Sam & Emily : The House

UPDATED: JANUARY 25

Sam and Emily are making a huge step. We are buying a new house. Well, it's a townhome really, but close enough!! The decision was made completely spur-of-the-moment. One of our friends was raving about his new townhome, so we decided to go down and just check out where he would be living. We loved it so much, and it seemed like such a great investment, that we put down a deposit the next day!

Our new address is 1201 Liberty Parkway NW, Atlanta, GA 30318.

The thumbnails below show our location within Atlanta. As you can see, we are inside the perimeter, and only minutes from both I-75 and I-285. Travel time to the Fox Theatre is only 10 minutes, and to the Ballet Shop is only about 5 minutes, neither of which requires getting on the interstate. Getting back to the area we currently live in, with all the shopping available and Emily's work, only takes about 10 minutes as well.


A map of Atlanta showing our location.	A closer map showing our apartment and some locations where we work.

The next section shows a little more about the development we are moving to. It's called Liberty Park and is a brand new development off Marietta Blvd. It's a gated community with a guard at the gate at night. All of the units are 3-story townhomes with built-in garage, and are two or three bedroom and 2.5 or 3.5 bath, in buildings of 6 to 18 units. The earlier you get involved, the more you can customize your own place. We got to choose everything, from countertops to flooring to having the place wired for surround sound! By the time all is done, there will be 433 units total.


The front guard hut and gate entrance.	A view down the street from the entrance. We are at the end on the left.	A picture of some of the units already built.	A map of Liberty Park, with our unit marked.


A view kind of like what we have out the back. We have no powerlines and more trees.	A picture of what people on the other side of the street get to see...a wall and a hill.

The following pictures are from the model home, which happens to be the same floorplan as ours. This means we know exactly how big it will be and how it all flows. We don't have to guess based on paper dimensions!! Obviously, the furnishings are different, but it gives a great idea of what ours will look like.


The floorplan of our place.	A picture taken from the front door looking up the entrance stairs.	Looking at the top of the entrance stairs from the dining area.	Facing into the dining room and kitchen from the living room. The doors from the kitchen lead to a small deck in front.


Taken from the kitchen across the main floor.	Some photos of the model kitchen. Stainless steel appliances included! We are using different wood.	The main living room. The doors lead out to a large deck facing west. We do not have the window behind the couch.	The garage area facing into the house and the downstairs bonus room. Nice storage on the left!


The master bedroom. Vaulted ceiling and a nice view West.	The master bath tub. A gargen tub for Emily. We did NOT get that ugly door.	A view from the master bedroom across the hall to the guest bedroom/office.	The guest bedroom/Sam's office. This is only about half of the room. It has a second window and it's own full bathroom.

Below I'll describe more about the property and about our particular unit. What we chose for our apartment and everything.

The elevation of our house (this is not our unit), and the paint colors used.

The Property:
- All three-floor townhomes with two or three bedrooms (buyer can decide) and two-and-a-half or three-and-a-half baths (again, buyer can choose).
- Community is gated with key entry. Also, a guard is on duty from 6pm - 6am for extra safety.
- Community is centered around a long, boulevard-style street. See the layout above. Our unit is at the end of the first part of this street before it turns.
- When completed, the community will have 433 units divided into buildings of 6 to 18 units. There will also be a pool in the center of the community.

Our Unit:
- We chose the Yorktown II plan. CLICK HERE to see the other available plans.
- Clicking on the picture to the left will give you an idea of what our place will look like. Our elevation is the picture on the left, and our front-color paint the picture on the right. Actually, that is how we chose our unit!! It was the floorplan we wanted with the front paint colors we wanted.
- We have a view to the west from our living room, deck, and master bedroom. This means good view of the sunsets. Also, behind our apartment is a 60' or so straight-down dropoff to an apartment complex below, which means not much obstructs the view except tall trees. The view on the other side of the street is directly into a hill.

Our Design and Choices:
Garage
- The garage is obviously on street level. It's a one-car garage with a decent amount of storage space as well. Leading into the garage is a driveway about 20' long from the street.

Flex Room - Also on ground level is a "Flex Room." The flex room is buyer-configurable. The buyer can have the room left unfinished, framed for a future bedroom, or fully finished as a bedroom with it's own bathroom and walk-in closet. We had the room left completely unfinished. We plan on turning the room into our home theatre.
- The flex room also has, depending on the side of the street, a door to the outside in the rear. The unit we chose has this door. It opens out to an area under the living-room deck. We hope to make this area into a patio.
- From ground level, you go up a 90-degree stairway to the main floor.

Kitchen
- The kitchen comes with all stainless steel applicances, including the stove, microwave, sink, and dishwasher. The refigerator is not included, so we have to buy that.
- They also allow you to choose the wood used in the cabinets. We chose the natural colored wood. We liked the warm tones and the brightness of it.
- Granite countertop and tile backsplash are also included. We chose Uba Tuba granite and a light stoney tile.
- We didn't like the flourescent light they were installing, so we upgraded to can lights for the kitchen area to make it a little warmer.
- Double doors in the kitchen lead out to a small deck on the front, overlooking the street.

