The 'hood

So some sarcastic dude went ahead and put together a Judgmental Map of Denver. If you want the full story click on the image of the map below and it will take you to a Westword write up on it. Anyone who knows me knows that I love myself some judgmental and un-politically correct generalizations (I'm sorry, they are funny).  For all the Denverites, enjoy.

So let's see where the McG's live and where they are going (yes I'm talking in the 3rd person)....

Well, we are currently in City Park West which happens to be sort of sandwiched in between "tattoos", "young active hobos" and "foodies." Since we are sans tattoos and have a home, I guess we're foodies? Um, ok. I do in fact love food, oh, and I often grocery shop at the not-so-lovely "UnSafeway" also featured on the map. If only we were a few blocks further north we could be gangsters.

Now when we started our house search the neighborhood that I was campaigning to be in (Park Hill, just east of our current place) is marked as "Wealthy Drive-By's"  (clearly I'm not that, as John refused to drop that much money on a 2 bedroom bungalow). And I often found myself driving through "people's bosses" and "almost rich" looking for houses thinking "damn it, why am I not rich?"

So where will be going? Well folks, just look where it says "Gay-pleton." That's right, Gaypleton! Well sorta. We are actually going to be right where it says "Yuppies" and "All the babies in Denver" (I'm pretty sure our house is being built where the "i" of the word "in" is). Considering we both graduated from Miami University (aka J.Crew U), appreciate a good Polo shirt, and have a baby, we might fit this stereotype. I just threw up, and had an awful self realization. I'm going to bag up all my polo's for Goodwill next weekend.

Ok, on the plus side at least we are on the "gay" side of Stapleton and not the "stab" side.... safety first, and my gay friends have better taste than most so I'll take that as a compliment. I'm pretty sure this also means well manicured yards, and "welcome muffins" from the new neighbors. Bring it on!

Framed Up

Exterior w/ Hardie Board

This week was some new housing milestones... all the interior walls are framed up! We did a walk-thru with our builder to confirm the framing, and despite all of our changes and my picky expectations they really got it right. There was one minor tweak and that was it...most impressive! The exterior has the Hardie Board going in, so it's really starting to take shape. We are also only ones on the block with a 2nd floor balcony (off our master), and I have to admit that is one of the coolest things as we see it all come together....John already has visions of having a beer up there while listening to the Rox's game while the sunsets, and I can't say that isn't a really good plan.

My Fireplace all framed up!

Validation:  (not that I needed it) The builder agreed during our walk-thru that moving the fireplace was a really great decision, thankyouverymuch. And to think all the backlash I took over that....

Kitchen looking towards the island

Framing for our shower ... makes me happy to see our customization taking shape!

What is this?? Oh, it's just a mountain view from our master bedroom balcony. Damn straight.

Basement

Cherry Pie Park - Across the street 

So this is cool...  there are 5 "pocket parks" in our area of Stapleton (Bluff Lake) that will be based on the 5 senses, and the park right across the street from us is called the "Cherry Pie Park." This particular park is based on the sense of taste, so they are planting a bunch of berries and whatnot in this park that are up for the pickin'! Pretty sweet....especially since Ian is a fruitaholic. We can just waddle on over an pick what we want for a snack. Interestingly they are relocating a bunch of the landscaping for these parks, and the big tree you see in the background was actually just relcoated from the Denver airport. 

One step closer to play dates

The house marches on and we are one step closer to Ian having a street full of friends! Can you believe how quickly the block is shaping up?! Remember in my last post the 2 houses to the left were nothing but a hole in the ground.

Here's the latest progress: the windows are in, most of the walls are framed, and they are beginning to install insulation.  Oh, and I went inside again to scope out that progress...

Up close and personal

The living room....looking towards the fireplace

Standing in the dining area looking towards what will be the kitchen/wall of cab's

Looking towards open staircase and living/dining

And if you want a little sneak peak at what else we have planned for the interiors you can see that here!

Raise the roof

I hope to have 5 minutes to post a quick recap of our holidays, but until then... I thought I'd share some progress on the house. Last time we drove by we pretty much just had a hole in the ground and a poured foundation. So we were shocked when we drove by on New Year's Day how much progress had been made...

WOW! The whole first floor is framed up!

Of course I went running inside to check it out.  I love seeing it all come together. 

looking towards the corner of the living room

Standing towards the back of the house looking to the front

Panoramic of the street view (it's a little "fish-eye"). Unreal how quickly it's coming together.

Then we went back yesterday on the 5th, and we are almost under roof! In just a week span. These guys are rocking and rolling. In fact they were all on-site working on Saturday so I resisted the urge to go inside and check it out.

Raise the roof baby! 

A street view of the progress. (Note: the house to the right of ours wasn't framed earlier in the week and now the 2nd story is almost up). 

Check out my hole

Lookie, lookie we have a hole!! Pervs get your minds out of the gutter... I'm talking about the hole that they just dug for the foundation of our new house! That's right we broke ground!! David Weekly (the builder) promised us that it would be in the month of November, and they just squeaked in on the 30th, but kept up their word nonetheless. John asked if he could drive the backhoe for the groundbreaking; and unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) was not allowed.  So, Our David Weekly sales coordinator, Liz, of course took this as an opportunity to tease John a bit and instead bought him a bright-yellow toy backhoe...Ian will enjoy it!

So without further ado, take a peek at our fresh hole...

Ain't she a beaut!

A view down the street 

And soon enough, we will have this....

Well, not exactly this (this is the builder rendering of our model),
but our paint, brick, etc aren't the same colors. 

In the meantime we've picked out all of our finishes, which was quite a feat. It only took us 3 meetings at their design center instead of the standard 1 (maybe 2). Thankfully our coordinator, Shelly, at the Design Center turned out to be a friend of a friend so she was super patient, and even got John a beer mid-way thru our first meeting when he about choked over the cabinet numbers.  It's funny, I could pick out finishes all day for my clients without thinking twice, but for myself it is so stressful. I find myself analyzing every decision. When push came to shove there were very few things that we went with the "builder" options, and somehow we did it within our max budget that John determined.  Come to think of it I think the only places we went with the builder finishes are Ian's bathroom (he doesn't care, right?), and the laundry room. I'm thrilled though because that means that our place will be unique. When we met with our superintendent, Scott, for our final builder pre-construction meeting and he was going through the list of things for our place he must have said "huh, never done that before" at least 10 times. 

The one thing that I learned in this process is that I am not the only one in this family who wants to be a designer. John, was VERY into picking everything and absolutely had an opinion on just about everything. He kept pushing me to pick colors.... I'm a typical designer...we live in shades of grey,  but I won, and we won't have blue counters much to John's dismay.  We are going for classically modern and sophisticated. 

John getting busy picking tile

I'll upload pictures of the finishes and selections we made in another post very soon. It's exciting to see it all come together!