More Footer Action

As mentioned in the previous post, we had a design meeting on Wednesday with our builder, the windows and doors guy, the site manager, and the framing and truss designer for our house. During that two hour session, we went over in great detail the design plan for the basement, main floor, bonus room over garage, and other considerations. While we had toyed with the idea of a bathroom next to the bonus room upstairs, we decided that the complication it would introduce to the roof truss design not to be worth the cost. So this means we are sticking with the original design and leaving the closet to the bonus room, so that it can be counted as a bedroom.

One feature that could be "new" is an expanded deck in the back. In the original house, we had a screened deck with just a small landing able to hold a grill, with stairs down to the ground level. Now that we have lost our "tree house" view, due to the fact that 22 trees behind the house have given way to an expansive view of the cotton fields to the east, I have become enamoured with the idea of a sitting area outside that would allow us to enjoy an unobstructed view of the night sky. I've asked for conceptual renderings of the idea; we'll see what the cost turns out to be.

In the new basement design, we had decided to add a wall running north-south, to separate a storage space from what we envision to be the open family space. One of the things we had asked the builder to review was a better placement of the support posts at the basement level. During the meeting, he came back with the recommendation of making that proposed wall load-bearing, which along with the use of a floor-truss design instead of standard i-beam joists, will allow us to span the family space without support posts. That, and we can run duct work through the truss, better hiding the climate control system. Of course, to make that wall load-bearing, that means we needed another cut in the pad for a new footer. And, since there weren't other footers under that particular space, they had to run it longer than the wall will be, all the way to the south wing wall footer.

All I need now is a small camera strapped to the back of a toy X-Wing Fighter.

The new footers for the new storm shelter have already been poured. The tractor is sitting inside where the shelter will be.

All things considered, it's been a pretty good week out there.