Well, well, well...where to begin...Much has happened since my last post. I hope everyone had a great holiday season and are enjoying a wonderful new year so far. We had a good time ourselves, but it's nice to get back into a little bit of a routine again. First off, as some of you know we will be adding a new member to the Brasher family come this June. We will be going for our 20wk sonogram on Thursday and will let everyone know if Drew will have a little brother or sister coming his way :-).

Now with the house, the last posting was well before we even got approved for our construction loan and now we are well on our way as you can see from the pictures. All and all, things are going well so far, but there are a few lowlights to go along with the highlights, but that is to be expected :-):

• Getting electricity going has been a big chore. We still have none and are using generators for construction, but are hopeful that will be up and running in another month. One high point is that the cost of PEC running a line to our house is well below what we had been first informed could be a possibility, but still a $5000 addition to our bottom line...
• A surprise to us was the difference in slab height between the front and back of the house, sooo we will have to add stairs and railings to all porches, and even the carport at the back of the house...But as our builder told us "If you can't fix it, feature it!" We shall see how this all turns out :-)...
• Fireplace or no fireplace. Our parents think we are crazy but our final decision is no fireplace INSIDE the house. A few reasons why...we will not have gas running to our house and there's no such thing as an energy efficient wood-burning fireplace. We have worked hard and are spending more money in other areas to achieve an energy efficient and environmentally healthy home and it seems counter productive, and costly. We will be adding a cool fire pit or outdoor fireplace at some point, but nothing indoors.
• We are to the point of adding windows and siding, and then roof so from the outside our house will look complete very soon :-)-YEAH!...One big snafu though...our windows (which are all custom sized) were delivered as retrofit windows, not new construction windows...this means they are missing a lip around them that enables the framing crew to easily install. We are in the midst of trying to figure out a solution that will not slow us down too much.
• We found out some exciting news from our spray foam insulation guy...we will actually be achieving an energy star rating on our home as a whole, complete with an official certificate which will be great if we ever resell or need to refinance, this will add much value. Many people build with energy efficient and other green practices, but unless they have true documentation from a 3rd party, it is not recognized by appraisers.

I'll be back for an update in a few weeks, hopefully at that point we will have the whole window snafu resolved and I'll be able to show you a complete outside shell of our house! Until then...