The Lichte's New Farmhouse.... Week 12

We have walls.... Big, beautiful, perfect, sturdy walls... I could not be more happy about the progress. We finally got some decent weather (it was beautiful all week) and it really shows.

This is the photo from my spot... Look at that blue sky - it really is a beautiful fall day. But yes I am spending it inside watching the chiefs game...

The West wall. Originally it had two windows (one on both side of the fireplace) but i scratched them for built -ins...

It was a tough decision, the unwritten rule of building a house I feel is to never scratch a window... BUT after lots of Pinterest and Houzz ideas AND getting the okay from my ladies (my mom and mother in law) I felt much better about making that decision.

This back section is our back porch. and that whole open space will be a french door and two windows (all that have transoms)... It should let in plenty of natural light.

Eat in area windows are to the right and master bedroom windows to the left. I want to put black shutters on the outside of my windows, so here I like that there is plenty of space on the outside to do so.

The backyard view. My Aunt is a landscaper designer, I need to start getting her stuff so that next spring I am ready to go with landscaping. If my farmer is reading this, I am just joking...  :)

The window opening to the far left is my bathroom. It sticks out a little bit so that I have an extra large ledge because it sits right in front of my bathtub. Then I can actually put things on that ledge sort of like a shelf. That's something that my builder came up with. I didn't even think of it and I am so glad that he did. He's been great at thinking of all of the things that I don't think of. Things that may seem to little to me he thinks of and asks about....

I was home from work on Friday getting ready for our Annual Hayride and Bonfire, so I was around peaking out the window every chance I could to watch all of this happen. 

We also got some dirt work done for our ground source heat pump.... I didn't photograph that because it's basically just bigger piles of dirt and lets face it, when you have all of these big, beautiful, perfect, sturdy walls you are done taking pictures of dirt. 

I hope that you all have had a great weekend.... Looks like we have another great week of weather ahead of us.. Happy Fall!

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The Lichte's New Farmhouse.... Week 11

Mother nature..... Rain..... Lots of it.. 

I am doing my very best at staying patient with all of the rain and construction delays that we have been having, but this is week 11 and we don't even have walls. 

Then I remind myself that mother nature.... and rain.... are also the reasons why we also have a record breaking crop (that in turn pays for this house)... SO. I am going to be thankful for everything that I have instead of bummed of the things that I don't have (walls)... 

Well, it wasn't rainy all week, so we do still have quite a bit of progress... Here is my Week 11 view. 

Remember our entire front porch is a storm shelter/storage in the basement. We got the metal put over the top, then there will be concrete poured over that. I always knew that the front porch was going to be big, but now that i can actually envision it a little bit more. (I've even started to find the perfect spot for a porch swing)... You can not have a farmhouse with a huge front porch and no swing...

We got all of our main floor decking on and even a space for the stairs going to the basement cut out. We will not have an open basement staircase to the basement since our basement is not finished, although we will have one huge open staircase going to the 2nd story. 

We have chalk lines throughout the whole floor marking off our floor plan and I can't help but think that means walls are just right around the corner. 

A big 3 car garage is really all that my farmer wanted in a new house. And our plan included a 3 car garage but due to the pesky budget we had to drop it to a 2 car BUT we made it a lot bigger. Today we decided to pull our cars in our garage and check out our space. It's the perfect size... Farmer approved.

Well, that's all that I have on Week 11. My farmer and I are headed to dinner with my brother and sister in law. I spent the weekend in Warsaw at my aunt's cabin and I must admit, I could have spent one more day there. It is just so beautiful - and as always I took a TON of pictures..

Have a great week everyone. It will be a busy one around here, hopefully that means getting back in the fields and getting ready for our annual hayride this next weekend. 

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The Lichte's New Farmhouse Week 10

Guess what? We have wood starting to go up... This is what I have been waiting for.  Ahhh it feels so good to be at this point. 

