Kirsten, I feel your pain.

We finally have a septic permit and the house plans have been approved by the city. Now they just need to put the two together and issue the building permit (hopefully this week!). Builder has arranged for a power pole, entrance material, and staking out the house on the property. Unfortunately it has been very rainy so we may need to have some well points put in to dry out the building site before any work can be done.

We close on the construction loan on Friday.

-Kathy

@window accents by Vanessa Downs Yes, sod has been put down. It’s amazing how fast they were able to transform the yard. A few days before this pic was taken the yard was a mud pit.

Oh, and our house is in Northern, Virginia (Arlington).

@katherineator, we’re hoping for permit approval by the end of the week also; I’ll cross my fingers for us both!

Busy day today cabinets are being installed, painters taking down the last of the paper, electricians installing outlets. We had 17 pallets of pavers installed.

We had final inspection last night and it failed! This inspector is so nit picky. He'll be back tonight to re-inspect the house. He said we wont get our COO until next Thursday. So it looks like we won't be closing on our house until next week after Christmas. I was so hoping to have Christmas there. sigh.....

Claudia and Nidnay...Just saw your notes above...I have Emtec Flat Black knobs. I got almost everything for my house from our local, builders supply and worked with the owner who is very sharp. He specifically assured me that this finish is not a “living finish” and that it is a stable finish. I’m going to be deeply disappointed and upset if this is not true.

our last house had Bravura in ORB that was a living finish and I absolutely hated the brassy patina that developed.

We spent way more than I wanted to on door knobs so these knobs better stay black. I will talk to him after the Holidays and let you know what he says.

Well sabrina that stinks. I don’t understand the CO thing and why the inspectors are so picky. No COs here.

what did they fail you on?

ILoveRed, I haven’t installed our door knobs yet but yours look beautiful

Ilovered....my Emtek knobs below......First pic is an interior door that doesn’t get much use and the second pic is my interior garage entry door. The high use knobs are getting shiny and you can see that the backplate is very flat in comparison (no one touches the backplate). According to everything I understand and after calling Emtek as well as reading their guarantee, this finish is not warranted. I will be calling them again though as well as contacting the door/window company that installed them.

So sorry for you SabrinaTX :-( But look on the bright side - You can celebrate New Year's in you new home!

ILR- The things he listed were so small, eye-roll worthy tbh. Things like missing bubble boxes on out door plugs (they were inside the house just not installed), a secondary filter on the a/c unit, one of the smoke detectors was not linked to the others, one plug outlet in the laundry room was to either have a gfi or only be a single plug unit.

Suru - crossing our fingers. I've learned not to hold my breath! LOL

Got my cabinets and doors installed!

Still no building permit. Apparently the wrong address was put on some of the paperwork, so although things have been approved, they have been approved for our neighbor's lot, which already has a house on it. So the city wants the permit to demolish our neighbor's house before they will issue us a permit to build our house on our neighbor's lot. I have no idea how it got to this point or how long it will take to correct. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

We are building on a rural 3 acre lot on a road that has only houses built on 3 acres. My in-laws bought the lot 30 years ago and and have been holding onto it. All of the other lots were build on a long time ago, so ours is the last.

We have the closing documents for the construction loan, but because we live in Florida and the house is being constructed in Virginia, we need to get a notary to witness the slew of documents that we need to sign and send back.

Bureaucracy!! Bad! Sounds awful, Katherineator. Hoping someone comes to your rescue and fixes this.

We passed final inspection yesterday! Now we’re just waiting to close on our loan while my hubby is on gov shutdown. I don’t foresee and problems as we have emergency fund just for this reason.

edited to add -we went out today to install our barn doors. I love them so much. My hubby made the doors and hardware from scratch!

katherineator that is just so wrong! Sorry you're having so much trouble.

sabrinatx, beautiful doors!

@katherineator I’m so sorry! Have you been able to go up the chain and explain what happened and ask THEM how to rectify it? They should be the ones providing solutions to undo the paperwork issues in their system. Demolition isn’t the way to fix paper drama, shredding documents and starting over is.

Beautiful barn doors. Glad you are moving forward. May all be solved quickly!!

Update: WE HAVE A BUILDING PERMIT!!!! Now if it would stop raining so that the work can start...

Oh that’s wonderful news on the permit!

katherineator that is fabulous news! It is very exciting to know you will be starting soon. Do you have everything picked out in your head of what you want for kitchen choices, bathrooms, etc? We

Our garage foundation was just poured and the foundation now sealed so excavator waiting and within the next two weeks will do backfill (water table was high so we had to build lour foundation up higher) next and then on to framing. Getting our last quote on Monday and meeting with the KD on Thursday for preliminary thoughts. He said he needs to wait till house is studded so he can do proper measuring for cabinets and needs the model numbers of all our appliances. My husband thought that was odd and I have never heard of needing that either but..... I am hoping he is making sure everything fits properly.

