Bulky, bulkhead :(

While I'm blogging this morning, I thought I should give you a less than exciting update on the house progress. We were at the house twice already this week to look at some "issues" and also for something a little more fun - our electrical walk through. The first visit was Thursday morning to look at ceiling in the basement...we found out earlier this week, to our dismay, that they cannot deliver on the 9ft ceilings throughout our basement that we agreed on in the specs. This is something that we took an obscene amount of time to figure out how to do in the planning stage so we were disappointed to find out they couldn't deliver on this. The problem is that there is a load bearing beam where the return air duct (heating/cooling) needs to run which means that the return air duct needs to drop down below that beam...creating a bulkhead. I tried to Wiki "bulkhead" because I'm finding not everyone is up on the new house building lingo...trust me, I wasn't either until about 3 months ago. Since Wiki didn't work out for me, in my own words a bulkhead is where they have to drop the ceiling down and dry wall around the vent work. You probably don't really even notice bulkheads in many basements but this is one of Brian's pet peeves and one of the main things he really, really, really wanted. I can't blame him...but at this point, it doesn't look like we have many options. Our project manager is working with the engineer next week to see about other options but clearly we don't want to have to sacrifice air flow just to not have a bulkhead and we certainly don't want the house to crash in because the load bearing beam isn't where it needs to be! I probably shouldn't even be telling you about this because if there is a bulkhead in our basement, I don't want it to be what you are looking for the first time you walk in our basement. And point of advice - DO NOT mention it to Brian! Hopefully the 10 ft tray ceiling with crown molding and rope lights in the basement will draw your attention away from the ugly bulkhead.

The second issue was that they didn't have a way to get the air to the 2nd story where the bedrooms are...so they had to run it through the office room. This is already not a real big space and now is taking up room that would have been our built in shelving. This isn't that big of deal because it's in the corner and they are going to make it look decorative. Regardless, still a change from the original plan.

BUT...if these are the biggest struggles we have, I'll take it. I guess you always run the risk of this kind of stuff when you are doing a custom home.

Our second visit on Friday afternoon was much more fun! We got to go through the house with the builder and electrician to talk about outlet placement. Yes, mom, there is an outlet on our mantel and yes, mother in law, there is an outlet on the landing. :) I feel good that we will have what we need but I can't help but be afraid of what we are going to forget. Sometimes after the fact, things seem so obvious.

I didn't get any photos while we were out but you can trust me that things seem to be moving quickly. They were working on the roof, had some of the tin ran for the HVAC unit and all of the outlets and where the lights will be were in place. They told us that they are on schedule to be finished and closed up by end of October!!! We couldn't be more excited about that date which will give us the whole month of November to get out of here...like we will take that long! It's also an away Iowa game weekend which means we don't have to miss another game since there are only a few games we are going to make it to this year. :) So mark your calendars, we might be all set up for a housewarming/holiday party in December.

Sorry no pictures...I'll snap a few this next week. XOXO- j