by Alison Moore Smith | Dec 18, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
No one likes a wet basement. It renders the rooms uncomfortable and unsanitary, if useable at all. One common feature used to keep basements dry until the surrounding dirt compacts is a French drain. A French drain is a hollow pipe, covered in fabric. The pipe is laid...
by Alison Moore Smith | Dec 16, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
Every house needs to have the street number clearly marked for the sake of visitors and emergency personnel. Rather than using cheap looking numbers from the home store to accomplish this, choose from among the myriad address plaques available for personalization. An...
by Alison Moore Smith | Dec 15, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
The stem walls are poured, moving us one step further to getting the walls going up. What is a stem wall? Stem walls are the supports that are used to join the foundation to the walls. We had planned to use the same concrete block that will comprise the majority of...
by Alison Moore Smith | Dec 15, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
With the temperature hovering in the teens on the building site, it seems on odd time to talk about barbecuing. Most people are hunkered down in front of the fire with a steaming mug of cocoa. But in our house, Christmas is the perfect time to break out the barbecue...
by Alison Moore Smith | Dec 10, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
You may remember that we were originally planning to include a wood-burning fireplace our custom home. We love the ambience a real fire creates and the fun-factor is high. Over time, however, the logistics (and mess) overcame our sensibilities and we gave in to the...
by Alison Moore Smith | Dec 9, 2009 | Design Your Own House, for Home
In spite of the weather—we had a high of 14 degrees today—the great crew was out working. They reformed and poured the remaining garage footings, this time at the correct height. When we got there, they were covering the cement with vast expanses of plastic and...
