As you all know, I decided to build myself a house in the Charlotte area, and after working on it for about two years, I've finally moved in.

I haven't had a lot of time to get settled, yet -- but it came out great. It was a lot of hard work, with design changes and other changes in the plans. It was an eye-opener because I never knew how much was actually involved in building a house.

But I finally got to move into it, right before leaving for the race at Chicagoland. Actually, my parents spent the first night there, because I had to go to work. So they stayed in it and made sure that everything was good and nice and that everything worked as it was supposed to.

But it's been fun so far, and I've been fortunate. Everything came out nice. The guys that built it, Simonini Builders and Ron Miller, the chief contractor, did a good job. Ron is the man when it comes to home construction. He has the best reputation around the Charlotte area, and after working with him for the past two years, I can see why.

Even though I helped design the house, I think it looks great. I'll be living there, so that's the way it had to be. I think it's a beautiful house.

I was involved in it pretty much every step of the way, and it took a lot of the free time I had to go and be a part of it, sitting in on meetings and actually redesigning a lot of the inside and the outside to not only make it cost-efficient but also good and livable.

I had a lot of ideas about the house that I wanted to live in. I like openness -- I don't like a lot of walls. For example, in my house, the living room, the dining room, the breakfast nook and the kitchen are all really one room -- they're not separated.

I don't like a chopped-up house that's split up into different areas. I'm that kind of a person who likes openness. That's the kind of house I have up in Virginia and that's what I wanted to build down near Charlotte.

I think it's worked out well. It's got some cool little features about it that I really like, that are different than other houses, and I think that's pretty neat. I put a lot of effort into having a cool theater room. I watch a ton of movies and this is the perfect place for that. You can also see the lake from almost every single room.

I was very fortunate to get hooked up with the same builder that built Matt and Katie Kenseth's house, and I think he's building Greg Biffle's house. He took a lot of the pressure off me. Yeah, I was involved, but he handled it real well and I felt like he was on my side the whole time. Whenever there was any little thing that came up with the construction, they knew how to handle it and to make it right. They were real efficient about everything and they always kept me in the loop about what was going on, in case I needed or wanted to have input on different things.

So it was cool. But the crowning moment to it came when my boss, Ray Evernham, who owns my Chargers, gave me a Galaga Miss Pacman game to go in my playroom -- so that's pretty awesome. It's one of those old-style video games, so that was pretty special. In fact, I hate to say it, but that might be the most favorite thing I have in the whole house. It was a birthday gift, so it's neat how that worked out. (Continued)