Thursday, 5/2

Big day -- signed the P&S at Lillian Montalto's office in Andover. We also met Shep's brother Craig for the first time. Craig worked patiently with us through the long list of price estimates for the options we'd requested. Some of the estimates were higher than we'd anticipated, particularly the cost to increase the size of the family room. Had no idea it would be that much.

[P.S. on 5/9: Something we learned from Shep about the cost of the enlargement:
"As the rooms get wider the span cannot be held up with conventional framing. A steel I-beam will have to hold up the floor joists on the second floor."]

So that was the bad news. The good news is that Craig seems a lot like Shep -- organized, thorough and easy-going. He spent the time to explain his reasoning on each of the options, helped us clarify exactly what we were looking for, and then proved to be very flexible about re-organizing or reducing the costs based on our conversation. By the time we got down to actually signing the P&S, although we'd crossed out a few things we wanted, there were other things we'd reached agreement on and overall I think both sides were more than satisfied.

Given how much Shep and Craig know about construction and how little we know, I'm sure some things we've asked for or had "ideas" about along the way are probably fairly stupid, but neither builder has ever reacted that way to us -- they take every question or comment seriously and help us explore whether or not it makes sense. We know from building our last house that homebuyers can be treated quite differently, so we're extra pleased to work with the folks at Londonderry Homecrafters.

Bill and I are still thinking through some additional options and upgrades we got prices on, but didn't include in the P&S. A full update on those coming soon.

Saturday, 5/4

Met with Tom Girard at Ipswich Bank to deal with the mortgage paperwork. Not a painful process at all; Tom had us in and out of there in short order. Doing our own credit checks back in January was a smart move since it gives us peace of mind now, knowing that there are no errors or mistakes in our reports.

In Massachusetts, by the way, everyone is entitled to a free report from each of the three major agencies once a year: Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. As a Mass. resident, you can ignore all the price info, read the fine print and get your free report online right away (except for one which insists on mailing the free reports, to try to entice you to pay $9.95 to get it online).

Anyway, everything seems to be proceeding smootly in that department. After Ipswich Bank we headed out to Georgetown to visit the site -- that's probably going to be a regular thing for us for the next five months or so!

Windows
We talked with Shep about the window situation in the family room, which is still being worked out. We know we want a lot of glass there, preferably connected (three or four windows across), but how exactly to do that, we don't know. Shep (and Craig) believe a bump out would be needed to make it look agreeable on the outside, especially since we're enlarging the family room and that's a pretty big expanse of wall.

But we're already planning a window seat in the back of the room, and a pass-thru opening in the wall next to the breakfast area, plus a fireplace in the opposite wall. I'm afraid if we bump out the front window, we won't have a single "flat" wall in the whole room, which presents a furniture problem. And I kind of like the idea of the windows being flat to the house -- see my page of window ideas (most of these we had to rule out because as Shep pointed out, they're too tall for a family room that will have another floor on top of it). So we'll talk about it some more next week, and hopefully find a solution.

Thursday, 5/9

Upgrade to Bruce prefinished hardwood
One of the options we've been mulling over is Shep's recommendation that we upgrade the oak flooring in the hallways, stairs, dining room and living room to Bruce prefinished flooring, which he believes will hold up better. Click for more about this.

Mudroom
Another area we're trying to sort out is the idea of a mudroom. Click for more about this.

Saturday, 5/11

Made our weekly trip to the site to meet with Shep and Dick -- which we really look forward to! We're at the point where most of the major structural issues have been sorted out -- things like enlarging rooms, where doors will go -- and can start thinking about more of the colors and styles that will determine the character of the inside of the house.

Still haven't quite figured out how we'll deal with the windows in the family room and master bedroom, but we're getting close to a decision. Most likely, we'll go with four same-size windows right next to each other, probably flat to the house. This will be a nice expanse of glass and let a lot of light into the family room, but with Shep's help we'll do it in a way that doesn't look too modern or depart from the traditional character of the home's exterior design.