This is my week by week spot.. We got over 3 inches of rain so you can tell that our smooth fit work from last week is a little rough this week. 

This is the metal that will go on the top of the basement storage room/storm shelter...

3+ inches of rain will delay construction a bit and leave my basement with.... water.... Hopefully this will be the last of it, for a while at least. 

 Well... That's all for Week 10. I know everything is going to start happening pretty fast now. We have already finalized our windows and patio doors, so I can only imagine that we will have actual walls soon.

We have lots of windows on the front our our house (10) and lots on the back of the house (10 plus a french door and some transoms) BUT we have NI windows on the East (the garage) and West side of the house... It will be interesting to see what our natural light situation will be. 

We went with Anderson Windows and it was so great to be able to order all of that stuff locally at out hardware store in town (Community Lumber)...They were very informative and helpful. 

When building a home there are many decisions... Everything down to what grilles you want in your windows. After changing my mind a couple of times, we decided to go with this one. 

(It's a little blurry but just a simple + sign grille in the top only) Very simple, very country. 

I hope that you all have a good week. My farmer will be back in the field tomorrow after a few "rain days"... With the difficult time we had last week it sure was nice to have him home more with me. 

Here's to good weather this next week (for my farmer and my builder)

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The Lichte's New Farmhouse Week 9

Hi Everyone,

We are another week down...

 I was in the middle of writing this post Sunday afternoon... Then tragedy struck. I got that phone call from my sister... The one where I can tell she has been crying, asking if I have talked to mom and telling me not to worry... You know, the kind that just stop you in your tracks and know that your world is getting ready to come crashing down.

My Poppy had a heart attack and he didn't make it. I have a special post planned that I have been writing in my head at night when I can't sleep - so this one is going to be just about the house. We will get back to my sweet Poppy maybe later in the week...

Back to Week 9....We got out concrete floors in our basement and a lot of great dirt work... To all of our workers, I am that crazy lady always walking around with a camera around her neck..

The finished product.... Concrete Floors.... We are SO excited for these..

And that's our Week by Week photo.. Looking at the front of the house from Week 9.

A little alter in the week we got some steel beams put up. This photo is missing one beam, it was too snug of a fit, so I think that they had to do a little cutting.

In addition to dirt work, we got lots of gravel... This is the back porch. Originally we had a screened in porch for the plan, and although I love screened in porches, I think just an open but yet covered porch will be a great grilling area.

One thing that I have been worried about is a steep driveway... Our concrete pad will technically be the ONLY place that our kids will have to ride their bikes someday (well that and the 2100 sq. ft basement) so it was important to me to not have a slope AT ALL... What I thought was impossible with some great dirt workers-they did it... It turned out so much better than I ever really imagined. That dirt work really made it look like a House..

A lot happened during Week 9, and we are currently on Week 10 so I can promise a lot more progress this week too.

Thanks to everyone for their kind words with my families loss this past week.

Hug your people a little tighter... What I would give for just one more.

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The Lichte's New Farmhouse Week 8

It's been 8 weeks..... and even though I am ready to start seeing some more progress (Wood) it has been so much fun to see everyday things happen. That's one perk to building about 150 from where we are currently living. Well that and the fact that we don't have to move anywhere until our house is finished.

Here is my progress picture... Week by week I stand in the same spot and here is Week 8....

Might not be a lot different than last week, but we have LOTS and LOTS of gravel. The gravel was used to fill in some around the foundation. The rest will be back filled with dirt.

It's really nice to not have my foundation filled with rain water from the past 8 weeks. It was beginning to be a nesting place for mosquito's. 

This is the back of the house - look how great our view is going to be from the front porch (minus the pile of dirt)

About a month ago we made the decision to install a Ground Source Heat Pump. It was a huge decision and we didn't take it lightly. After plenty of research, number crunching, talking with people who had one installed, we decided to go for it. It's a lot more money up front for the unit and installation, but in the end saves money and will pay for itself. Plus there is the perk of not having a noisy unit outside... That's right - there is no AC unit, everything is installed underground. That's all I am going to say about that, because really that's all the farther my knowledge goes on that subject. AC/Heating units are my farmers job, I like to concentrate on other things, like light fixtures.

