A secret garden...

While we were at the house site, Sarah and I began creating her little "secret" garden. I guess she "needed a bit of earth" like Mary did in The Secret Garden.

Basement floor is finished!

Looking into the garage...and Sarah shows by her height, the height of the walls along the back, northwest side of the house.

The orange lines on the back of the concrete are to where the waterproofing needs to go. Next week, the grader should come out to backfill in next to the walls. The sewer and water have both been hooked up (although the plumbers need to come out and connect the house to the sewer/water hookups now). Once the waterproofing and grading are done, then we're on to framing!

Pouring the Basement Floor

The concrete company was out finishing the basement floor today. We got there just as they were finishing up. They washed off the wheels and sides of the cement truck and drove away.







You can see the basement area before the concrete was poured; the indented areas are thickened parts of the slab to provide extra support where there will be the most weight from the house.
















This last picture shows the finished floor -- all grey and shiny.

Rough Plumbing

Okay, the rough plumbing is in, inspected (and passed!). Next week, termite treatment and pouring of the slab.

We have a basement!

The basement walls were poured on Tuesday afternoon, and the forms were removed yesterday. They look great!

Today the plumbers are out doing the rough plumbing work, and the inspection for that should be on Friday.

We need to decide on soil termite treatments before they pour the slab floor sometime next week.

So far, we're on schedule.

A little progress on the basement

Friday the rain let up enough for them to begin putting up the forms for the basement walls. They haven't poured any concrete for that yet, but hopefully that will happen soon (if the weather holds).

Today was "a perfect day"

Chuck, our GC, is fond of saying "on a perfect day,..." and then he follows that with what would happen to our building project if everything went better than expected.

Today was one of those days.

The concrete company finished digging the footings and the inspectors came out. Early. Everything passed inspection--the soil, and what had been dug. The concrete guys didn't hit any rock while digging. And then the final piece: the concrete trucks rolled down the driveway this afternoon in time to pour the footings before calling it a day. Wow!

A warning to trespassers!

If you're thinking of doing any mischief here...keep out!


We're staking our claim on this land! It's ours!

But we'd love to have you as neighbors ;-)

Reason(s) to Celebrate!

Our permits finally came through!

The electric soft service has been put up and approved by the state at the site. Water/sewer has been notified and should be getting us a meter and service soon (6-8 weeks we've been told).

The surveyors came out yesterday and re-marked the house corners.

The all-important (we-won't-work-at-your-site-if-it-isn't-there) "port-a-potty" arrived on site today!

Doggett Co. was out at the site today beginning the process for digging the footings for the house and laying out the basement. Here are some pictures:







Yipppeeee!!!!!

Projected finish date: September 15, 2008.

One more rendering of the house

I thought you might want to see one more rendering of the house from Punch! Pro. This is a generalized view, but might give you some idea of how the house might look.

We couldn't figure out how to make a screened in porch. Also, the basement is just four walls and a garage door, but in the current plan, it includes a walk-out door and some windows. Yes, the decks are floating in their own little universe.

And for you really sharp readers, you will note that the sun is setting on the northeast side. We plan to have the sun setting in the southwest.

Changes to the upstairs

Here is the new floor plan for the top (bedroom) floor. We've made a nice master bathroom and closet area. The master bath is largely Chuck's doing (our GC). We also opened up Hannah and Josiah's bedrooms on the other end of the house.

The roof was raised on either end of the house, providing some additional square feet. Previously, the master bath was a part of the master bedroom; now it is its own room.

We had a bowed-out area on the first floor, for the gas fireplace. (No windows behind the fireplace, of course, but windows next to it.) We extended the bow window up to the second floor. To the right is a view from the master bedroom, standing at the door.

The renderings here are from Punch! Professional Home design. It is a somewhat clunky program (ask us sometime about the floating toilets and the doors extending into the next floor). Punch! could not export a JPEG of the blueprint layer, but it was able to do a DFX/DWG export, and I used Free DWG viewer to turn the DWG into the JPEG that you see above.

Give a man a program, and you frustrate him for a day. Teach a man to program, and you frustrate him for life.

