Construction - Day 96

The progress on the house is beginning to be less and less noticeable. The big item this time was that the tile was completed. It's amazing how many options you have for tile, and then they give you just as many options for detail work within the tile. We opted to have a little bit of special work done in the entry hallway as an accent. It turned out very nice.


They also finished painting the outside of the house, including the doors, eaves, and accents around windows.


The entryway is pretty nice, with a 12-foot circular recessed ceiling.


Our lone coach light is just outside the front door. We opted to not get them on either side of the main garage since we're on a corner, and there is a street light right next to us.

Construction - Day 89

The tile started this week, so it's really starting to feel more like a home. The tile color and the kitchen cabinets really look good together - now to select a paint that goes well with both.


They also poured the driveway and walkways in the front. As of now, our plan is to remove the walkways and replace them with other landscaping. Unfortunately, they wouldn't just leave them out for us from the beginning.



The stone detail on the front of the house is a nice accent. We may try to incorporate the same stone on other parts of the landscaping - we'll see...

Construction - Day 82

They put the cabinets in the house this week. All the doors and hardware are up. The light fixtures have been installed throughout. Tile will be laid in about a week. We went and signed off on the granite slabs that they will be using for our kitchen countertops this week, too.




The stone work is also done on the front of the house, and some of the exterior walls have been painted. The garage doors are installed, and they'll pour the driveway sometime this week.

It's starting to feel like a home to us. We've been trying to go out there on a weekly basis so Trent can get used to the new place. Won't be long now...

Construction - Day 61

A lot of big steps were taken on the house over the past week or so. I had a walkthrough with the superintendent to look at the electrical options we had chosen about a week and a half ago. The day after, they put all the drywall up. Two days after that, all the stucco was up on the outside. They say that all the new things done to the house from now on will not seem as big of a deal since all the large-scale stuff is done.

Either way, it seems a lot more real to us now. We can envision where we want to put furniture, how we will paint the walls, and what we will do with the landscaping. It took me a year to put in the back yard in our current house. I can't wait to get started on the new one...


There is an area between the front door and the covered portal that we will make into a small courtyard. We'll build a wall between the two walls shown on the sides of the photo, and put a gate in the portal. It'll be a nice little private area that separates the house from the street.


Doors will be installed next, so we'll need to stop by the sales office and pick up a key next time we go to check it out. We also set up our final walkthroughs. We are scheduled to have the keys delivered on April 20. Good times...

Construction - Day 40

It's interesting to see the differences in building between the house we're in now and our new house. When we signed a contract to build our house in Maricopa, the builders were selling a house a day. We signed in July and we closed in March. It was getting to the point that the trade workers were hard to come by. Shortly after we bought, they were selling homes using a lottery system. Dozens of people were on waiting lists to buy a handful of houses.

Now they're averaging sales of about a house a week and finishing construction in 135 days per house. They have an overabundance of trades, and they're very anxious to get properties off of their hands. Never mind all of the forclosures and short sales out there... but I'm sure you're all more than aware of that.

Seems kind of early for them to be welcoming us to our home, but counting the days, it looks like we're almost a third of the way there.




It still cracks me up to see the chicken wire on the outside of the house.

Construction - Day 24

We stopped by the house after the zoo to check progress. They started framing three days prior to these pictures. It's amazing how quickly things move in the initial stages of a house being built. There is still a lot of finish work that needs to be done on the framing, but the house has really taken shape.

Construction - Day 13

Jessica shot a wedding on Saturday (12/19). Between the ceremony and the reception, we stopped by the new house to check the progress. The slab was poured this week. It really helps to get a feel for how the house sits on the lot, how big the back and front yards will be, etc. It seems like things have moved pretty quickly up to this point.


Here's a detail of the slab. More to come...

Construction - Day 6

We stopped by the house today to sign off on a few things. Construction continues to progress.


Jessica and Avery are right inside our front door in this photo. Exciting stuff!

Construction - Day 1

The agents at Old Stone Ranch where we are having our house built told us that they were scheduled to break ground the week of December 7th. They really weren't kidding! They sent us this picture today, and sure enough, ground has been broken.


We've had them put off getting started as long as possible. The standard build time for Shea homes is 135 days. If things go nominally, that would put us moving in at the end of April. We would like to time things so we move out of our current house just as Trent's school year is finishing up, which is at the end of May. We'll do what we can to push things out as much as possible, but with the housing market the way it is, builders are definitely anxious to get properties off their hands. We'll see how it goes...

Design Center

One of the funnest phases of having a new house built is when you get to pick out all the stuff! Here are some of the items we chose at our design center appointment.

It All Happened So Fast

About 9 months ago when the stock market began to take a dive, we started contributing much less to Kris' 401k at work. Over that period, the funds in our savings started to creep up. We didn't really think about it too much until about a month ago. We thought that we should probably do something with the money since it wasn't doing anything in our checking account and short term CD rates are horrible right now (as I'm sure you've all noticed). Our original intention when moving to Maricopa was to make this our home for about 4 or 5 years, then move to Chandler. It was never really an option up to this point because of the cost of housing up there. Also, we never would have predicted that the housing market would fall so hard in Maricopa.

However, it is something that we really wanted to do for a number of reasons: 1) proximity to Kris' job, 2) more mature infrastructure in Chandler, 3) more and higher quality resources available for Trent since he is getting closer to the elementary school age (the special ed. at the Chandler school district is wonderful). Maricopa has been a great place to live, and we've made a lot of good friends, but when you have to drive 25 miles to get to the nearest Home Depot, Target, sit-down restaurant, movie theater, etc., etc., it starts to wear on you. The school system is pretty dismal out here as well.

So we crunched the numbers and made the decision to make the move. We put our house on the market last Wednesday and by Friday we had six offers. We accepted an offer from an investor who will rent the house back to us on a month-to-month basis until we are ready to move out. Saturday, we signed a contract to have a Shea home built in Chandler (SW corner of Ocotillo and Lindsay). It will be a bit smaller than the one we're in now, and is a 1-story home.



It will be finished around May of next year. We sold for about 60% of our original purchase price and the new house is about 140% the price of what we paid for our current house (for those interested on just how bad the market is out here). We figure that the housing market in Chandler will recover much faster than it will in Maricopa for many reasons, so the investment will have a faster return up there than it will here - at least that's what we're telling ourselves to stay positive when we think about the money lost.

So, it will be back to square one for us. Kris is feeling pretty secure at his job, and he's liking what he's doing. We're not depleating our entire savings for this whole endeavor, so we're still in a decent position financially. We feel that it's the right move to make, given our position in life right now. Anyway, that may be more than you all wanted to know, but we're pretty excited about the new prospect, and it did all happen a lot faster than we had expected.

Trent's Room

Trent's room has been done for awhile now, so I guess it's about time we showed it to everyone.


This has been an on-going project that started when Trent was about nine months old. Of course we wanted to have the nursery all ready and perfect before he was born, but I just couldn't decide what I wanted to do.

We decided to go with a car theme, since he has liked cars ever since he was really little. I took pictures at some classic cars shows and hung those on the wall, along with a framed vintage racing poster.

Kris put up the beadboard paneling. It was a very complicated process, in my eyes. I'm glad he has that engineering mind! I painted the paneling, trim and walls. We also have a cool valance that Kris' sister Kathi made. It's solid blue with metal grommets at the top.

Once Trent is sleeping in his big boy bed, we'll take out the crib and center the dresser on that wall.