Living Room and Dining Room
- Hardwood floors were also included on the main floor. We got to choose the type of wood, although there were only three choices. We chose a darker, yet still warm-colored wood. We thought it would keep it separate from the kitchen counters while still being warm.
- We also chose to have surround-sound wiring put in the living room so that we could have all of our speakers without having to run cable all around the room. I also hope to have some jacks put in the kitchen or on the deck.
- Off of the living room is a large, 10' x 14' deck. The deck faces the west and overlooks a high dropoff, so the view is quite good. Should be a nice, relaxing place to watch sunsets and grill out.
- Off the dining room area is a two-story-high stairway to the bedroom floor.

Master Bedroom
- The master bedroom has a vaulted ceiling.l. Nice and high!!
- The room has a double-window which faces west, so we get good sunsets, and no morning sun-in-the-eyes!!
- Although we didn't have a fan installed, we had fan wiring put in so we could install our own.
- The master bathroom has a double-vanity and a large garden tub.
- The room also has a walk-in closet, although it's not too large.

Guest Bedroom/Office
- The guest bedroom is also Sam's Office. This room also has nice, high, vaulted ceilings.
- The room has one double window and one single window, both overlooking the street below. Since we are near the big corner, we'll also have a little more open view from here.
- The guest bedroom/office also has it's own full bathroom and large closet.

Other Top Floor Stuff
- Right next to the master bedroom is the laundry room, with room for a washer and dryer with linoleum floors.
- The entire top floor is carpeted.
- There is also a small linen closet on this floor at the top of the stairs.
- There's also attic storage!

This section will get updated with pictures and notes as the place gets built.

This is our Realtor, Chloe Evers. Chloe is a friend of Sam's from college, also a theatre major (now doing what most theatre majors do...something else).

July 22: The day we signed the contract, our unit was a mound of dirt.

July 27: The foundation has been poured. We also stopped in the office today to change the lighting in our kitchen. We didn't want the big flourescent light that gets installed as standard, so we added some recessed floodlights.

July 31: We stopped by the site today to check on the progress and noticed that they have started the framing. It's good that Emily decided to walk into the framed area, because she noticed that they had framed our flex room for a bathroom and walk-in closet. We wanted the flex room unframed, so this posed a small problem! Luckily, the office said it was no problem to have it unframed. Whew!

August 6: Less than a week later, and we find that they already have the second floor completely finished, and the third floor is coming along.

August 11: Before leaving town for the weekend, we decided to run by the house yet again. Progress seems to have slowed a little. In five days, only a part of the building that didn't already have a third floor has one now. There has been bad weather around here the past few days, so that could be a reason!

August 23: Emily stopped by and found finally a fully-built structure. Things are coming along...but now's the point when things start to appear really slow! Once the siding goes up on the outside, there will hardly be anything to see. One thing we did notice, however, is that they built the wrong elevation!!! Somewhere along the line, something got changed, and we didn't get the same elevation we thought we were getting. It's still the same floorplan, with the same window layout, but the roof lines are different. It kinda sucks, because we really liked the one we were getting, and the new one is a little blah, but what ya gonna do??

August 28: Emily stopped by again to check out the place. Since the last visit, the roof has been shingled, and the entire building wrapped in the moisture seal. Plus, we have a front deck!

September 17: It's been a while since the last stop. In the past three weeks, the siding has gone up, the windows and most doors have gone in, and a lot of internals have started going in (plumbing, etc). Things are moving along!!

September 18: We both stopped by the house today on the way home from the airport. Since we have our pre-sheetrock meeting tomorrow, we thought it might be fun to take a walk through ahead of time. We walked through to find many of the outlets in the wrong place, and the speaker wires not even installed. Hopefully, something will be done by the meeting tomorrow.

September 19: This afternoon was our pre-sheetrock meeting. This is the meeting where we walk through with the head construction guy and verify that all of the outlets and switches we had specified are in the right place. On no time, things were not looking good. Almost off the cable and phone outlets were in the wrong place, and the speaker outlets were completely messed up. As it turns out, the contractor for those systems didn't have the correct drawing for our unit, and had installed stuff based on another drawing. Since the guy happened to be working in our unit at time, he could take care of several changes then and there. We decided to stop back by the next day and recheck.

September 20: We went by again to check on the progress of the fixes. All of the cable and phone outlets were now correct, but the speaker outlets were still not right. Sam marked the wall where they should go, then went and found the head construction guy to make him aware. He wasn't too pleased with the installer I guess, and promised to take care of it right away.

September 27: We ran by the house on the way home from the airport today to check on progress. They were loading drywall sheets into the house, a sign that things are really moving. The speaker outlets are now correct as far as we can tell, at least in the living room they are. The kitchen ones look a little odd, but it's hard to say exactly.

