The lovely meadows overlooking the Swan Range mountains inspired the name Majestic Meadows in 2017. It wasn’t until 2024 that we finally broke ground on our home build. There’s a symbolic nature to building a foundation together in a place we love. Building a house is exciting, stressful and takes a bit of work. In today’s post, I’ll share site excavation, inspection, as well as footing and stem wall concrete updates.
Build Partners
In the past, I’ve shared how we chose our property (Lot Strengths and Weaknesses Checklist). I’ve also previously written about selecting our builder. We are in the very early stages but are thrilled with J Martin Builders. They have been professional, helpful, saved us money, and provided great communication. The builder and subcontractors have performed work as promised in the contract. They’ve also kept a clean build site.
The following work has been completed:
- Architect turned our SketchUp floorplan into a set of construction plans, which we made several small changes to the plan without issue.
- The excavator cleared our driveway and build site of plants.
- The Excavator lowered our raised build site by two feet, which provided space for the build, driveway and two flat garden spaces.
- The excavator used the earth for the build site to build up our driveway reducing the slope.
- The excavator dug the crawl space foundation, including the footers and stem walls.
- Foundation forms, including all required rebar and ties were placed.
- Concrete guys poured the footers and stem walls.
During our first official build meeting, Jason went through the agenda and next steps. We’re on or under budget, so our first bill will not be a surprise. We get weekly build updates with pictures, but we also have monthly meetings led by Jason discussing progress, next steps and our budget. Our build team, including Jason, John, Leah, and Stephanie help order and receive everything it takes to build our house. John provides great updates, and Leah finds the best deals. Fingers crossed we stay on or under budget! We’re heading to Montana this week and look forward to seeing the build progress for ourselves.
Interior and Exterior Finishes
Our new build is inspired by Mid-century Modern design, which gained popularity in the States from 1945 through 1969 after World War II. Many architects and designers were inspired by Scandinavian and Danish Mid-Century Modern designs, which were part of the Modernist movement. The creative geniuses at the time took bold risks and started to experiment with home designs and interiors bringing MCM design to the U.S. There is much to love in MCM, including open floor plans, large windows, natural material selections, and a home designed to fit the site.
We’re bringing all our samples, so hopefully we’ll finalize the selections for our cabinets and flooring. There’s a light-colored wood floor option from Floor & Decor that could work but we’re looking forward to seeing what local flooring stores have to offer. When possible, we prefer to use natural materials such as hardwood over Luxury Vinyl Plank flooring. Pricey terrazzo is our top choice for the primary bathroom, but we can choose cheaper tile options for the guest bath, laundry, mudroom, and storage spaces.
Our cabinets have been a mid-tone white oak in the SketchUp model but, we’re considering other stain colors and wood species. I’d go for a walnut, but my hubby, Jim will need to be convinced. We both love the natural beauty of wood, so our cabinets and most of the floors will be wood. Our partners, Joni Stoll Designs will be there to help with final selections that will look great together.
If you’d like to learn more about our finishes, check out one of my posts below:
Inspector
Kelly Quinn, our independent inspector is also a local builder. Kelly will inspect the build site at critical construction points during the build. Although, we trust our builder, we are about 3,000 miles away, so it’s nice to have the inspector there to verify different stages on our behalf. Confirming correctly finished work allows us to confidently pay our builder. So far, our inspector has examined the construction plans, inspected the foundation forms, rebar and ties before concrete and after it was poured. During the inspection he takes detailed photos of all completed work.
Learn more about Inspections and our design style in the post below:
Mountain Modern Home Completion: Mid-October 2025
We’ve spent the last seven years researching, designing and finalizing the floorplan, interior and exterior design of our Mountain Modern home. It’s exciting now that things have started to move more quickly. Jim thinks it will be done around October 2025.
In my next post I’ll share our updates on our cabinet and flooring selections, as well as framing, roofing and existing well. Sneak peek? Nope, but I will tell you that I’m in LOVE!
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Design, Garden, & Travel by Majestic Meadows 
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