot 93, the only house between her parents house and ours. Its some massive two story home. There must've been some miscalculation, because they started building this mammoth house only 8 feet from the wall of our home. We weren't too happy about that.

Noel's father said something to our sales lady, Sabrina. She said that she had two other homes in the same community still available, but both were larger. Noel and I love the house we bought SO much, and were willing to stay, even though the neighbor was on top of us... but thought there would be no harm in looking at these other two homes.

The first we saw was awful. Ugly home with some poor design choices. The 2nd home hasn't been built yet. But much to our surprise, it is an amazing floor plan! We liked it... a lot.

But the home was much larger than ours. My father-in-law says if we want the house, he can negotiate KB to give it to us for only $10,000 more than what we agreed on for our home. Son of a gun... he was right.

Noel and I went in to Sabrina's office today to sign the paper work and switch our home to the new one. Kind of a whirl-wind weekend for us. But here are the details on the two homes:

Old 'new' home:

• 2,159 sq ft
• One story
• 4 bedroom
• 2 bath
• Expected Closing: Late August

New 'new' home:

• 2,855 sq ft
• Two stories
• 3 bedroom + Loft
• 2.5 bath
• Expected Closing: Late September

The new home also has a formal dining room! Something we didn't have in the other home. Oh... and the slab is laid out for the neighbor (one neighbor is already built), we are 20' from one neighbor and 3x further from the other. PLENTY of room.

I've switched the rendering on the left side of the blog to the new elevation. I'll try and post some images of the floor plan as well. And the name of the blog is new, too. Keep checking back to read more, and see more of our New 'new' home!

Everything you think you knew about our new home is wrong.