Things are Moving Along Quickly!

I had not been out to the site since the last post in March, thinking it was going to take Rick's team longer to get the land ready. However, blessed with the gift of relatively good weather, Rick's team has been rocking and rolling on getting the slab ready to pour. Hopefully his team will be pouring concrete next Friday, April 11.

Here's a picture of the form for the slab being pieced together by Rick's team. We also finished all of our window selections this week, nailed down the plumbing fixtures and have already done all of the paint colors for the interior. We're finalizing some guidance for the electrical contractor this week for placement of the floor outlets in the gameroom and any additional outside stubs we may want before they pour the slab next week. After all this time of our house being purely theoretical (on paper and in our heads), it was really exciting to see some actual forms in the ground!

Keep checking back... if the weather cooperates, we'll keep moving along quickly.

Permits Have Been Approved!

The city-parish permit office accidentally called me today to tell us that our permits had been approved for building our house! After calling me, she called our builder Rick to let him know he could pick up the permits. We're one step closer to turning some dirt.

We Have an Electrical Pole & Box

Yesterday I went by the lot and our electrician had installed a temporary pole and a box to hold the electrical meter. As soon as our permits are approved by the city-parish, we'll be able to get Entergy out to hook up the meter and get us ready for power to our site for building.

We also have a little sign marking our lot and our address. Before you know it we'll start seeing the framing for the slab!

We've Closed on Financing

On Friday, February 29 (yes, leap day), we closed on the financing for our new home and gave our builder, Rick Vinyard, authorization to proceed. This move means that the beginnings of construction are imminent, as we are waiting on permits from the city-parish and we'll be turning some dirt very soon!

We'd like to thank the folks at IberiaBank for all their hard work through the lending process. Building a custom home isn't like financing a regular home buy and our house is especially tricky because of the ICF construction and green construction elements. We'd like to thank Justin Tregre who was our closing agent and who will be working with us for the drawdowns with the builder. We'd especially like to thank Ferol Hebert who worked her magic with financing options and made this all possible. If you're looking for financing options, definitely check them out by calling Ferol at (225) 921-0829. We'd also like to give a shout out to the folks at Signature Title, they've handled both of our closing so far (the land, and now the construction loan), and their service is really great. You've got to have a title company, and as they say it, "put their name on the line everyday," so check them out at (225) 767-7777.

Habitat Home & Garden Show This Weekend!

The Capital Region Builders Association (CRBA) is hosting it's annual Habitat Home & Garden Show this weekend at the Baton Rouge River Center. Hours are Saturday, 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

This year's theme is Green Construction! Come out and see the latest and greatest of suppliers and builders who work with environmentally friendly materials and techniques.

Our very own AWESOME BUILDER Rick Vinyard will be there with his Precision Construction crew and you can see a section of our wall construction live right there at his booth.

The Habitat show sort of represents an anniversary for us because it was at this event last year that we found Rick and our designer John Guillory to begin doing the plans for our new home.

P.S.: We may have some really exciting news on Friday, so check back here!

What Makes An Awesome Builder?

I've heard that when you build a custom home, the hardest thing to find is a good builder. In that regard we are extremely lucky to have found an AWESOME builder named Rick Vinyard.
Rick (the one in the ball cap, not the hard hat) is pictured here pouring concrete into one of his ICF homes under construction in Baton Rouge.

So What Makes an Awesome Builder?

1) True custom home builders only build homes to their client's specifications. Rick Vinyard is a custom builder. He doesn't start a house and then give the owner a couple of options toward the end. He starts from the beginning, owning his client's vision of their home and then directs the building of that home to their specifications and desires.

2) Rick actually has an office. A real office with desks and computers and chairs where you can sit down with him and really talk through things. I would compare Rick to going to see a very good doctor... anyone who has sat with a really good doctor in their office, not the exam room, sees a place with books and evidence of recent research and a real investment in their craft. That's Rick Vinyard, he's like a doctor of home building. Rick does research, he goes to manufacturers and understands how their products are made and installed for optimal quality. If there's some kind of special material his client wants, he goes out and becomes a distributor of the material so that he can get that material at a better cost and learn as much as he can about the application of that material. It's like buying a fine piece of art, the overhead for the creation may be a bit higher than if you bought a piece of pottery at the local discount store, but the quality, craftsmanship and art are unparalleled in a fine piece of art.

3) Rick is a great project manager. He has crews of people that have a proven track record of working with him and then he manages them well. If your builder picks up assorted labor from the home improvement store parking lot, this is a bad sign. You want a builder who people want to work for because those people are going to do quality work... and Rick accepts nothing less from his people.

