I’ve been continuing to neglect my little corner of the internet these days. We have been SO BUSY around here! Between getting the fields and equipment ready for planting to Bible study, from to getting to know new friends in town to chasing Nora around the farm, we are on the go. But the most exciting thing that happened to us this past week was the pouring of our basement. It’s finally happening!

Let me start with first things first….let’s talk about our house. After working for about 4 months with our architects in Kansas City, we finalized the blueprints for our house back in January. As Eric is the general contractor for our house, this allowed him to go around and get pricing bids for everything we need: air conditioning, electrical needs, plumbing, dry walling, insulation, carpet…the list could go on and on. After getting the bids into the bank, we received our loan and were able to officially purchase our plot (10.01 acres, necessary for agriculture residency) and begin the building process.

The house we designed is a ranch style. We wanted to keep to a traditional farm house style, inside and out. The upstairs is about 2600 square feet and has 4 bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths. The upstairs has a very open layout; upon entering the foyer, you can walk straight forward into the living room with fireplace. The living room opens directly to the right into the kitchen and separate dining room. The entire length of the east wall (living room and dining room) are windows, with access onto the deck from the living room. We wanted to capture the view out over the pond, especially when the sun rises in the mornings 🙂 Walking down the hall to the right of the foyer, you can enter into the laundry room, go downstairs to the basement, the master bedroom/bathroom or go all the way to the end of the hallway to the mudroom and wash room. To the left of the foyer, you can reach the guest bathroom and bedroom, and two additional bedrooms with a Jack and Jill bathroom.

The basement is about 2700 square feet, but our plan is to only finish about 1500 of it. It has an plan for 2 additional bedrooms, one full bath, and extra kitchen and recreation room. And, of course, lots of room for storage and decorations (duh!). We aren’t planning on finishing the basement right away, but is something that we are so excited about none the less! We especially love the fact that our basement is a walk out. We are so in love with our house. It’s everything we have ever dreamed of and more!

Last week, we had our basement dug. The whole process only took about a day, and before we knew it, they were out pouring our footings the very next day. When the footings were done, they came out and placed the forms for the walls and got them poured. about 24 hours later, they were able to come out and remove the forms leaving just the concrete walls to stand. It was amazing to see our house take full shape in so fast a time! Eric and Kim have been out today digging and laying drainage pipes around the foundation and along the inside of the basement walls. The electrician came out today to stake out where our electric boxes will be and we are hoping to get our lagoon dug soon (for those of you who don’t know what a lagoon is, it’s basically a “poop pond” as I call it. We don’t have city sewers out here and won’t have a septic tank, so everything will go into a pond away from the house. Sounds gross, but it’s really quite intriguing!).

Hopefully the floor for our basement will be laid in the near future after the plumbers come in to assess everything. Eric met with both the lumber yard and the company designing our trusses this past week and we are looking forward to getting our trusses brought in in about 3 weeks or so. Then the hammering will finally begin!

Here are a few snap shots of the past week during the foundation laying process. Enjoy!