Breaking Ground

After waiting and waiting on our builder to do a 'ground breaking' cerimony we decided to take matters into our own hands. Last week we loaded the kids and some shovels into the burban and headed over to our lot. As you can see by the pictures, our oldest daughter was the only one interested in this little ceremony. The other kids were off in the mounds of dirt playing with their cousins. The wind chill on this day had to have been zero degrees. It was freezing! My children however have no nerve endings apparently because they are never freezing. I think my youngest was the only other one that was smart enough to wear a coat. The clear blue bright sunny skies trick you into thinking it is going to be warm outside.

On a recent trip to CA over the holiday season our builder went and snapped some pictures with his cell phone of the house our house started out as. The roof line isn't the same over the mid level library on the front and we will not have that canopy over the door either. I think I am going with the coloring of the exterior with the exception of maybe a bit more contrast with a lighter color stucco, but I really like the chocolate brown tile and trim. We will also be a lot further back from the street than this. We are starting the house 60' back from the street.

This second picture give a better idea of what the area around the front door will look like. The door is recessed back 7' from the front. We also rounded that arch to match the arches in the balcony. The roof line over the front door is also different because there is no longer a balcony with a door there. We also added another garage. So, like I said, our house started out looking like this.

Here is the kitchen. My cabinets wont be this dark and I am doing a stucco and tile range hood instead of the steel. You can also see from the picture that there ar 2 dishwashers which I will not be doing. One is sufficient for me. Other than that. It will pretty much look excactly like this. You can see the door to the pantry on the right with the other stainless fridge showing. An extra fridge in the pantry instead of in the garage is so freakin awesome! The only thing that might present a problem in this kitchen is a lack of counter space. It is pretty non-exsistant. I will fix that by not having the cabnitry come all the way down to the counter and by putting a little bit of counter under the microwave (it's next to the fridge). So, there you have it. We are hoping that the plans are out of the cities hands by the end of next week so we can get rockin and rollin on this house. We are hoping to be done around July-- I really don't want to be moving after school has started. Cross your fingers for me.