Thursday, January 28, 2016

Pouring the Basement Walls

Pouring the Basement Walls

Yesterday the concrete trucks finally arrived and we were able to pour the basement walls. It feels good to finally see some progress after all of the weather delays.

Unfortunately I was at work all day so I couldn't sneak out there and take some pictures as they were filling the forms, but here are some of the pictures that I have.

Curt did take one picture of the concrete truck filling the forms.

Left side of the garage looking to the back of the house
 
Front view of the garage looking all the way down to the porch
 
 
The front porch
 
Left side of the house with the egress window
 
 

Monday, January 18, 2016

Weather Delays and Footers

Footers

The last couple of weeks have been crawling by it seems like. We are currently about 2 weeks behind schedule due to some uncontrollable circumstances, first we had a huge rain storm the week after new years which we had to pump out about 2 foot of water, then last week and this week we have been running into issues with mother nature and extremely cold temps. Just one of the joys of deciding to start building during the middle of winter :) 

Although we have had a bit of progress and we have been able to at least get the footers installed and covered with stone. Unfortunately I was out of town for work so I wasn't able to get a lot of good pictures... 

Pictures of the "Pit" & the framing of the footers



Pictures of the footers covered with stone




Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Dig Day!!!

DIG DAY!

Sorry for yelling, but we are extremely excited that the day has finally came. Finally after months and months of talking and signing papers and seeing visions in our head we were finally going to be able to see some progress on the house!

Curt had called us on Monday night and asked how everything went with the variance meeting, we told him everything was good to go and we were excited to begin! He told us to meet him out there at the site at 9 am and they would begin digging, he also asked if his contractor would be doing our sewer and water lines, we decided to go ahead with their quote as again they were the cheapest we could find.

We pulled in a little early at about 8:40 or so and luckily the weather was pretty nice considering it was 3 days before Christmas. We got out of our vehicle and met with Curt and the excavator to go through some final details concerning where the sewer and water lines were going to come into the basement at. We signed a few papers to finalize everything and they began digging.


As they began digging Curt and I went back to his truck to sign some change orders and discuss the plans. He said that the digging would be completed by the end of the day but with the next 2 weeks being holidays things might slow down a little bit as most of the trades are off on holiday. Completely understandable and was surprised and great full that they started digging 3 days before Christmas. Before Curt left he gave us a picture of a rendering of the external view of what our house should look like when its completed.

We loved it and cant wait to hang it up in our new home!

But while the excavator was digging Blake and I began supervising and drooling over the heavy machinery.


Snap of the dig almost complete


Pre-Dig Tasks and Building Permit

Pre-Dig Tasks and Building Permit


Well I guess one of the silver linings to delaying the dig date was that we had some extra time to complete the tasks that needed completed before our dig date.

Utilities

We went ahead and called the gas company as well as the electric company and setup all of the accounts that we needed. In order to get our temporary power installed we informed the electric company that we were working with an electrical contractor and he would be the one contacting them to setup the dates and times for the temporary power poll. Apparently the electric company did not listen very well as I got a call a couple days later from the electrical company asking me where to install the permanent power line *face palm* the guy was really nice and understanding and told me he would get it taken care of and add the electrical contractor to the account. A couple of days later the electrical contractor came out installed the temporary pole, once that was setup the electric company came out the following day and hooked up temporary power.

Construction Drive

Curt had provided us with an estimate for the construction drive, I think the quote was something around $600 and we called around for a couple of other quotes and actually the Wayne Homes contractor had the lowest price by around $200. We were initially planning on just using their contractor but on Friday before our dig date a family friend was asking how things were going and we eventually got on the topic of the construction drive, long story short he said that he would go ahead and dig out the drive and spread the driveway for free. So the next day him and I headed out to the lot and finished the drive in about an hour and it only costed me $130 for stone and two 30 packs of Busch Light (Putnam County Currency). Lesson Learned - the surveyor sets 3 marks 1 inside of the other 2, the mark on the inside is the edge of the house. I accidentally marked the garage using the wrong stakes so now i have to go back later and extend the driveway about 20ft. oh well our driveway is going to be small so the extra space shouldn't be an issue.


