Oklahoma Is The Place To Be…
Calling All Gnomies — give me your brains! Or at least your thoughts.
It’s been forever and a day since my last post. It’s not for lack of ideas and topics (if anything, I’ve got too many of them) — it’s just a lack of time, but that will change soon (I hope). I am closing down the Chicago offices of the company I’ve been working for the last 3.5 yrs, which is not an easy task. For the past several weeks, I’ve been the sole person working in the downtown office that once was our US headquarters with 60+ people. The company is still thriving, but has consolidated all business functions to a new headquarters in Atlanta. Once I close down the office, I’ll be working from home the rest of the year, then I’ll be released by the company.
But on to the fun stuff. In a post last July, I mentioned the possibility of moving away from my beloved home town of Chicago to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Well, my wife and I are one huge step closer to that becoming a reality. We just spent four days in “T-Town,” as the locals call it, on a Real Estate Safari. Naturally, we did a ton of research online. Can you imagine what house hunting would be like without the Web?
I even went so far as to do a mash-up in Google Maps that combined the physical location of the listing with thumbnail photos and links to full photo galleries and virtual home tours. The realtor we are working with out there joked that we didn’t need him (but we did — and he turned out to be a great guy).
We traipsed through more homes than I can to recall. And took photos and notes… and more notes… and more photos. As we pulled up to one home in a nice new development, a fellow strolled over (did I tell you home friendly everybody is out there — and not in the creepy way) and introduced himself as a home builder. He suggested we walk through the home he was in the process of building across the street after we walked through the one we came to see.
After strolling through a drop-dead gorgeous home that we determined was “too much” home, we went over to the construction site. Greg greeted us and, with great pride, showed us the custom home he was building. The walls were all up, but it was still a ways from being completed — I’d say it was about 50-60% complete. Monica and I looked at each other — and we both knew it, this was the place. Mind you, this home was already sold. In fact, Greg told us this was the third home he’d built for the same customer… and that doesn’t include the custom office he built for this customer’s business. But Greg had some other lots in the same subdivision, so it would be no sweat to build a home for us. He also had a completed home a few streets away that we walked through. It was too expensive for us, not to mention too large, but it gave us some major ideas and design elements we intend to borrow from.
So where do you Gnomies come in? Well — since we are going forward with a custom home (something I could NEVER afford in Chicago), I want to pick your brains on how to outfit the home from a technology standpoint. For example, should I go with Cat 5e cabling, or Cat 6? Should I put a sub-panel upstairs, where my office/multimedia room will be located? Should I put wiring and junction boxes in place in the ceiling in that room so I could install an LCD Projector in the future? Naturally, I do not have unlimited funds, so I can’t go completely hog wild with things. What I want to do is ensure, as much as possible, that I have a robust electrical and data infrastructure built into the home during construction (the ideal time to do it).
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I will put Google to work. We have a custom Google Map that contains links to photo galleries on Picasa. One of those galleries contains photos of the empty lot where our home will be built, floor plans drawn up by our builder, other galleries contain pictures of a home under construction which ours will closely resemble and a completed home by the same builder.
So, without further ado, here is the link.
Post your suggestions and ideas in the comments section. And thanks in advance. I know with your collective creativity, I can make my new home into the technology showcase I want it to be.
[tags]relocation, oklahoma real estate, home building[/tags]
