Extreme Home Makeover: Coventry Edition - The walls go up

Things have been crazy busy the past few weeks, and there has been a lot of progress on the building of our new home during our Extreme Home Makeover: Coventry Edition. We sold our current home. Twice! Both deals fell through because the buyers were unable to get financing or didn't have the down-payment. So our house is back on the market.

If you're looking for a home in SE Edmonton, the house we're selling has a huge pie lot, double attached garage, lots of backyard room and a defined garden area, plus 2 apple trees--and a prime location close to schools, buses and a shopping centre within a 3-minute walk. It's listed on the MLS site HERE.


As for the new home that Coventry is building for us, the basement walls are all up and done; the floor will be poured later. Right now it is filled with rock.

We can see the basement windows and the side door. Without the inner walls framed, the basement looks huge. Later, there will be 3 bedrooms a large bathroom, a family room, a storage area/kitchenette and the utility room.

Framing the basement comes later.

The framing stage for the main floor is the next major stage after the basement walls are done and the floor for the main floor is secured. This is an exciting stage of the build. This is where the homeowner can see his or her realization of the 'dream home' or plan coming together, recognizable now. It's also the time when small errors can be made by the builders. Hey, no one's perfect--and no company either. The sign of a good builder is whether they recognize the error soon enough and fix it quickly. We've been fortunate in that Coventry Homes is a top-notch builder. A window was placed in the wrong room (that far narrow window in the pic to the left) and was quickly and easily fixed a day later.

In the pic on the left you can see the large windows in my kitchen nook. They overlook one corner of our backyard--the largest area of our backyard in fact. The windows also look out over a walkway and treed area, plus a neat circular park with benches and trees. Of course all the trees are young ones, but give them a few years and this will be lush and beautiful. The best thing: no neighbors sharing the back fence (like we have in our current home).

More walls went up and then they started framing the rooms inside the main level of the house, about 1660 sq. ft. of living space. My (and my husband's) space! There are stairs going into the house from the garage or to the front door and stairs into the basement. But I'll rarely go downstairs, which is a good thing since stairs have been challenging for me lately. Everything I need, including a nice sized laundry room is on the main level.

The left photo shows our bedroom. One thing we learned from building our first house, when the walls are framed, suddenly the rooms seem smaller as your mind tries to fill in the drywall and finishing touches. It's a weird sensation and can cause you to panic to the point where your husband has to go out and measure everything himself and compare it to the floor plans you've had drawn up.

What seems like a small space can turn out to be bigger than you thought, which is exactly what happened when we compared our new bedroom to the one we have now and the one on the plan. Our new room IS a bit bigger than our existing one (and the correct size on the plan); it just looks smaller.

All the rooms on the main floor have been framed. Yesterday, I walked into my laundry room, bedroom, walk-in closet, and the huge open-concept living room/kitchen/dining nook, which will be bright with the morning sun through all the nook windows and sliding glass door. I love morning sun! As I stood near the open windows and overlooked my dirt backyard, some Canada Geese flew overhead, honking and announcing their arrival and that spring is here.

The 3-car attached garage (my hubby's favorite part of the new house) saw walls going up too. There's the door from the garage into my house (left).

Once the walls were in place, they started adding the roof. This is where the design of the front of the house starts to take shape. See that single car garage on the right? That's my space.

All in all, building our second home has been exciting and very fulfilling.

In the words of author Stephen J. Cannell's popular character Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith (George Peppard) from the A-Team, "I love it when a plan comes together."

And the plan for my dream home is shaping up very nicely! Thank you, Coventry Homes!

~Cheryl Kaye Tardif,
bestselling Canadian author