We had all of our basement plumbing done during Week 8. We are not finishing our basement (we probably won't ever finish it) You know, until we have teenagers and their loud music and eye rolling annoy us.... But for now it's just plumbed for a future kitchen area and bathroom. 

Week 9 (which started today) we are supposed to be getting concrete floors in the basement. That will take a couple of days, and then after that hopefully we will begin framing. I am ready to see the house really start to go up. I feel like I have starring at the same hole in the ground and I am ready to start looking up. 

 

Have a great week everyone. My farmer is in full Harvest mode - we are still eating, breathing, sleeping, thinking...all things corn..

 

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The Lichte's New Farmhouse Week 7

Well it's harvest time on the farm so my farmer has been working around the clock. I have secretly been excited for Harvest to start. Don't get me wrong, I miss eating dinner at a decent hour, having my farmer around more and our social life (or lack thereof) will revolve around the weather for the next several months. BUT - it's a great time for me to get some of my little "projects" done.

On the list this harvest season is redoing my kitchen table and chairs, upholstering my new "used" wing back chairs and cleaning out our detached garage. You can bet I will have posts about my table and chairs and my attempt to reupholster something, but I think I will leave the garage cleaning out to your imagination. No need for a blog post about that one - It will be just me wearing boots and gloves in an attempt to steer clear of any spiders...

Back to the house, last week was week 7.... Here is my week to week point of view. Look at that big blue beautiful sky..

 We finally got all of our concrete walls done. Waiting on mother nature was frustrating at times (we are used to it - we are farmers) but our walls look great... After the concrete was poured and the forms were ripped off the basement walls were coated tar.

We do not have a walkout basement and because of the front porch expanding the whole front of the house these two windows are the only basement windows that we have. 

We decided to turn underneath of our front porch into a "storm shelter"... We had actual concrete walls poured on both sides and will eventually have a concrete roof as well. It will be great peace of mind with the bad storms that we sometimes get here in the Midwest PLUS with our bigger front porch it also adds about 750 square feet of storage. I plan to have shelves built in there and it will be a great for canned items... 

Those are the two holes for our garage doors... I plan to have the barn style garage doors. 

That's all on our house. This next week might be kinda slow around here. Maybe a little bit of plumbing stuff for the basement and some drainage tile for the exterior of the foundation. But I do have a meeting with the window guy.

From the paper it looks like we have a pretty decent amount of money budgeted for windows, but I have been warned that it will not go far. I love windows, I don't want to have to lose any, but I have several areas of my home that have a grouping of 3 and 4 windows together. To stay in budget we will make those groupings down to 2 and 3 if necessary. Who am I kidding - it's going to be necessary. (I hope my farmer is reading this-he will be proud)

I love transom windows. I think I have known the definition of transom since I was 6 years old (thanks Mom)... I was always that weird kid flipping through my moms Southern Living magazines..

I would love to have this from my living room our unto our back porch. (as my farmer says - just looking at that is making us over budget) But come on - isn't it beautiful... 

Or something like this but instead of three sets of doors (cha ching) I'll settle for a door in the middle and windows on the side. 

We have got a very open living area floor plan - it's one of our favorite things about the house, but it limits actual doorways. We do have a perfect little doorway from the front hall to the kitchen and I plan on having a transom above the doorway there like this picture below from... you guessed it... Southern Living.

Well - that's where we are at for now... I'll be hitting house stuff pretty hard since my farmer is in the field. I hope everyone is having a safe and bountiful harvest. I know with the market prices being really low it makes it a little bit tougher (especially when you are building a new home) but I hope you all wake up and go to bed feeling very blessed - I know my farmer and I do.

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