Since we returned home to Calgary on March 1st, we have been massaging our architectural drawings, including a trip north to visit Chris Laing who has helped us so much.  The plans are now finalized & we awaited the return of our builder, Blaine, from Arizona the 1st week of April.  We are excited about building our new home in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan!  Here are some drawings & plans to give you an idea.

Here is the front view, also showing the basement via dotted line.

Back view showing the deck to the right of the garage.

Side view showing solar & thermal panels on the roof

Other side (the neighbours are pretty messy – hence the reason for small, frosted Windows!)

NOTE:  All the plans are fairly preliminary ones – I don’t have the finals, but it gives you the idea of everything!

Here is the landscape plan.  The numbers correspond to a plan of plants we’ve chosen.  Suffice to say  there are lots of berry bushes as well as attractive flowers.  (I may include the chart next year when it gets finalized.)  This shows the size of our lot & how the house fits.  This leaves a large area for our bird-attracting area, which we’ll observe from the deck!  We plan to have several bird feeders, a bird bath & a few  bird houses.

It is not a large house – only 1400 square feet (plus same sized basement).  The lot is a double lot which used to have 2 small houses on it.  They were basically ready to be condemned & we had them torn down before we left for the south last fall.

Here are some photos taken of our lot – the large one looking straight on & all the way through the alley to neighbours on the next street.  Top photo of the right=hand neighbours – bottom the left-hand neighbour.

Here is the floor plan for the main level

Here is the basement.  As you can see, we have 2 guest rooms – yahoo!  A king-sized bed in one, two twins in the other.  There is also a bathroom (not shown) just above the twin room.

This is a model of the kitchen.  It is unusual since we are having green cabinets!  We saw it in a show room & fell in love.

Here is a sample of the wood color & our handles

We have borrowed a small trailer from our builder, Blaine, to transport some loads of stuff out to a storage site in Maple Creek.

This is our first Saskatchewan licence plate!  (Of course, it isn’t really ours – it belongs to Blaine!)

On April 28th we took the first load of stuff to our storage container in MC.  Our dear nephew – Ben – & his friend Kelly helped us load the stuff we’d been storing in our dining room.  Took two hours!

The partially filled trailer getting ready for the first load to go to MC!  At the other end it was much easier to get things unloaded into the storage container – only about half an hour!  Our builder’s son & his fellow worker did the job.  Blaine also helped out!

At the front-left side of our property there is an old lilac hedge.  It has nearly started blooming!  Can hardly wait until we live here!

Friday, April 29th:  How wonderful we have relatives in town.   We were sent this photo by Penny & Wilf showing that they’re starting to break ground on our house!