Project Info....

Guess this should have been my first post - please forgive me - Blogger Virgin here....

Several years ago, my husband and I, my parents and my brother and sister in law bought 160 acres outside of a major city in Heartland Central. Our plan is to build a home that will last us through all our family's stages - raising 3 kids, entertaining, growing old. My parents have already finished building and are currently on the land. My brother's family hasnt started construction. We have footings and stemwalls.

The house will be a walkout basement, main floor and a loft over the main floor that will be our master bedroom. We designed the house ourselves and since we will never sell and we have no covenants, we got "creative".

Kids are in the basement with media room and a play room downstairs. The main floor is just a large open space with kitchen and dining areas as well as a "keeping room" that will keep our life in order :) The kitchen as a large center island which will house a slide underneath that goes down to the basement in the center of the kids area.

The loft overlooks the kitchen, dining room and the living room.

The project was originally to be a walkout basement with a metal structure over - but our ICF basement builder asked to bid the project. Why not? Well, he came in under what we would have spent with the steel, the framing crews, the insulation.... It will be great. The thermal mass of the concrete will hold its temperature. That means that we will need a smaller HVAC system to ensure that it kicks on and off at a regular inteval otherwise, with a conventional sized unit to the house, the HVAC would kick on once a day - not a good thing. It also means that it will have a slow heat loss in the event of a loss of power, which happens usually about every year with a good ice storm here.

The structure is a rectangle with a single slope room that goes from 30' from bottom of basement to roof on the loft side to 26' on the other side of the house - basic - classic - modern.