homevolution: I vote for... a door that opens from the left!

I voted! (and I got about 2.75 stickers for it)

Happy election day! I had a great day today. I love my job, but it almost always involves working in the office all day, so whenever I'm out doing something else in the middle of a workday it feels sort of liberating - and today I was out for a big chunk of the day to go to our pre-construction meeting. We didn't need to leave the house till 9:30, so I went for a morning run (that never happens normally - sleep always beats working out on a typical morning!). After the meeting Bryan and I went to vote together, which took a while even mid-day with all the crazy lines this year!

Free tacos for voting from California Tortilla - yum!

Then, we went to get lunch, which was exciting because 1) it's rare that I buy lunch out during the week, 2) it's even more rare than Bryan & I get to eat lunch together, and 3) we got free tacos for voting! By the time I actually got to the office it was about 2:30, so I had a short & sweet few hours at work.

Back to the pre-construction meeting...We had already decided on all the finishes a while back, so this was the meeting to go over the tiny remaining details. As a very quick summary, this is some the stuff we went over in our two-hour meeting:

Exterior of the house: Where do the flood lights go? Where does the security camera go? Where do the outlets go? Which way does the door open? Where does the electrical box go?
Basement: Where does the electrical, gas, security, cable, sump pump, HVAC, and all that stuff go?
1st floor: Where do the recessed lights go? Where does the security monitor and intercom system go? Where do you want to put the cable hookups in the family room & study? Where does the return air vent go?
2nd floor: Where do the recessed lights go? Where do you want the cable hookups in all the bedrooms? Where does the access panel for the jetted tub go? Do you want a medicine cabinet in the master bath?
Grading plan: Going over utility lines, driveway, type of sewer system, etc.
Scheduling & Responsibilities: Going over the various details about how the process will work

Some of these decisions were a little weird to make, like the cable hookups in the smaller bedrooms. These bedrooms are for children that aren't even going to be born for a couple of years, so it's strange to think about where they might want the TV to go once they're old enough to have a TV. And there's one room we're going to use as a guest room initially, but we plan to use it as a playroom once the basement is finished (assuming there are kids to use a playroom at that point!) - so where should the cable go in there? It felt strange to talk about all that stuff!

Compared to the bigger decisions we had to make earlier on, none of these little details were on really 'fun' issues, but it still feels really exciting since we're getting so close!

And this time I actually thought to take some pictures while we were there. I updated my finishes post with pictures of some of our specific choices, but in this post, I thought I'd show some pics around the showroom...