15 September 2003

So, how did two transplanted Yoopers who had clung to a toe-hold on the southern edge of Michigan come to be building a house in Indiana? Well, it was a combination of things:

First, Mairi was born and all of a sudden that hour I spent on the road each day (half an hour in, and half an hour back home) seemed a lot longer. When I returned to full-time, Chris started bringing her in for lunch every day — so now we were each spending an hour in the car, and Mairi was away from home for two hours mid-day.

Then, this past spring, my sister-in-law Tracy accepted a job at Notre Dame. In moving to the area, she and Lou decided to move to South Bend, and found a nice, new house in a nice, new neighborhood. So new it wasn't even finished the first time they brought Chris and I to see it — and we were pleasantly suprised by the quality of the construction.

We began having "what if" conversations, which led to us putting a down-payment on a lot, "just in case". After many more conversations with various people, we decided that the opportunity to live in a brand new house, with a floorplan we'd chosen, a few doors down from family and much nearer to work, church, shopping and pretty much everything else in our lives was just too good to pass up.

Mairi becomes more mobile every day, and the house which was wonderful for two adults, and would be fine with older kids, just works less and less well for us. We're both looking forward to moving to the new house as soon as it's completed, which they currently tell us should be sometime in December.

The folks building our new house are Weiss Homes, the neighborhood is Farmington Hills, and the floor plan is the Tippecanoe (the same floorplan as Lou and Tracy's house, as it turned out). This is a computer drawing of the front elevation for our house, colored by moi (for photos of samples of the siding, shutters & roofing, see the Photos section). It's not perfect, but it provides an idea of what our new house will look like: two stories, a two-car attached garage, and a porch along the whole front of the house.

On the first floor the left front window is in our "Great Room" (a.k.a. living room), which runs the depth of the house and has two more windows looking out on the back yard. The right window looks into the den, back of which is the kitchen. Behind the garage, to the right of the kitchen and back entrance, is a full bath (ok, technically it's a 3/4 bath — it has a 60" shower but no tub).

On the second floor the left two windows are the Master Bedroom, while the window towards the garage is one of the smaller bedrooms (the third upstairs bedroom faces the backyard). The window over the garage doors looks into a "Bonus Room" or FROG ("Finished Room Over Garage"), which has two additional windows on the back right corner.

The basement although unfinished is a "look out basement" with windows in the left and back foundation walls. There will be a deck off the back of the kitchen and dining area, with steps down to the backyard.