Finally! Driveway excavation has begun. Only about 1/2 mile to go from here!

As previously stated, we moved in a month ago with a temp occupancy permit and we are loving every moment here. DW is really happy with everything especially the kitchen, storage for absolutley everything and much more, the heating/HVAC which is amazingly efficient and so far economical, given that we have two huge furnaces and a massive home to heat, having consumed 176 therms since we moved, even before I set/fine tuned heat zones temperatures and schedules.

I'm home for three weeks, hence tilers are busy working on master bath shower and tub surround; hopefully be enough to start using the 10' 4" wide shower even before installing shower glass wall and pivot door in the center. We currently shower in one of the larger complete bathrooms in the guest wing on the other side of the house; it was funny during Thanksgiving with a house full of guests and we all used one bathroom for showers though all bathrooms have working toilets and sinks with H/C water and tiled floors installed. While tilers are here, I've requested the builder to let tilers complete kitchen and laundry room backsplash, family room fireplace and bar wall tiles. Can't wait for the family room to complete. I can then put up computer design renderings of our familty room and kitchen and real pics side by side to show how precisely they match, be almost hard to tell the difference. Even after that, three bathroom showers need tiling and that work is scheduled for Presidents Day week in Feb when I'm home.

We wont be done even after that; completing the Media room and bar (aka man cave is a pre-spring project), exterior decking and a whole lot of drywall in center and rear garages. Getting there.

NewEnglandgal, congrats on the foundation! I will be interested in following your build. I checked out your boards and it looks like we have similar taste.

My husband told me to pick out all of our finishes before we even met with builders. That was a good idea, since it allowed us to know how much we would need for allowances. We met with the kitchen designer that our builder prefers in early November and it took several modifications and about a month of work before I came up with a design that I liked. I will take credit for the design because the first renderings done by his designers were pretty bad (by my standards...I tend to be very particular). I got out my graph paper and architectural ruler and drew the designs myself for him to plug into his computer program. I'm really glad we weren't on a tight deadline and started early.

This will be our third new build. The first was in 1990-1991. We (me, my husband, my in-laws, and a handful of sub-contractors) built it on a tight budget. I was 21 when we started, 22 years old and 8 months pregnant when we finished. The second was 14 years later when our school district got re-zoned and we wanted to keep our kids in the same schools. We walked into a model home, loved it, and told the builder to build the same house for us, finishes, paint color, etc included. It was a piece of cake build with no difficult decisions to make and no problems with quality of workmanship. This one is more difficult in terms of us having infinite decisions to make and also by virtue of us living in Florida and the house being built in Virginia. I'm super excited to see vision of the house we have planned for almost a year now materialize.

Flashback 28 years ago... that's me!

Here is the foundation with my grandson in front. After it cures they will bring in lots of fill.

KatherineKatherineator what part of Virginia? We love Virginia! My daughter lived in Chesapeake for a year, just moved to NH. Beautiful state..

I have been looking at plans, floors, cabinets, you name it for two years. I keep changing my mind wanting everything tto look nice together.

I'm curious to see what the KD is thinking.

Our sink and dw will be in the islans.island. cook top (induction) will be near double ovens.

It is fun to look at all the choices. This is our forever home till we die or go to a nursing home. How scary is that????

We're building in Chesapeake, where our two other houses were. Minus the past 9 years, I've lived in Chesapeake all of my adult life.

So many choices!

Interesting that you say that this is your forever home. You don't look very old, so you must plan on living there a long time. It's hard to say if this is our forever home. I guess if I like it enough... it is one story, so definitely lends itself to growing old in.

Here is a rendering of one of my options that I worked with Cabinets.com on. The black void on the range hood is wrong in this picture. In real life it is filled in with wood like the upper panel. We're also going with an induction cooktop. I have one right now and love it.

Very nice! OMG that is so weird you are building there. My daughter loved it there and wishes she was still there. She lived on Driftwood Dr (they rented for a year).

I am 56. I'm going down the mountain! Lol

What are you doing for counters?

NewEnglandgal,

I hate to hijack this thread, but would love to continue this discussion since we obviously have a lot more to talk about. I just enabled the messaging feature on my advanced settings.

I turn 50 in February and wish we were in the mountains, but will be happy getting back to the country rather than the insanity of South Florida. We will be out in the farmland in the mid-east area of Chesapeake. Where are you building? Did you get your plans online or did you have them custom?

