Our New Home - All Moved In!!

As we noted in our last blog, we're officially moved into our new home.  We've delayed this post until our new refrigerator was installed.  It was back ordered when we moved in, and we had a loaner "mini" fridge.  So here's a lot of pictures of the finished product!

Exterior of Our Home:

Front of our home.

New Home - Final Construction Update

Our last update on the construction of our new home was almost a month ago, and at the time we were only 6 days away from closing.  Sorry for the delay, but it's been a busy month!  So here's the final construction update, the move and the first couple of home improvement projects.  Stay tuned...we'll also be blogging with final pictures of the inside and outside after the move and we'll also do some time lapse pictures showing the construction from start to finish!

On our last blog post, the inside was almost complete and the yard had just been graded.  Dave was concerned that as a result of all of the construction traffic in the yard and lack of top soil resulting from all of the grading to create the lots that we would have trouble growing sod. Remington Homes allowed us to have Soil-Tek add a layer of compost to the yard after it was graded and before the sod was put down.  1-inch of compost is equivalent to 3-inches of black top soil and will improve water infiltration, reduce the amount of watering needed and help the sod root better.  They can also do this over your existing yard, which we had done at our old house several years ago.  The best part of this was that the City of Ankeny, through their Stormwater Utility provides a 50% reimbursement program for soil quality restoration project such as this, so we were able to get reimbursed for half of this cost.  The compost was sprayed on September 18th.

The compost is pumped from a large truck and sprayed on the yard.

Weekend Wrap Up (9.26-9.28)

This past weekend consisted of unpacking, unpacking and more unpacking! After moving, I'm not sure why people want to move every two years!  It's a lot of work and after having two kids, it felt like we haven't moved in a couple decades! The amount of items they accumulate is astonishing!

I would like to thank my little sister Linda for taking the kids Friday morning and returning them Saturday afternoon. It made life so much easier to move on Friday without them being here. Plus, we were able to stay up late on Friday evening to unpack and catch up with our new neighbors.

We absolutely love our new neighborhood because everyone is so friendly and there are lots of kids about our kids age. I always wanted a neighborhood where our kids could grow up with other kids and just buzz down the street after school to hang out. I grew up on a farm so I couldn't just buzz down the street to hang out with my friends. There were cattle to be fed, hogs to be bedded and feed to be ground for the week! I do love the hard work ethic that I received from growing up on the farm so that is why we try to go back as often as we can with the kids!

Little-C, R-man and Cousin B having fun in the corn field! 

New Home Update - In the "Home" Stretch

It's only been 10 days since our last update, and once again there has been tremendous progress, and not a moment too soon as our closing date is a mere two weeks away from today. We've had our moments of slight panic wondering if it will all get done, but everything seems to be coming together nicely and everything appears to be on track for September 25th...provided it quits raining!  So if you could read this and then do an anti rain dance that would be appreciated!

The week of September 2nd, after Labor Day, the siding crew moved in and began getting the siding installed.  They were also the crew that constructed the arches in front and on our covered deck.  Both of these were add ons, the deck arches were something we planned early on, but the front arches were an idea we added later to make sure our house was unique.  The siding was finished up on September 10th.

Siding getting installed on the side/back of the house.

Basement of our new home

After we had our lot chosen and the plan signed off on, it seemed like nothing was happening but our realtor kept telling us we needed to be patient because a lot was happening behind the scenes.  After the plan was submitted to the City of Ankeny, they would review it to assure everything was up to code and issue a building permit. Thankfully, it didn't take too long and the builder was able to get started.

The first work done on the lot started on Wednesday, May 28th when the basement was dug, and they formed up the footings, as shown in these pictures.

Building a new home - the beginning to a new adventure

Dave has been trying to convince me that we needed to move into a bigger home for a few years. Right now, our house is about 2,400 square feet (downstairs and upstairs). Before we had children, the house was plenty big because we could utilize all of the closets. Now that the kids are getting older and need a little of the space, I realized it may be time to move into something a little bigger. However, after looking at a few houses, I wasn't convinced. Did I really need something bigger, could we make our existing home work?

I kept going back to the house that I grew up in. It was about 1,000 square feet on the main floor and the basement isn't finished. My parents raised all six of us there (I have two sisters and three brothers). They still live in the house today and it's plenty big now that we are all gone. I mean, the house had portable closets, not built in ones. It was only a three bedroom house, my parents had one room, the girls had another and my brothers had the third. I kept going back to this thinking, do we REALLY need a new home? I survived, not happily at times, but somehow we managed with the tight quarters.