September 29: The drywall is up! It hasn't been joint-compounded yet so it looks like utter crap, but it's there. Things are starting to look good!!

October 8: After being out of town for nearly a week, we thought there would be some major changes to the place. Not really. The drywall has been cleaned up, and the installer was putting in kitchen cabinets. he had the first one up, and they do look great. We still don't have a back porch yet, although every unit up to ours does, so we expect one soon!

October 9: Today was a housewarming party for our friends who live in the same development. We thought we'd go look at our cabinets now that they are hung. All I have to say is "nice"!! They look great, even without the extra adornment such as appliances and backsplash tile. The only problem is those pesky speaker outlets. The ones in the kitchen were definitely not installed in a good place and they kind of overlap the cabinet such that they couldn't even be used. That will be a repair! We also stopped by after the party to see what our night view was like, and whether lights from the community below/behind us would be obnoxious. Not at all...looks like the nighttime view will be perfect!

October 10: Yikes!! We have a new closing date...we will now close on the house on November 23, the day before Thanksgiving!! That's a bit scary huh?!?!

October 12: Sam stopped by on the way home from work and found that the initial paint had gone on the outside. He didn't camera, so no picture. Look for one soon!

October 21: After another week out of town, we both stopped by the house after work today and got a shot of the paint job. The grey is a little lighter than we were hoping for (the house across the street has my envy!), but it's fine. Also, notice the columns installed on the front porch, as well as a new driveway! On the backside, the back porch has been started, and looks like it's going to be one hell of a relaxing space!!

On the inside, the countertops have gone in, and look pretty nice. We found a little ding on one of them, so that might have to be replaced. The kitchen sink is in too, and it's a damn sexy sink. The backsplash tile was going in while we were there, and the tile on the bathroom floors upstairs is already in. Things are looking good!!

November 14: Sorry for the lack of recent updates. We've been out of town a lot and busy when we weren't. We just realized that we don't have any pictures of the finished outside. So look for that soon! ....We had our first walk-thru with the builder today to locate and discuss any problems in the house. For the most part, things look pretty good. There were a few minor problems with outlets which have to be moved, a door that was on backwards, and quite a bit of base molding which is messed up, but things look much better than what our friend said he had to go through. Whew!

November 16: Dropped back by today to get some more pictures of the house. Fix-its are going at an incredible pace. The house is VERY busy right now, with drywall being fixed, paint being touched up, outlets and switches moved, doors replaced, etc. To the left is a picture of the front, unfortunately with ladders and other equipment present. But you get the idea! The inside is a disaster! Below are a few other pictures from inside (sorry for the dirt!)


The living room as seen from the kitchen. Notice the sun streaming through the windows. Mmmmm.	To the right will be in installed bar, to the left is the dining room and kitchen.	The kitchen under some heavy work. Wood cabinetry, wood floors, granite counters, and tile backsplash...ahhh.

November 17: We finally found a fridge. It's been a long and arduous process, and has led us to every corner of Atlanta. We finally found it about 1/4 mile from our apartment at the Best Buy next door!! I don't know why we never looked at Best Buy in the first place (I think we thought it would be too expensive). But they were having a sale, and it was an open box item. So we got this one for about $250 less than normal price, and with free delivery!! Until now, our favorite fridge had been about $500 more than this one, and that was at an outlet place with some dents and stuff, and we would have had to move it on our own. One note, we DO plan on buying more than just green and yellow food products!

January 15: Well, it's been almost two months since the last update to the website!! Work, holidays, and deaths in the family made it very difficult to find any time to do anything. Below are a few in-progress pictures as we get settled into the place. There's still a lot of mess, and still a lot of stuff to be unpacked, but the pics below should give you a general idea as to how the place is looking. They were very quickly taken, so some are a bit blurry.


The kitchen on the sink and fridge side.	The kitchen on the stove side. I LOVE this stove!! So easy to clean, and it actually works.	The dining room area. This space isn't really big enough for our table, so it sits by the wall and gets pulled out for use by visitors.	The future home of the bar. Still trying to figure out what to do in here...built-in, custom cabinets, stacked boxes...ugh...anyone want to find a custom cabinet person for us??

The living room and couches. Still looking for some better lamps.	The living room featuring the new 42" plasma. That thing rules. A rather comfortable living room, I must say.	The view out the deck doors. I love our trees and the dropoff. Even if it is hoodish down below, it's barely visible, and a much better view than the other side!	The master bedroom and the famed bed. This is of several pictures stitched together, so our bed frame looks wonky. Still trying to pick a paint color!

The room better known as "Sam's Hole." Sam's office desk. Notice the large amounts of clutter. This room doubles as the guest bed with a futon off to the right.

January 20: And phase 1 of our crowning achievement....the bar shelves. The shelves are up and ready for a party. The lights aren't connected yet, but they will be working soon!! The bottom piece will also get built from several different parts to fit into our design. Look for that in the next several weeks!