Design: February - March 2022

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We discussed our desire to have a custom home with Matt Cetwinski. If we're going to build our dream home, we want to design it and have "our vision" turned into our masterpiece. Matt suggested that we contact Allen McDonnell, owner of Reality Drafting, Inc. in Morton, IL. Allen brings over 21+ years of designing residential and commercial buildings and will complete the entire plan that is needed to build. His completed plan would contain all the elevations, roof plan, floor plans, framing plans, ceiling heights and plans, basement plans, lot location and the exterior rendering of the front and back.

We sent an email to Allen to contact us to set up an appointment. He called, we set up a future meeting and we drove down to Morton on Thursday, January 28, 2022 to sit down with him to describe what we were dreaming of for our floor plan. It is normal for the family to have some type of desired floor plan scribbled down on paper so he has something to work with - yeah, we didn't have that! We purposely didn't bring any drawings of our floor plans because we wanted to describe to Allen what we wanted and not limit his expertise in design by looking at our chicken-scratch floor plan. After looking at, literally, thousands of floor plans online together, we agreed on many things we wanted and things we didn't. Colleen was most excited about 2 things - her kitchen and she wanted a nice sized pantry! We had some pictures of what Colleen's "dream kitchen" would look like and we basically designed the house around her kitchen. We wanted an open floor plan containing the kitchen, dining room and the living room. Walking in the front door, Colleen wanted the focal point to bring your eyes through the foyer and the living room with tall ceilings and floor to ceiling windows that look out over the 2 acres of beautiful backyard. She wanted the dining room facing North with windows to our backyard and have a door to our large covered rear porch. Our other dreams were to have split bedrooms with our master bedroom being on the opposite side of the house from the other 2 bedrooms. We wanted 1 of the bedrooms to be used as an office, but to have a closet so it would still be considered a bedroom for resale purposes. The other bedroom to be used as a guest room with an exterior door to our backyard so our visitors could enjoy the outside without having to "wake up the house." We wanted a small front porch to have a couple chairs to be able to sit outside and enjoy our neighborhood. One other "little" thing that we both wanted was an actual laundry room on the 1st floor and not down in our storage area in the basement like our current house. The last of our "wish" list was to have access to a bathroom from the covered back porch so nobody would have to walk-through the house when we get to Phase II of our building plans - having a swimming pool.

We thought for a long time about what we wanted to do with the children (growing fast and more than likely Anna being either in college or living on her own by the time this build is complete). We decided that we will finish the basement. A finished basement will keep our children from messing up our 1st floor where we will live, but also be a safe-haven for them and their friends to hang out. Plus, when we are blessed many years from now, a great place for our grandchildren to hang out! Oh, and giving me the better chance of sweet-talking Colleen into letting me get a pool table! We gave Allen an open canvas to design our basement with a large family room; a kitchenette with fridge, microwave, sink; 2 bedrooms with egress windows facing East so our future pool plans would not be hindered with below-level windows; a full bathroom and a separate room to be used as a game/theatre room. We also wanted plenty of space to be utilized only as storage. We left Allen's house and had a delicious dinner at La Fiesta (lafiestamorton.com/) in Morton before leaving to drive home. We highly recommend this restaurant if you love Mexican food as much as we do!!!