I think we're going with granite. I saw a slab of Colonial Dream that was really pretty. I'm not opposed to quartz though. What about you?

-Kathy

I'm not sure how to turn messages on in Houzz. Maybe someone can tell us ?

The granite is very pretty.

I was contemplating soapstone.

Now I have decided I am not focusing on any one thing anymore. I'm starting with my floor, going to see the KD, pick out cabinets and colors then move on to countertops. It sure is overwhelming at times but with all the help I've received it has made it much easier to figure out how to go about it and not try to do little bits here and there.

Now I have decided I am not focusing on any one thing anymore. I'm starting with my floor, going to see the KD, pick out cabinets and colors then move on to countertops. It sure is

One more day in December!

Newenglandgal....are you using the app or a browser? Computer or phone/iPad?

On PC, go to your profile and click 'advanced settings'. Scroll almost to the bottom to 'who can message me' and change it to anyone. On the Android app it is under email preferences. At least that's how I think it works. I haven't actually tried it. Look at my profile and see if there is an option there to message me.

I use both android and laptop. On my phone cannot find it under email. I looked before posting.

Edit to add Kathy I cannot see a message button on your profile.

I’m on Apple....but should be similar in your browser....

Scroll down almost to the bottom of the page.....

On the same Advance page....you can change your email settings for messaging....

Thank you! I think I fixed it!

NewEnglandgal: Perfect! Now there's a big white 'message' icon on the right hand side below the facebook and twitter icons on your profile. I sent you a message. Let me know if there's one on mine so that you can respond.

I've heard good things about soapstone in kitchens, but being that it's commonly used in laboratories and that's my profession, I don't think I could have a kitchen with soapstone and it not remind me of being at work.

I guess I took a simplistic approach to my design, which was find my favorite rooms and then just steal the ideas. That's what Houzz is for! We're going with a mid-tone warm brown gunstock oak hardwood for most of the house and then off-white kitchen cabinets. like the picture below.

Pinebaron, that sounds like a gigantic shower. Can't wait to see the pictures! It sounds like a zoo at your house, but at least you're in it.

Kathy, you are so funny. The master shower is taking shape for sure. Shower base is done and walls are up, they've applied a water proofing paint and it sure has a strong smell. It's coming along with the rest of the zoo.

This morning was a clear day

And I love cleaning these floors, very little dust due to excellent air filteration nevertheless there's always something to clean on this floor and the same floor with satin finish in entire kitchen.

Night view of entrance

Pinebaron beautiful view! Id be out there every morning watching the sun rise or the sun set depending on what side you are on.

What flooring is THAT? GORGEOUS. Is it slippery?

@Pinebaron I hadn’t seen updates on your space in awhile - what amazing progress! I agree, what on earth is that flooring?! Gorgeousness. And the dimensions of that shower look fantastic, is it going to be a zero entry on one side or just a two person steam shower?

Your views are so lovely and worth every penny you paid, that’s a great shot. I wish we could have gotten a lake but alas, we needed proximity to freeways and work and medical more so that meant no pretty nature reserve. I can still droil over yours, though!

NewEnglandgal the views are what made us purchase this lot. At night the same view looks amazing with long light reflections of homes across usually very calm water. Contrary to what my DW and daughter thought, the floor is not slippery at all, it is commercial grade large format tile with very fine grout lines you can barely see.

dsnine, we've been so busy with the move then we finally made it month ago, I'm primarily working away hence not much at home and try and make the best of it when I am. I took these pics this morning; I'll wait for tile work to complete, then a few cabinets installed around bar and fireplace, before providing further updates. No it is not zero entry on one side, left side is a bench. The shower is 10'4" x 4'2". Two person? It is certainly large enough for a few but no way, be just one person with choice of 2 rain showers plus 2 large hand showers on rails and 4 jets, just about enough for fun showering.

What you see in the view is the sea, its a harbor. We are a shade over a mile from the freeway and 16 miles to the airport.

Drywall went in yesterday. I am really hoping we can be in before the end of march!!

Backfill happening today and hoping framing will start next week. Most likely end of week.

NewEnglandgal I was only able to find one slab big enough for my island Brilliant Black my island is 5x 10’7” I had to go to a store that only sells to fabricators so I am waiting on a price. I also found out they painted my interior the wrong color waiting to find out what is going to happen, it looks ok but it was Supposed to be -75 and it was painted 75 it is much much darker.

Very nice!! Sorry about the mess up on the paint. Cant they paint over it...the correct color?

We will be moving in soon!!

Why are you posting this on a monthly thread that is 2 years old? We have a Dec 2020 thread.

I had too much wine...

How can I delete this?

Put the wine down. Houzz: Building a Home is serious bizniz.