Here is our burned house. Don’t let the outside fool you — it’s totaled. If anyone would want to preserve it, it would be the insurance company, and even they agree demolition is the only option. Also, the contents are a total loss. Here’s what it looks like though:
The house we’re putting up in its place will be bigger, and sport a half basement. Here’s the floorplan:
The basement will only be rough plumbed, and we’ll finish it in the future. We plan to eventually have a kitchenette, bedroom, and bathroom down there, along with a media center. Since this house will cost about $50K-$60K more than insurance will pay, we’re going to be scrimping everywhere we can…
Anyway, just wanted to update everyone! Hope you’re having a great day. 
#1 by FergatROn on March 16, 2010 - 7:42 pm
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Great to see that you have another house to replace this one. I’m curious. Your new house is a ranch w/ half a basement? How does that work.
#2 by Shawn Powers on March 16, 2010 - 7:56 pm
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Basically, the left half of the floorplan will have a crawlspace underneath, and the right half will have a full basement. It saves money on cement, and we *might* be able to reuse part of the existing foundation/crawlspace…
#3 by baldfat on March 16, 2010 - 8:06 pm
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Can you have a Man Cave this time without video feeds with stuff animals
#4 by Nathan on March 16, 2010 - 8:25 pm
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Congrats. That looks terrific. (You deserve some good stuff.)
#5 by Metalx1000 on March 16, 2010 - 8:37 pm
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Nice, but can it run Linux?
#6 by Shawn Powers on March 16, 2010 - 8:39 pm
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Oh yes. Oh yes.
#7 by Brad on March 16, 2010 - 8:50 pm
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If they have to pull new electrical wiring you might as well get a nice home network out of it.
It would be cheap during construction to pull Cat-6 and multi mode fiber to every room and put up plywood for a mini wall mount rack in the basement.
Future proof the crap out of it since it won’t cost but $1000 for materials and you know your gonna use it.
#8 by mattw on March 17, 2010 - 9:39 am
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Looks nice. I hope everything goes smoothly with the demo and reconstruction.
#9 by Darin Lory on March 17, 2010 - 10:08 am
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That’s a pretty nice floor plan!! I like the dedicated office in the floor plan! Can I use that as my floor plan for my new office I want to build?
I hope you can use the existing foundation. Sometimes when you have fire damage, the heat ruins it, but I had a friend luck out and was able to re-use his foundation when his house burned down.
Good Luck Shawn!
#10 by Eric on March 17, 2010 - 10:09 am
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You must’ve been quoting C3P0 when the shock wore off–funny, the damage doesn’t look so bad from out here. Pretty horrific, though, but I like the new floorplans. Good luck Shawn, keep us posted on how things are going, and let us know if we can help!
#11 by gamerchick02 on March 17, 2010 - 1:59 pm
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Awesome floorplan. I like the idea for the basement too!
Amy