Going to the showroom...

was a lot of fun and also a little overwhelming. It's very hard to picture the final finished product, but we think we made some good choices and are excited to see our home when it's finished. We'll share pics at each stage of the building process. :-) This is all so exciting!

Our Garden Tub with Shower

This is our garden tub with shower that will be in the master bathroom.

Master Bathroom Tile

This is the tile that we chose for the master bathroom.

Cabinets over Potty

We chose to also add cabinets over the potty in the kids' bathroom, so this just shows that too.

Kids' Bathroom

This is what will be in the kids' bathroom. We just changed the cabinet space a little bit so that the right side will all be pull out drawers for them.

The Bath Lights

The bath lights will be like these...just all in chrome.

The Stair Light

This is the light that will be on the staircase.

Lighting Package

We chose to just pick the included light package and not upgrade anything. We're going to pick out our own stuff with time and we're having them block and wire for the ceiling fans that we'll eventually get in the living room and the bedrooms. These just show all the lights that will be in the breakfast nook, bedrooms, and all that.

The Front Light...

The front porch light.

The doors and hardware

The doors that we chose for all the bedrooms and such are all 6-panel doors and the hardware for the knobs and such are all like this picture...all satin nickel.

Countertop in Kitchen

the picture we took didn't really turn out, but here is the sample picture that I found online. The color is called "neutral glaze."

Kitchen Sink

Here's the kitchen sink and faucet that we chose.

Cabinets in the Kitchen

The cabinets in the kitchen will have the crown moulding on them. We thought that added a lot and looked really nice. Everything will be the really light color.

Cabinets

The cabinets in the lighter color (far left) are the cabinets we chose in our home. All the cabinets in our house will match one another.

Our Kitchen Tile

Our kitchen tile that we chose.

Our Fireplace and Carpet Choice

Here is the fireplace that we chose. We also chose the same ceramic tile choice going around it. It's a chocolate mousse. The carpet sample that you see in beige is also the carpet color for all of our carpeting that we chose. It's a satin pearl.

The Niche Wall with Bookshelves

We'll have a set of 3 of these going along the niche wall that is going to separate the living room from the playroom. The bookshelves will face the living room.

Small Bathroom Tile

We picked this tile to go in our little powder bath (the half bath), and the kids' bathroom.

Entry Tile

This is the entry tile that we chose when you first walk in the front door. We liked this as we didn't think it would show too much dirt with the dark grey specks in it.

Front Door

This was our front door design, however we changed it a tiny bit. They had a newer model that had a small circle in the middle of the design and I liked that a little bit better. Our front door will also be the dark green that was shown in the exterior colors that I showed you earlier with our brick choice.

House Exterior Colors

The brick will be all over the front of the house and on half of the side walls. The other part of the side walls and back of the house will be the gray color that you see (big swatch). We decided to do our front door in the green color that you see on the little swatches.

Our Brick Style on Another House

This is a picture of an existing house that shows the brick style that we chose. Our home will not be designed like this on the exterior, however you can get an idea of how the brick color will look when it's on the house.

Our Brick Style

This is the brick style that we chose for the outside of our home. It's still a little dirty here as they don't powerwash them when they put them out to choose from, but they do show you existing homes that have that brickstyle too and I'll show you a picture of that next. Anyway, our brick style is called "Rhodes." I think it will look nice.

Final Showroom Choices

Ever since signing the contract and picking out our lot, we've been venturing out to the showroom to see how we wanted our house to be. It was a little overwhelming with all the choices and only being able to see a square of this and that and trying to figure out whether it all went together. We decided to go with neutral colors so that it would always match whatever decorating we decided to do. We just had our final appointment out there on Memorial Day and turned in our final choices and turned the last of our earnest money in. We also got to see our blue prints and everything as those had been ordered and we had to add our plugs and phone jacks that we wanted as additional ones off of those. They'll start excavation and they'll lay our foundation in about 4-5 weeks. I'll show our choices that we made for our home to you next. :-) We're pretty excited!!

Our elevation...

This is a picture of one of the houses that is in our neighborhood that shows the elevation that we chose. We'll have the extended covered porch like they do and the outside of our home will look like theirs. Our brick color is different than theirs though. But, I'll get to all that in a minute.

That ends the tour of the model home...

Well, that ends the tour of the model home that is our exact floor plan that we chose. The video does it a lot more justice, however we wanted to be able to put up some pictures for those of you who couldn't view the video.

