# 7 - The Numbers Don't Lie

I mentioned before that the most common question we get is Why don't you just sell?The second most common question we get (from ourselves! And from the brave souls who dare utter it out loud and actually ask us.) is Are you sure it's big enough?A couple weeks ago, I walked outside and thought, "Holy smokes.  I just don't see how ALL OF THIS can fit in all of that."  But, I kept it to myself.  Later that night, right before we went to bed, I said, "Matt, are you sure it's going to be big enough?" And he cracked up not in a funny ha-ha crack up, but in a "Oh, man! I was wondering the same thing." crack up.

It seems like it's not big enough.  But, the numbers do not lie.  I think it seems small for two reasons: 1) The giant open sky makes the area seem tiny in comparison.  Once there's framing, it'll give a more accurate feeling of the space.  2) The rooms aren't going to be enormous.  Like I also mentioned before -- we don't need huge rooms, we just need more rooms.  But even still, our new master bedroom, master bathroom, laundry room and furnace room will be bigger than their current counterparts.

For comparison purposes we did two things:
1. Sent a text to Matt's mom asking her to please measure her living room and let us know how big it is.  Her living room layout is very similar to what our family room will look like - a rectangle room with stairs at one end.  What a relief when she sent the rough dimensions of her living room and they were within a few square feet of our family room.

2. Compared the new square footage to our current square footage.  Our current house is around 1450 square feet.  Our addition is 780 square feet (the footprint of it.  Not including the upstairs bedroom/bathroom).  In our current house 780 square feet contains 1 laundry room, 1 furnace room, 1 entry way closet, 3 bedrooms, 1 hallway, 2 full bathrooms, 2 standard square closets, 4 good size long closets, 1 walk-in closet.  In the addition we'll have 1 bedroom, 1 walk-in closet, 1 long closet, 1 furnace room, 1 laundry room, 1 family room, 1 staircase.  The addition is deeper than our current house and more than half as wide as our current house.

Of course, we considered the size of the addition before we started building and on Matt's drawings all of the new rooms are plenty big.  But, as we started the process and as we walk around the actual area, it threw us for a little bit of a loop.

The numbers really don't lie -- but they're being stinkers and keeping us on our toes! 

That photo above is where I left off.  That indentation in the block wall is where the patio door will go.  At the end of this, we'll have 2 patio doors that exit onto our patio.  One is currently in our dining room and the new one will go here.

The original plan was to pour the slab as one whole pour inside the block walls, through the patio door opening, and outside the block wall to meet up with the current patio.

 

But after some thought, Matt decided that he would prefer to have insulation on the inside of the patio door and not just one big slab going from inside to outside.  A lot of heat is lost that way.  And my feet do not like to be cold.   So, Matt and Ezra spent a portion of last week building a little patio door curb (for lack of a better word).  Insulation will go on the inside wall of the curb and the concrete for the patio will be poured right up to the outside of the curb.  First, we had these two figure out how many cubic feet of concrete we would need to fill that area.  And we got to give them the obligatory parent speech about, "See?! You really do use math in real life!"

 

 

And then Matt and Ezra went to town framing and pouring the curb, and the girls and I went to town shopping for dresses for each of us for my brother's wedding! When we returned the curb looked like this (and we had 1 of 3 needed dresses.)

 

 

The Curb.  Patio door will sit on it. 
They can't do this with block because you would see the holes beneath the patio door. 
The white on the block walls in these photos is foam insulation, and a piece of that will also go right alongside the new curb.



This all happened over the weekend, and once the week started, things really started taking off! 

Our plumber had a starring role this week.  On Monday, he came to tie into our sewer line.  See that last picture of our curb?  See that straight white sewer pipe in the background?  The one I laughed at Matt for photographing?   Notice this photo - see the new pipes attached to the old?  The plumber tied into our current sewer line so we can connect all of our new plumbing to it.  Outside, near Matt, is the new sewer clean out (I'm 99% sure that's the clean out). 

And then, in the photo above Matt is digging for a sleeve, (added during the footer and walls process), where the water line will run.  Blue is water, white is sewer.  So the water will enter the addition from this side through the blue line and exit through the white.  It took a lot of digging (you can't tell how deep that hole is, but it's deep!), but he found the sleeve, ran the water line through and seated it in its appropriate location.  The plumber came back on Tuesday to stake it so it won't shift during the pouring of the slab.

Once this was staked, the foundation crew came back to pour some more gravel.  The plumber uses the gravel to seat the pipes exactly where they need to go. 

The pipes in the foreground are for our bathroom sinks, toilet and shower.  The pipes are left tall so that when the slab is poured, there's no chance of them getting buried. They'll be cut to the appropriate height later in the process.

 

The kids use the gravel to seat themselves and play for a good long while. What's not to love about gravel?!  Sensory adventure!

Can you see the rainbow?

Up next is the foundation crew again.  They'll come and pour more gravel, grade it, and get ready to pour.

Except - we threw them a little monkey wrench that might delay things for a week or two.  We're like those wacko homeowners on all the HGTV shows who start out saying, "We want a new house and for as cheap as possible!"  And then, "But we would really love diamond studded counters and a separate double-sink bathroom for our pet iguana."

We changed our heating plan, and now we're hoping/planning to heat with radiant heat. As in - heat in the floors! ON MY FEET! ALL THE TIME! FOREVER! NO COLD BATHROOM FLOORS!!! My body totally relaxes just thinking about it. It actually won't add any (or very much at all) cost to the project, it'll just shift some of the expenses from one line item to another.

We're in the studying phase of this and waiting for quotes.  Once we decide, we'll order the supplies and lay the radiant heat pipe ourselves in the gravel before they come to pour the slab.  Fun family project.  Minus the iguana.