About Chris & Colleen...

Chris & Colleen met in May 1997 through a mutual friend, Dan Turczyn. We began dating in July 1997 and were married at St. Valentine's Church in Peru, IL, on June 10, 2000. We were blessed with our first child, Anna Vivian Mueller, on June 16, 2003. We were blessed again on October 4, 2009, with our son, Jake Christopher Mueller. We have lived in Oglesby for the past 20+ years on East 2nd Street. Only a true Oglesbian will understand... Chris & Colleen are both imports but are proud that both Anna & Jake will always be true Oglesbians, born and raised in the wonderful small town of Oglesby! We have always dreamed of building a custom home as we began to reach retirement age and have a wonderful home when we become grandparents. Realizing that these dreams can become a reality much earlier in our lives before retirement, we decided to go for it. With Anna finishing up her Associates Degree at Illinois Valley Community College and moving off for a 4-year university after, she will not be in the situation to fully enjoy the new house. However, Jake currently in 6th grade at Oglesby Washington, is the perfect age to be able to enjoy the new house through his high school years at LaSalle-Peru Township High School.

Our Next Chapter

With our decision to close a huge chapter in our lives came an extremely difficult realization to leave our neighborhood. We purchased our house in December 2001 and moved in during February 2002. At the time our neighborhood was mostly older residents. As they began to pass away, a younger generation began to move in.

Our neighbors have been great friends, great neighbors and more like family to us. We've held newborn babies of our neighbors, held new puppies, grieved with each other at the loss of family pets. These neighbors have been to more of our children's birthday parties than our actual blood-related relatives. We've gone on camping expeditions together, we've gone on family vacations together and countless crazy adventures. Our children have all grown up together as close friends.

Our toughest day will be when we drive away from our current house for the last time and have to leave our neighborhood and our family of friends!

{{To be continued}}

Design Phase: December 2021 - January 2022

Prior to purchasing the lot, we contacted Matt Cetwinski, owner of Cetwinski Construction in Utica. His website can be viewed at: cetwinskiconstruction.com/. Matt met us at the lot on a cold Saturday morning in December to evaluate the potential to be a future build site for us. The lot is at the end of the cul-de-sac, facing North-South. The main concern on our minds was being at the end of the cul-de-sac and having to angle the house on the lot to face the street, would that take away the large lot size towards the North. We also had concerns on where we would be able to place our septic system without being forced to place it in the backyard. Due to the size of the lot, location of the house, having village water and natural gas, Matt assured us that we would have no issues with having the septic located in the front portion of the lot off to the far East side that would not interfere with the home. Also due to the size of the lot, the position of the new home would still be able to enjoy the enormous backyard area. This was THE final lot of the Phase IV for the subdivision. We thought that if this was meant to be, then it would still be available to us after we moved around some assets to be able to purchase the land.

After discussing with Matt, we contacted a life-long friend and local real estate broker, Ellen Credi. Please visit her website at: https://www.blackhawkbrokers.com/. Ellen and I have been friends since we were about 9 or 10 years old and I have always trusted her experience and professionalism when it comes to real estate. After discussing our plans, we had Ellen put in an offer for the lot. After some discussions, our offer was accepted on December 28, 2021. We closed on the lot with our attorney, Nick Balestri, on January 13, 2022. The Law Offices of Bernabei, Balestri & Fiocchi can be viewed at: https://balestrilaw.com/. We became the proud owners of the last lot in the Ridgeview Estates and 1-step closer to making our dreams a reality.

Design Phase: February - March 2022

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!!!

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

We had a Zoom Meeting planned for 7pm with Allen to discuss any last minute changes and also for us to see a Computer Generated 3D Rendering of our floor plan with the ability to virtually walkthrough the entire house including the basement plans. We have dreamed of this build, we have talked about it for over 20 years, we discussed whether we wanted land in the country or in a town and if our dreams could ever come true. Now we were walking through our dream home on the computer. It was truly an amazing feeling and surreal to see it. We approved the entire plan after the walkthrough. The only downside was that we didn't get to keep the walkthrough because we didn't have the Auto CAD program.

We cannot say enough good things about how Allen McDonnell from Reality Drafting, Inc. handled everything from our first meeting to our final approval. He went above and beyond on every aspect we asked of him. His experience and his expertise shined through with our floor plans. All of our dreams, our wants, our wishes were all put on paper with such precision. It turned out amazing. We could not have asked for more from Allen! If we called him daily to thank him for his work on our dream home, it still would not be enough thanks! Plus, he'd probably just block my number after about day 7. If anybody ever needs a Draftsman to design your custom dream home, I could not recommend Allen enough!!! You can email him at allenmcdonnell@gmail.com - you will not be disappointed!!!

Bidding Phase - April 2022 - Current

We now have our finalized plan in our hands and need to distribute it out to the builders that we want to build our dream home. For the past several months we've talked with many friends & family to discuss local builders. In our minds, the builder is the most important part of the pie. Allen knocked it out of the park with our design, but at the end of the day it was going to be exactly how we wanted it. We would never take any credit away from him, but we knew how it would turn out. To choose the builder is something to not take lightly. It is the builder that will have the outcome of our dream home in their hands. Thank you to those that took the time out of their lives to talk with us, give us pro's and con's, and their honest opinions on who to trust to build our home.

Without a doubt, Matt Cetwinski was our first choice. From the moment that we were interested in the lot, Matt was quick to respond to our emails, answer our questions and give us his opinion. We have seen some of his work and it is truly amazing. We've talked with people that had Matt do work for them and their opinions describing how his work was impeccable. Cetwinski Construction was our 1st builder we put our floor plans out for the bidding process.

Jeff Gochanour, out of Wenona, IL, is another local builder that came up repeatedly with high marks for his construction abilities. On a side note, we had met Jeff in April of 2021 when we purchased our golf cart from him that was built by Jeff and his son. We love that golf cart!!! Jeff was our 2nd builder that we put our floor plans out for the bidding process.

Dean Tieman at Tieman Builders, Inc. (http://tiemanbuildersinc.com/) was an easy 3rd builder for us to give out for the building process. Dean and the entire Tieman family has been friends of the Mueller family for years and years. The Tieman family are great people, inside and out! It also makes it easy when he has so many people in our area that have had work performed by Tieman Builders and we could not find one negative about his ability!

In our local area, we have many gifted builders that we would've felt comfortable with to build our dream home. We decided on picking our own top 3 that we want to build our dream home. In no way are saying any other builder is not worth it other than the 3 we picked. In the bidding process, it is extremely time consuming and meticulous attention to detail is required. We did not find it fair to put our plans out to other builders and make them go through all the work because at the end of the process, we would pick Matt, Jeff or Dean for our project.

Plans Delivered - Week of April 4, 2022

We emailed our plans to Matt Cetwinski, Jeff Gochanour and Dean Tieman. All 3 were very quick to reply and had some specific questions to verify different aspects of the build. With Easter coming up soon and many schools going on spring break, the 3 of them were going to begin working on the bids and we would start planning on meetings once we're through the holiday towards the end of the month. We have been forward with each of them and we are not afraid to tell them who else we have bidding on the process. We believe they have the right to know who they are bidding against. What we will never discuss is the difference in prices between the bids of our picked top 3 builders. We think that is not professional, immoral and unfair to each of the builders. We want to compare apples to apples. They all have the same plan, they all have their own ways of planning and bidding and we plan on having everything identical in the bids. We trust these 3 builders tremendously and feel confident in their ability to bring our dream home to reality. We'll see where the costs come in and make our decision.

We will give updates after we schedule our meetings.