4) Rick is a master communicator. It helps that he can be seen on his jobsites with his laptop in tow, sending e-mails and keeping track of information. Before we even had a contract signed with Rick, it was less than a day turn around on getting an e-mail response from him. Now that we have a contract, he still responds with the same swiftness. We also feel comfortable talking with Rick. If your builder gives you a greasy, used car salesman kind of vibe... RUN because there's a lot in building a house that can be hidden from the homeowner by a shoddy builder. Rick is very down to earth, very approachable and comes across as the honest broker you want giving you advice on choices you are going to live with for a very, very long time.

5) Rick always has mud on his boots. In fact, most times at his office, his boots are outside because he doesn't want to track dirt everywhere. Look for this sign with a good builder, a guy who's a little dirty from actually being at the jobsite means he'll actually be supervising the quality of your home. Rick takes that even a step further as a true craftsman, as seen in the picture above, he can't help getting his hands dirty by actually doing some of the work on his homes.

Bottom line, an awesome builder has an attention to detail, a commitment to quality and a focus on his individual clients. Everyone we've talked to and all other houses we've seen, people who have built with Rick are extremely pleased with his work. That's the hallmark of an awesome builder and we were extremely lucky to have found ours. If you'd like to check out other work that Rick's done, visit his Website at Precision Construction Group.

ICF: It's Actually Pretty Easy Being Green

The immortal Kermit the Frog sang about the challenges of being green more than 30 years ago. Today, it's a lot easier than most people think with innovations in building materials such as ICF or insulated concrete forms.

Our house is being built with the ECO-Block system (ECO-Block Website) that reduces waste in construction, but also reduces energy costs, improves indoor air quality and creates a quiet house free from the intrusions of ambient environmental noise (like trains and sirens). ECO-Block can withstand 250 mile-per-hour winds, making it extremely resistant to storm damage. Concrete breaks down at a much higher temperatures than average house fires can create, making the construction fire resistant as well. We wanted our dream home to last forever, a possibility with this innovative construction method.

The main element of ICF/ECO-Block that blew us away was that our home will require 1/2 the tonnage of HVAC of a comparable non-ICF home. In South Louisiana, that efficiency nets a significant energy savings and a much more comfortable home during the unbearable summers months. ICF construction also makes homeowners and builders eligible for energy efficiency tax savings and special energy efficient mortgages that can make the green building process more feasible.

How Does ICF Work?

ICF construction uses layers of Styrofoam and other recycled materials on either side of six inches of concrete. The result is very solid 12-inch thick walls that keep out noise and environmental pollutants while retaining an energy efficient temperature inside. Our builder is an advocate of envelope construction on this type of home, meaning that the entire house is sealed with a high-filtration HVAC system that keeps the indoor air clean and humidity regulated. The exterior can be treated with stone, brick, shingle or stucco finishing and the interior walls take sheetrock just like any other construction. Plumbing and electrical rough ins are done very similar to typical construction, only special knives are used to cut away the interior foam for pipe and wiring. Exterior walls do require extra hardware for hanging pictures or other items, but the bracket system used to hold the Eco-Blocks together allows for special hanging gear to be used.

As the walls go up, we'll be providing detailed pictures of the days leading up to the big concrete pour. For more pictures of ICF construction in progress, visit our builder's website at www.pcgbr.com.

Sneak Peak at the Plans

Here's a sneak peak at our floor plan. Click on the drawing to enlarge. This post is for informational purposes, folks, don't try to download this and create your own plans. You probably won't get very far with a .png file anyway!

Meet Our Designer: John Guillory

We have approval of our final plans by the structural engineers, leaving us one final approval by Lexington Estates developer, Greg Flores, before we can break ground. In light of finalizing our plans, we thought we'd take this opportunity to introduce our designer, John Guillory.

John is a master at translating people's thoughts into reality on paper. He worked with us for a long time before we even had a signed contract to guide us in the decisions we needed to make to help our dream become detailed house plans. John is a very straightforward designer and his expert advice (often put as, "here's why you don't want to do that...") helped make our plans not only functional but cost efficient as well.

We loved working with John, not only because of his incredible skill, but because he was so much fun to work with. John's creative approach to home design allowed us exceptional input into the design of our new home to make it exactly what we envisioned. We found John to be extremely professional and personable, a combination that provided an easy working relationship.

If you have a housing dream you want turned into plans, contact him at his company, Custom Home Design at 225-292-2232, visit his Website at www.chd-plans.com or e-mail him at guillory@cox.net. He has a number of plans available on his Website that offer an excellent starting point for a custom home or he can sit down with you and draw out your house room-by-room on his drafting board.

Where is Lexington Estates?

I was standing on our lot a few weeks ago and realized I could literally see the levee of the Mississippi from our lot. Lexington Estates (for those familiar with Baton Rouge) is just past Bluebonnet on Nicholson (headed toward Iberville Parish) next to the University Club Golf Course and neighborhood. The mighty Mississippi is less than a mile away and the land is home to fertile green pastures of former farmland.