House Building: Planning

Assalamu 'alaykum!

Now that we have a place where to build a house we had a lot of planning to do.  The fun part was we got to draw the plans for our house.  After reading some reviews, I chose Chief Architect to draw the blueprints.  We had the option of having someone else do it for us, however, there were some advantages and disadvantages of that.  The advantage would be that we wouldn't have to do the hard work and it would be done quickly, and the disadvantage was the cost.  We decided to eliminate this cost and go ahead and learn how to draw our own plans.  I watched some tutorials how to use this software and started playing with it.  I had no idea what do draw so I got some books from the library with pages and pages of already made house plans.  These books were huge, and the plans were so complex and made for more expensive houses.  Then I discovered online that all those plans can be viewed on websites like houseplans.com and eplans.com, so I returned the books and used websites like these for references and ideas. 

When making a plan there are certain things that I had to keep in mind to make the house as functional as possible.  Some of them are:
- The measurements of rooms. Measure the rooms in your current dwelling place just to have an idea how much is 17ft by 15ft, so that you can compare and add or subtract footage where needed.
- Do you want a split plan where the master bedroom is away from the kids' bedroom or not.
- When placing windows think what you would be looking at through them, do you like the view or not.
- Having the laundry near the kitchen so that you can easily get that load of clothes washed.
- Having the garage near the kitchen so that you can take your groceries directly from you car to your countertop. Also, having this path concealed when you have company comes in handy.
- Having a door from you kitchen to your deck for easier summer barbecuing.
- It is helpful to plan already where you would put your furniture so that you know where to place doors and openings.  The more free wall space the more you have ways of placing your furniture different ways.
- Using space in the house wisely by using every inch of it.  Place closets where ever you have space that will not be used at all.  Even small closets 2ft by 2ft can get handy and become bookcases or place for your storage cubes.  You can never have enough of storage space!
- Make the walls straight, ceilings flat, and not too complicated, since you will most likely be charged for anything that is not standard depending on your framer.

Here are some plans I came up with in my beginning stage of drawing:

Oh yes, the moment I saw a U shaped plan on the Internet I fell in love with it.  As you can see, I had many tries and many more then I can possibly fit in this post, but that's the advantage of making your own  plan.  The moment you get an idea you go sprint to your computer and put it in your plan, at least that's what I did.  Our friends and family had many suggestions which were very helpful. We listened  but we didn't obey it all. We knew this is what they all would like in their own house, but that did not necesseraly mean we wanted or needed it too. We took and choose what we thought would be useful to us, and modified the plan as necessary. Oh, this was so much fun; dreaming it then drawing it on plan.  I would dream during the day and draw it in the evening, but of course, it all went for approval when my dear husband would come back from work. I was fine with that, after all he'll be paying for all of it:) Some ideas got turned down, andsome passed the 'test', but still I was satisfied with what I got.  As we tried to have all we needed with as little square footage as possible we had to trim some rooms often.  We would take off footage from the kitchen often, but it was OK since I had made it huge at the beginning anyways:). 

Here is the final (yeah, right! I had so many finals even after this final) plan that we decided on:

Our Final House Plan

3D View



What would cost from $600.00 to over $1000.00 for buying the full set of plans on websites like eplans.com, we got this plan for free.  We did have to go to Fedex Kinkos to print our plan, but that was less then $5.00 per 1 sheet.

I hope  you enjoyed reading this.  In my next post I will put some pictures of the building process and I hope to catch up so that I can post as we build, since we are still at the building stage.

I am so glad I had the opportunity to plan and draw every inch of our house, and it is all due to Allah's Mercy and blessings which He has bestowed upon us. Alhamdulillah!

House Building: Our Big Project

Assalamu alaykum (Peace be upon you)...

I will start off by thanking Allah for all the blessings and gifts He has given us, for surely we would not have accomplished any of what we have without His help, mercy and permission.

We are in the middle of a big project and that is building our first house. Living in the US it is tempting to have all that we wish for. One can easily earn money but spending it is even easier. Alhamdulillah, for the past six years of our marriage we have saved enough to start building our own house interest free of course.
Here is how it started to unfold: a year ago I checked out some books on house building from the library. We were clueless regarding this subject. We did not know the cost of building the house, or whether we would do the whole job or just partly, what went first the footers or the foundation, simple terms such as plywood, drywall, framing...were stange to us. We had a lot of learning to do! I got The Owner Builder Book, House Building for the dummy and others ranging from general topics to some complex ones such as house framing. I researched and learned more by watching videos and reading articles on the web. Oh, this soon became a very interesting subject I could not get enough of. Meanwhile we started looking for a lot to buy. We wanted to be close to the mosque as possible, but getting a lot near it was hard because there weren't so many. We would find some wooded ones with a lot of acres and hills, and many trees.  That all meant a lot of money upfront to clean it up and fix it for building a house.  We stumbled upon some nice lots but they had many restrictions, which we really did not like. After all, we want a house of our own so that we could have freedom to enjoy it, we did not need anybody to tell us how to use our property.  So, alhamdulillah, after a while we decided to look up some lots where many of our relatives have already bought their houses.  It was a bit further from the town, but I figured, we have to compromise and give some to get some.  The area is very quiet, plenty of backyard space for playing, gardening..., most of our close relatives were in this same suburb, so we decided to give it a shot. And this is what we got...:

We purchased the lot for $ 22500.00 and chose the corner lot because those lot have more square footage then the others.  InshaAllah in my next posts I will try to share our house progress as it happens.