No, that's not the color of the bed spread, floor, or walls. I think we will be spending some time playing with those later.

I have bids out to several window manufacturers. I think we will be looking for a double-soft Low-E argon window. It sounds like windows have gone up significantly in efficiency (= letting in light when you want it and not siphoning off heat at night in the winter).

Plans are in for review

Well, the plans have been submitted for review before the permits get issued. Hopefully if there aren't any changes that need to be made, we should have our permits by Friday. If there are changes that need to be made, Chuck will make those and resubmit the plans for final review. Rajah plunked down our money for a construction surety bond so that we can pull the permits as soon as the plans are approved.
Hopefully soon we'll be able to start pouring the foundation and working toward framing. Stay tuned...

Progress?

Do I wish I had more to tell you about the house progress? Yes...

We've been hard at work....just not at the site. Rajah and Chuck have duked it out for a couple of weeks now on what kind of foundation we'll have, and the numbers for plumbing, and what kind of tank-less water heater we'll need, rain gutters (ad infinitum) and we've almost got all of the numbers in. The hope is to submit the plans back to the engineer for approval by Friday, and then next week submit for permitting ( I think).

So, for now, no pictures or anything moving at the actual site...but progress is being made behind the scenes.

More progress on the foundation hole

"Somebody up there is looking out for you"

Chuck called PSI (the soil engineers) last night. This morning Angela came out and did a soil test, in which she dropped a heavy weight on the same spot 20 times and measured how much it gave. She said since the soil was very hard, she proposed a solution: put in 3 or 4 truck loads of pit gravel and then compact it. The soil and the rock would have a similar "give," and the slab would be less apt to crack.

This is the best outcome we could hope for after hitting rock. The solid foundation and the inexpensive solution prompted her to say, "Somebody up there is looking out for you."

Angela will come back after the gravel is installed to bless it.

Rodney is looking to finish up before Christmas, and this is a speedy solution. He will get the gravel in today. There's a chance of rain tonight or tomorrow, and he'd like to get the gravel in before then.

Rajah talked to Chuck about the possibility of installing engineered walls, instead of poured concrete. (The engineered walls are made in a factory and are stronger than poured concrete. They have waterproofing "built in." Pit gravel is a prerequisite for the engineered walls because they are trucked in as a single piece, and must be exactly level. The pit gravel allows for this leveling.) Chuck said that he would take the plans over to Precision Walls in order to get a bid.

Building our house on the rock??

Spoke with Chuck. Good news: they were able to get enough rock broken up and moved out to lay in the foundation! Hooray! Tomorrow a soil engineer will be meeting with Chuck to come up with a plan to keep the house from settling unevenly. The big X looking "rock" is what they dropped on the rock to break it up. That's a lot of rock they took out of there!

Yikes! We hit rock!

Chuck, our GC, called last night to say that they hit rock yesterday while digging out the hole for the foundation. Today Rodney and his crew are going to try to break up the rock by dropping a wrecking ball of sorts on it. We're praying that the rock will break up. If not, we'll have some decisions to make that could be potentially very expensive. Stay tuned!

More work to be done....

from December 17, 2007

As it turns out, we needed to re-mark the corners of the house so that they could dig out and level the site for the house. Then the foundation can be poured. As we walked around to see all that had been done, we decided to have a few more trees taken out -- one nice pine that would be a little too close to the house for comfort, and several smaller trees in the back. We needed more space behind the house for runoff drainage. I didn't get any pictures today of the progress they made, but I should in a day or two.

Chuck meets tonight with Rajah to finish plugging numbers into our spreadsheet. The good news he shared with us is that lumber prices are at an eight-year low, so we're really getting good deals on the materials for building. This will allow for some unseen niceties like quieter flooring and such.

End of Day 4

from December 15, 2007

By the end of the week, right on schedule, they have cleared and graded the driveway and house pad. We will meet with Chuck (GC) this afternoon to talk about what comes next. This is the "path" no more...now it is our driveway. Follow us in!

Further in...

Turning to look down the driveway across the creek

Awful big pipe for such a little creek!

Site for the house...now cleared and ready.