Thursday, October 17, 2013

Our house and Leo's house

Today I am resisting driving down to Coleman.  I am excited because they are planning to start the excavating for his house today but the weather is a little unsure so I am resisting until Leo goes down there and checks out the possible progress.  Maybe I will wait until the weekend or next week when they will have a bit more work down.  Today they are to start digging the hole for the crawl space.  They have to put up the cement block walls (5 blocks high for the people that care) and then they have to pour the footings and he wants a cement floor in that crawl space too.  The water pipe has been laid to close to the house, the electricity is in from the road and at the pole barn and the septic tank and tile field are ready to be hocked up.  Leo took care of all those issues and the company that he is buying the house from is doing the site work so we really are making progress.  
 A couple of weeks ago when I was down there the last time we stopped over at the 10 acres and he helped me see how it will look on the site.  They have been doing some dredging of the creek in the woods and it is cleared out and running free of overgrown plants.  They also built him a 'ford' across the creek so that he can drive back into the woods farther with his tractor.
 This is the site where the house will go with this as the view out his kitchen window.  He has recently mowed it and it looks pretty good for land that has just been reclaimed from the woods.  He and Josh cleared out this site over the past many years.  All the stumps and trees were removed to prepare for the house that he is finally getting.
 This is just another view looking south.  This will be his back yard.  There are a couple of birch trees and of course the pole barn off to the side.  I think it is a beautiful site.
 This past weekend we met Leo in Cadillac for dinner.  Bud and I had looked over the contract and helped Leo with the legal aspects of the house.  As you can see Leo is getting his hair back.  He looks a little 'sober' in this picture but it really was a fun evening.  I think Bud's picture just caught him not smiling.
 This is the best I can do for showing the plans for the house.  I had to blow it up and piece together some parts because the original plan was for a 3 bedroom house and he is getting the 2 bedroom version.
The house is 26' by 42' which makes it 1119 square feet.  The features that we liked were that we were able to modify this plan the most and make it fit his needs.  He liked the size of the living room which will be 24'4" by 13'.  He was able to get this big room by having just 2 bedrooms. He added a door on the right side next to the kitchen so that he can get in and out there if he builds a garage on that side.
The master bedroom has its own bath which is nice.  The 'double closet' look is just because I had to cut and paste a couple views of the plans to get what we are getting.  The guest bath is very nice too because you can see that you can get to it via the back door and from the living room.  That is nice for coming in from the outside and being able to use the bathroom without going through the rest of the house.
The kitchen is nice and open too.  He will be able to see the kitchen from the living room and check on food cooking.
 The laundry room is nice, right inside the back door and there is a coat closet right inside the front door.  I think the plans look nice.
It has been a process but I think we are getting close to getting Leo into a house by the first of December.  I am very happy with that plan.  They told us that the house is already under construction.
 Leo just called a few minutes ago and the contractors are meeting at the site in a half of an hour.  Not enough time for me to go down there right now but I am beginning to think that I may wait a couple days until the digging has been done and the blocks have been laid.  That will show more progress.  It is hard being so far away.  I would be there every day.  Leo is going over there today and meeting with the contractors so that is good.
You can tell that I am excited.  My goal is to get him as excited as I am.  Maybe that is asking too much but I think it will be better when he is actually into his house.
Yesterday Bud and I drove down to Grand Rapids and ordered our new furniture.  I am excited about that too.  It is going to look so nice in our living room.  Bud approved of all the pieces that Eva, Jessica and I picked out a couple of weeks ago.  He sat in all the pieces and thought they were comfortable.  The hardest thing we had to decide was what we wanted to have our 'accent' pillows like.  This whole process has made me excited about decorating this room and changing it around.  Leo will get our blue sofa and the mauve love seat.  We will need to get a cover for the love seat since mauve probably isn't a good color for anyone anymore and especially for Leo's house.  I am sure that we will be able to find something.

After picking our our furniture, we went over to Jessica's house and took her out to dinner.  Eva was busy so she couldn't join us.  It was a nice dinner and great to see Jessica again.  She is also excited about our new furniture since we are getting the exact same sofa and love seat that she and Doug have in their house. She did all the research for us and we love it.  Gray is the new "mauve' but a much nicer color.  I am excited about how to accent the gray colors in our house.  Maybe red will be our accent color.  I saw some beautiful red lamps that would look great. I could also do a turquoise or maybe even an orange/red color.  We will wait on those things until the furniture arrives.

SO, new beginnings for Leo and a new "look' for our house.  Now you will need to visit and see how it all comes together.

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