Ramadan Activities

Assalamu 'alaykum, 

SubhanaAllah, it seems as if Ramadan has begun yesterday but we are almost half way done.  Before Ramadan I have prepared some Ramadan activities for the kids to keep them busy during the day and so they would learn more about it.  These are some which we have done:

We made a Ramadan calender that we printed from Islamic Bulletin Boards.  I colored the background with black water colors so it would resemble night and the rest was colored with crayons.  I also added some Velcro on each date so we can put a corresponding moon picture every day on each of them.

We also printed a Ramadan coloring book from Talibideen Jr. that they have enjoyed coloring.

Found at Crayola's Islamic Activity Page

My son liked using water colors for this masjid.  I have noticed that he likes this more then coloring with crayons, could be because he thinks he is 'painting'.

We made this Lap Book from umm Abdul Basir blog.  There were two Lab Books so we took some things from one and some from the other one to make one. Then we practiced writing Ramadan on our dry erase board.

We'll add this to Lifetime Learning At Home's Ramadan Giveaway. Make sure you check it out and enter, the giveaway ands Ramadan 15th!

Walmart: Back-To-School Laptop, Printer, Case and USB Flash Drive Bundle ONLY $318 Shipped

Assalamu 'alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh,

Another great deal especially for those who are in a need of a computer especially if they will use it for getting homeschooling resources is this find.

Walmart is offering a laptop computer, printer, laptop case, and USB flash drive for as low as $318 plus .97 shipping. You can choose which computer, printer, case and usb flash drive that you would like to have and the base price is $318 for everything! It says the shipping is only .97 too = $318.97 shipped!
In addition, you can add more options like a mouse, wireless router or software to your bundles for the additional low prices listed!
Head to the Walmart site here and see this deal to make your bundle.

Great Staples Back to School Deals

As we get ready to homeschool, it is great when we run into deals such as this one.

• Notebooks $.01 (limit 6)
• Free mechanical pencils and copy papper (500 sheet) after mail in rebate
• Sharpie Markers $.25
• Dollar deals - $ 1.00 each: colored pencils (reg. price $4.00), hole puncher, 4 pack stick glue...

There are so many to write them all, so check your Local Ad for more great deals and hurry prices are good while supplies last.  I hope this was helpful to you inshaAllah.

Entertain the islamic way

Assalamu 'alaykum, after so long we are starting in Ramadan with our Homeschooling and Ramadan activities. For a start here are some Islamic cartoons we ran at today on YOUTUBE:

This one is from the producers of Zaky and it is from their new DVD, but nice and very well illustrated Ramadan nasheed.




This one illustrates the steps of prayer.

AND the next one goes in detail about the  5 Pillars of Islam and it has 2 parts:

Make it into a game

Too often children become uncooperative when it's time for a chore like clean up or when it's time for bed. When that time comes they will do whatever, but just not what you are asking them to do. They will ignore you as if you are not even in the room, pretend that all of a sudden their hands hurt so they can not pick up the toys or their hands are to 'heavy' for that, or simply they will through their usual temper tantrum when this time comes around. The solution? Well, why not make it in a game? Kids love it, after all that is what kids are for, games and play. When you turn those boring tasks into a game children become very eager to participate.

Do you have a pile of blocks on the flour after your children have played? Call them and invite them to find a 'green on', or a 'triangle', who ever finds more and puts it in the bag wins. Help them along the way but don't let them notice it, still pretend it is a game, and soon the blocks will be where they belong. This way they are cleaning up, and learning and re-enforcing their colors and maths.

Now, if it's time for bed, and you have a bed routine such as milk, brushing teeth, toilet and reading a book, but when you mention it to your toddler he or she isn't so quick to come and go along. Make it a competition, first one to come and finish it all wins. As a prize have them choose which book is going to be read that night. Of course, cheer on all of them, and show special appreciation to the winner. I did both of this with my children last night and they were very cooperative.
Sometimes, when it's time for bed I pretend I am locomotive and soon I become a train with three more wagons behind me. We go for a walk around the living room and maybe in the kitchen and then we hand to their room for bed. Now, think what else your kids do not like but it is important for them. Maybe there is something from school, or you have them to memorize qur'an, or something else? Think, think, think...and make it into an appealing game. For example, when I started teaching my kids qur'an they didn't seem interested. They didn't quite understand it.

So, I ran across the above picture from a sister from Easel and Ink, edited it a little to incorporate the material we are learning. After they complete coloring the mosque they get a special treat, like going to the store and buying a toy they want.Now each night my preschooler reminds me it's time for qur'an, and in the way his sister participates as well.