The Half Bath

There is also a little half bath downstairs that we only have video of. It's pretty small with just a toilet and a pedastal sink, but at least we won't have to run upstairs everytime we need to use the bathroom and our guests won't either. :-)

4th Bedroom

I don't have a picture to show you of this...however the game room that is upstairs, we are turning into a 4th bedroom. We'll have to show you after our house is built as we didn't take pictures of that area, however it is in the house video if you can see that.

Master Bathroom

Here's our master bathroom. We'll have the his & her vanities like this one has. Then, the far corner will have the potty, our bathtub in the center will be a huge garden tub with a shower, and then on the otherside of the bathtub will be a walk-in linen closet.

Master Bedroom Sitting Room

This shows the sitting area in our bedroom.

The Master Bedroom

Here is part of our bedroom...off to the left of the bed on the wall that you can't see will be Andy's walk-in closet. If you were to walk straight out from the end of the bed to the other wall, it opens up into a huge walk-in closet which will house Jess' stuff and Andy's render farm of computers searching for more life forms in space (SETI). He's been waiting to move to set it all up, so I gotta give him some room. I'll have more than enough in my closet.

The Boys Room

Here's the 3rd bedroom and where we'll put our boys.

Deidra's Room

Here's Deidra's room. She can't wait to get in here as this is a lot larger than the room she has now by far. She wants to decorate her room in Tinkerbell right now, but we'll see if she changes her mind later.

Kids' Bathroom

Here's the kids' bathroom upstairs.

Upstairs Hall

This is the upstairs hall. :-)

Stairs

The staircase. In OUR home, because we chose to have the extra set of kitchen cabinets on the left side of the staircase...that side will be solid where the stair rail is with an enameled top that will match our walls. The stair rail on the right, will look like what's pictured in the natural wood.

Kitchen and Breakfast Nook

Here's what our kitchen will look like. The breakfast nook is off to the left and the door in the back goes into our huge pantry on the left and the utility room on the right. We will not be short of cabinet space or outlets in the kitchen. We get 34 lineal feet of counter top space in here too. We also added an additional little countertop that will come off of the staircase in our home that will give us an additional full cabinet as well as a little countertop over there as well. This model doesn't show that though.

Living and Family Room

Here's a shot of the living room and dining room, although we cut off most of the family room in the picture. In OUR house, the dining room and living room will be separated by a niche wall with 3 bookshelves lining the wall and the bookshelves will be facing the living room. The dining room will become the play room for the kids. The far left corner of the living room will also have a fireplace. :-)

The front of the house...

Remember this is the front of the house of the MODEL home. Ours will have a big porch on the front and a different colored brick. But, I'll get to the pics of our choices that we made at the showroom a little later.

We took pics of the model home...

so you could get an idea of what it will look like for those of you on dial-up that can't view the video we made. I'll be putting them up, hopefully today. It's a whirlwind around here with everything going on, but we're happy.

Our House Plan Video

We went out to another development of History Makers where they have the exact model of our home. We took this video of the model home there so you can get a better idea of what our house will look like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGRLsEn-O1M

Once we can get into our house, we'll share the video of OUR home once it's done as there are some things that we've added as upgrades that this one doesn't have.

A couple pics of our lot...

Here's a couple of pics of our house lot with me standing at the lot line. :-)

We are the proud owners of over 7500 square feet of dirt!

Here's our very own "Sold" sign that we got to place on our lot at 217 Equestrian after signing the contract. We're really doing this! We are so excited!

The Second Floor

We're adding a 4th bedroom upstairs where the game room or 2nd living area would be. This is the only change that we're making upstairs.

The first floor

This will be the first floor of our house. We're going to add a niche wall between the dining room and the living room that is going to be all bookcases. The dining room is also going to be the playroom in our house. We're also going to have an extra little counter in the kitchen coming off the stairwell.

What the outside of our house will look like...

We chose elevation D for our exterior. I can't wait to put rocking chairs out under the awning on the porch.

BTW, we are finally building a house! We fell in love with this house that we saw and were going to bid on it when we found out that the buyers (who were also a foster family) decided that they weren't going to move as they had a chance at adopting their kids. So, our realtor told us that she knew where we could get the same house plan. She took us over to History Maker and we went through the houses and after some thinking and praying, decided to go ahead and start the building process. We're going with the 2751 model. It's 2700 square feet and will be a 4 bedroom, 2 1/5 bath. We are thrilled!