Cooper At Home: Building Part 1

Things are getting interesting over at the home build! I’m spending the week finalizing a ton of selections and I can’t wait to share them all with you guys!! Before we start talking all things lighting, appliances, plumbing and tile let’s catch up on what all we have accomplished in the past 9 months. If you’re new here we were approached to sell our house fairly out of the blue last fall. Since we already owned land and were debating renovating or building, we entertained the idea which lead to us closing on our home in 30 days, renting it back for a bit and starting the home building process from scratch. We started the design process in October of last year and on December 16th of 2017 we started clearing the land. It has been a long 9 months of permitting, grading, waiting for the rain to stop, then waiting for the snow to stop, then waiting some more for the rain to stop and then finally starting construction. Here is a look at how those past 9 months have unfolded and what we’re looking ahead to next!

This is what the house looked like for a solid two months. We got everything graded and then had a wet, nasty, rainy & snowy winter. When we finally hit a dry spell we wasted building our forms & pouring our concrete walls.

The girls were ecstatic to see our house finally being built but couldn’t quite grasp why it was taking “so long”. Little did they know the months of waiting that were ahead! We killed time by taking them on equipment rides each time they visited. And by we, I mean Zach did & I sat in the car or walked around and took photos.

The process of building the forms and pouring the foundation wall took several days, maybe even a week or two, but after that the rest of the foundation went fairly quickly. They wrapped the foundation in waterproofing, put in drains and filled in a ton of rock so that when it rains the water will drain down and around the house. After that we poured the slab and could finally see the “shape” of our house!

Next up was the framing which went by incredibly quickly. The crew started early, worked late and threw up rooms and walls like they were building the ark anticipating the flood. Each day we went to visit we would have an entirely new spot of the house to see. The girls did NOT love this part because of the noise of the nail guns.

The best part about this stage of the process was that we could finally walk inside! Don’t get me wrong, it was a very stressful ordeal making sure the kids held our hands and didn’t fall out a window. If you have small kids & build a house, buy those kid leashes that look like little backpacks and thank me later.

I took the girls to Florida with my family and when we returned we had an entire house complete with a roof! This is one of my favorite spots in the house. I love these huge windows in our lodge room! The fireplace will be rock with bookshelves on either side & shiplap on the back wall.

Opposite of the fireplace is our kitchen! We love to entertain but aren’t fancy people at all and truthfully most of our gatherings are centered around watching one sport or the next. Our dining room table will be between the kitchen and the sitting area (and TV). This way everyone can be together when you are cooking, socializing & even eating if there is a big game on TV.

We also are going to have a table and sitting area on our screened in porch which I am ecstatic about! I can’t wait to sit out by a fire in the mornings or relax on the porch in the afternoon while the kids play in the yard.

As of today all of our doors and windows have been installed and the garage doors are on their way! We have a real fireplace on the inside and the main exterior fireplace has been rocked so that we could start shingles.

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The hardie board and cedar on the exterior have been started and the rock work is well under way. Next week I’ll share some updated photos that include the rock! Our soffits have all been painted as well as the exposed rafter tails so that we could install a drip edge and then shingles. Next week I’ll share more exterior pictures of the roof, rock, interior as well as all about our paint scheme and the constant disputing it has caused. As of now Zach and I haven’t had any major knock down drag outs but it’s still early in the process. 🙂