First walkabout

I had my first opportunity to go inside the house today. I met with the project manager at the site this morning and we walked around the house discussing the positioning of various additional power outlets we had requested. I didn't take any pictures because the house was, to be frank, in a dreadful state. The rain was coming in through the unfinished roof, so there were pools of water all over the place. It was fairly dark, very noisy and the floor was littered with obstacles. I didn't want to walk around with my camera, trip over a piece of AC ducting and kill myself. That being said, I did get to look around a bit so here are my impressions.

The house already feels right. It is everything I hoped it would be, and there's much that surpasses my expectations. Here are the things that I'm particularly happy about:

• High ceilings that make even the smaller rooms seem spacious and grand.
• The height of the raised hearth on the fireplace makes it look expensive.
• The arch window on the stairs leading to the second floor.
• The layout.
• The quality of construction - the house feels solid, even over-engineered. It would take some serious huffing and puffing to bring it down.
• The “morning” room should really be called the “everyday and twice on Sundays” room. It is easily the nicest room in the house. I can't believe we considered not having it at one point.
• Absolutely enormous basement. It goes on forever. By itself, it is as big as the apartment my wife and I live in at the moment.
• The egress window is much larger than I expected and lets a significant amount of daylight into the basement.

We have a couple of days of rain to get through, and then I hope to be able to get out to the site and take lots of interior pictures.