The enormity of dealing with a custom home is starting to sink in with us. When we built the house we live in now, there were a few, tightly-controlled choices for colors and styles for things like exterior siding, countertops and flooring. You could go outside the standards, but it was actively discouraged, and of course dramatically raised the price.

Coming from that experience, it's hard to adjust to the idea that this time around there's no set list of exterior siding colors, for example -- we need to drive around or visit showrooms, come up with a color, and then show it to the builder. Ditto for countertops, floors, cabinets, bathtubs, showers, faucets, fireplace mantles, and every other minute detail. We have to do a tremendous amount of legwork to choose all these options, plus manage it in a way that doesn't end up adding tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of the house. Whew!

Not that we're complaining -- we know how fortunate we are to be able to custom-design our home. It's just overwhelming, especially if you're not the Martha Stewart type. :-)

This week I'll be thinking about how to organize the list of decisions we need to make and what aspects of that process I can move online so readers of the site can follow along.

Thursday, 5/23

Bill and my mother-in-law and I visited Design Home 2002, a luxury model home in Medfield intended as an "idea showcase" for new home buyers. There were lots of features and accessories in that home well beyond anything we could afford, but we got some great ideas. The paint color in the master bedroom was exactly what I had in mind for the family room -- it was absolutely perfect. I wrote down the color code and can check that one off my list!

After the Design Home tour, we had a very late lunch at the Cheescake Factory and went up to Home Expo in Burlington. That was a great experience too -- saw several things that "clicked," especially a kitchen tile that I fell in love with. I can feel the pieces starting to come together now, and the decisions aren't feeling as overwhelming as they did at first.

Saturday, 5/25

Had a marathon planning session with Shep and Dick today, during which we made some major decisions about the deck. We're actually going to go with a multi-level deck (stole this idea from Lot 18). The first level off the breakfast nook will be about 14' by 17', and run along the back of the house toward the study. Then there the railing will come in about 7' to create a corner for the grill, and next to that will be a couple of steps down to the next level. That one will run another 17' feet along to the end of the house. Since the group slopes up to that corner, that means we'll just have a couple or three steps down to the grass -- very nice! Not only will we have an absolutely wonderful deck space, with room for a table and chairs on one level and chaise lounge chairs on the next, but we can avoid the steep stairs I was worried about.

After going over the deck and other upgrade questions, we went down to the lot to make the hard decisions about where the house will go. There's a big beech tree that I had been worried about losing to construction, and sure enough, as Shep started reeling out the tape measure to see how far back our house would sit, backing into the woods, it looked like it would be impossible to keep the tree.

When he finished measuring the depth of the house, he was standing right next to the big old beech. "How do you feel about a tree coming up through your deck?" he said, and then made a brilliant suggestion -- lop off two feet from the depth of that section of the deck, and then there would be room for the tree. I was amazed -- it wouldn't look strange? Shep said absolutely not -- it would really "make" the backyard to have a big shady tree overlooking one side. He's going to put a protective well around it and we're going to save that tree! Imagine how nice and shady that part of the deck will be on a hot day -- and we'll still have the full-sun upper level to use too.

Sunday, 5/26

Back out to the lot to double-check the tree ribbons and make sure we're saving the old beech and some birch trees we really liked.

I've been thinking about the windows in the family room some more. It's a tough one. Shep suggested three separate windows across (instead of the two that are there now), to account for all the extra wall space we created by bumping out the room size. I really want to keep the windows together though, to create more of a picture window effect. I tried to mock that up using the plans we just got, but realized crowding the triple windows together looks strange on that wide wall. Then I tried to add a "flat bump-out" and a gable to see what that looked like. Am I on to something, or would the architect recoil in horror? I don't know anything about architecture so I may have just devastated the plans -- I'll show Shep and see what he thinks. Take a look for yourself:

Laurie's family room window idea (NOT approved by any architect, anywhere!)