Progress: Roof and an oversight

The roof is coming along and the house is taking shape. We live in one of those areas where a ton of the houses tend to be "McMansion-y" and as my architect and I like to joke, are "all roof".  Why is that?   Yes, my house is larger that I would personally prefer, but the roof was one of those places where I could hopefully make it seem less imposing somehow.   Our house is at the minimum HOA roof slope requirement intentionally, with the roof pitch being consistent with this type of home style.  My husband was a little dismayed with the lack of pitch compared to the surrounding homes, and I got a little laugh at that.   It's funny how something like a roof pitch makes a difference between oozing charm or looking overbearing.   Here it is, below.  Can you imagine if the roof were much higher?   It would have looked even more large and daunting. 

Frustration - mistake on the overhang

Originally my architect had drawn this house to have beautiful exposed rafters under the eaves.  I nixed this idea, however, since our old home had tons and tons of wasps making nests in the eaves all the time, and all I could think of was how many extra opportunities every bracket would offer to an insect to make a nest.    Now that construction is coming along, I was kind of regretting that, and had asked my builder if there were a way to preserve the exposed brackets now that the roof was coming along.  In that process, I sent my architect a photo via my cell phone and asked her opinion if doing it the "cheap way" (i.e. since the construction is already there, and not the more elaborate way she had documented to do it "right") was even worth it.  Much to my surprise, she replied that it looked like my eaves were not large enough as per the plan, even though she was just basing this assumption off a mere cell phone pic.   Sure enough, my builder took a look and confirmed that all my overhangs had been constructed at 16" and not 22"!   I was feeling a little frustrated that both my GC and my framer missed this, even with the plans clearly marking the layout of everything.  What if I had never sent that picture to my architect? I would have ended up with hardly any overhang.  Now, they are having to extend the rafters another 6" and I'm guessing that somehow I will end up paying for it, even though supposedly I will not see an increased cost.  We shall see.

A blip in the scheme of things, but frustrating nonetheless.

Progress: Garage and It's Fantastic Dual Purpose

The garage is up.  I must say it seems rather "wimpy" because unlike the rest of the house, it is made of traditional wood construction. We did this per our ICF contractor's recommendation, but if the big bad wolf comes that thing would be toast ;-)    Just looking at it compared to the ICF shell makes you really appreciate the true efficiency of an ICF wall.  We do plan on doing spray-foam insulation in the garage.  So here's the garage, which completes the footprint of the house:

The house looks deceivingly large because it is a long, boomerang-shaped house, and the garage only amplifies that effect!  Half of it is only one-room deep, but from the front it seems massive. However, the shape really works now that it's totally complete.   As mentioned in my first posts regarding the lot, the beauty of the garage location is that it transforms what would have been a "subdivision-like" yard into a very private oasis, like so:

in looking above, you can see that no matter where you are in the house, the ENTIRE back yard is private (there is only a treeline on the other side).  Perfectly private.  One would never know there was another house beyond the garage, and incorporating a more "courtyard" patio system in the back, now that the walls are up, seems like a natural progression in the future. 

What Would You Do?  That Looming, Big Garage Wall 

That being said,  it's important to be thoughtful as to how that brick wall appears once the bricks are applied.  Since that wall almost functions as a "feature" wall when anyone is out back, it might be good to add some design elements to "warm" that space up.  For instance, here's a picture of a newer home that did a similar thing on their back wall.  Personally, I'm under the impression that they wanted it to look "old" by making it look like these were old door openings that were bricked in:

...  now, I'm not sure that particular look is for our home, but the concept is the same.  Perhaps some decorative brick detailing design to amplify that wall as more of a courtyard space when the possibility arises to add a patio over in that area would be nice.  Even if it's just a few simple rectangles of slightly raised brick with a herringbone pattern inside, to deviate from the large flat expanse of brick on that wall:

What do you think?

What To Do? New Front Door Elevations

Based on the previous post on the foundation/front door mistake, my architect sent me a file with some new elevations.  I actually don't care for any of them...   I realize that the original front door gave the very flat house that one element of dimension that it needs, with much layering.  This is what the house was originally supposed to look like, with the door recessed in:

from the side angle (it's a boomerang-shaped house) you can see the depth of the door more: 

Option 1: (no) 

Option 2:  (no) 

Option 3:  (no) 

Option 4:  (no) 

Option 5:  (no) 

Option 6:  (maybe?  still very "country-ish" to me but works more than the others?)

Hmmm.

Progress: Next Up, and a " Hold Off " Decision

Up next:  The braces for the ICF walls come down tomorrow.  Then the foundation. (I'm still confused as to why they do the foundation AFTER there are 15 foot walls up, which seems like added difficulty, but my builder explained the ICF company didn't want to do this because of covering the pilings or something like that??...  )  Then, the interior stick-build framing of the first floor is scheduled for Monday, and the blocks for our front patio and garage should be done by week's end, too. 

THE BACK YARD DILEMMA 
Originally the blocks were also supposed to include our back patio and screened-porch, but we are holding off on that now because of the unexpected elevation as mentioned in the first "Mistakes" post.  Our builder explained this will be a little more costly because of another delivery fee, etc, but that's okay because it's so important to us.   The way our porch & patio is on the plan may not be applicable now given the excessive height, and while I'm sure there is a good solution to this with a subtle terraced approach to the yard, we aren't ready to commit to the existing design now.  We are guessing we can get about 2 feet of fill to decrease that elevation to about 4 feet from the exterior rear doors, which would be fine.  Here's a pic as a point of reference.  To the right where those workers are, is the big great room window (which would be almost feet-level when you are standing inside, as I set the windows as low as local Codes would allow) and to the right of that is the back patio door: 

Right now the foundation is dug out so everything is "lower" around the house.  We want to wait until the backfill is completely done in the rear before making any rash decisions on what will be a heavily-used porch and patio.   The last thing I want is a steep set of stairs down to the yard, so we want to be very thoughtful in the process once we manipulate the grade, and depending on the outcome will likely get a landscape designer involved as well.  The original backyard was supposed to be only a step or two down like so:

Now I'm not sure that makes sense;  it may make better sense to incorporate a smaller patio where the left "???" is, and instead, add a courtyard patio where the red circle is.  This area is naturally much lower to the ground,  and that garage wall provides a perfect backdrop for a courtyard effect anyway.

What do you think?