Variance Meeting

Finally the time we've been waiting for. We went up to the town hall and met with the zoning committee. We didn't know what to expect walking in as we hadn't known anyone who had been through this process, but it was really quick and painless. Basically we sat at a table with the 8 members of the zoning committee we explained why we needed a variance due to the fact we did not know that lot was zoned different from the town regulations and our house would not fit on the lot otherwise. They sat and discussed for a while but since no neighbors had shown up to the meeting to dispute the variance we were granted the variance and were given the building permit right on the spot. PHEW - Ready to Rock and Roll!!! I immediately called Keri to tell her the good news and let her know we could go ahead with our dig tomorrow!



Bank Closing, Lot Survey, Permits, and Our first Delay

Bank Closing, Lot Survey, Permits, and Our first Delay

We had a scheduled date of Dec 4th to close on our construction loan. We were excited and had a full day planned because we were going to be closing the loan, meet with our surveyor to stake out the property, and get all of our permits for construction.

We started the day by meeting at the bank at 9 am, we met with Steve and went through all of the paperwork which felt like it took forever... Finally we dragged through the process and signed the paper and signed the first 2 checks for our initial deposit to Wayne Homes as well as the purchase of the property. Then it was final, the loan was closed and we were really going to do this thing!!!

Immediately after our closing at the bank we ran over to the lot to meet with the surveyor. When we got to the lot the surveyor was already marking out four corners of the house. I went out and talked with him for a bit and asked for the plot map as that was something we were needing to get our building permit. When he handed me the plot my heart sank, the house was positioned on the lot facing the wrong road... originally we had the house facing west because that was the address the developer had given us when we bought the property. We originally wanted to face the house the way it was plotted but did not think it was possible so we were okay with it facing the west, since the surveyor had the plot complete and most of the house marked out I figured I would run over to the developer and ask if it would be possible if we could face the house north instead of west. Luckily he was completely understanding and was perfectly fine with us facing the house north. PHEW dodged a bullet there, so we ran back to the lot and told the surveyor he could go ahead and finish staking the lot as he was planning too.



If that wasn't enough we now had to run up to the village office to pay our water and sewer tap in fees,  get our building permit, and also get their sign off that we would now be facing the house north which would change the address of our house. We walked into the village offices paid the fees, got everything signed off with the zoning inspector regarding the address change, and then hit a snag.... It appears that where our house is located it actually zoned differently than the village zoning laws and with this zoning area the house must be 35 from the front of the lot and have 45 feet for the backyard, unfortunately our house was going to be 26 ft from the front of the lot and if we moved it back to 35ft it still would not have the 45ft back yard required by zoning regulations... The zoning inspector was really cool and assured us it most likely would not be an issue and we would just need to have a meeting with the zoning board to get a variance. I am fine with that.... but the sooner they could get us in for the zoning meeting was on Dec 21st, 6 days after our initial dig date.... BLAH... laws are laws, looks like we will be needing to get a hold of Wayne Homes to push our dig date back.

That same day I contacted Keri and she was able to setup a tentative Dig Date on Dec 22nd the day after the variance meeting, I would need to contact her in case the variance is denied. This was super awesome of Wayne Homes to be flexible and allow me to move the dig date and then tentatively schedule a new dig date 3 days before Christmas!!!

Lot Inspection and Pre-Construction Meeting

Lot Inspection and Pre-Construction Meeting

We started the day off by meeting out at our lot at 8am, when we got there we met our construction manager Curt. He walked around the lot and took some height measurements of the land, also checked for the sewage, water, and gas hookups.





After we finished at the lot we went to McDonalds to sit down and talk about the process, go over the house plans, discuss some of the items that we decided to do ourselves, and went through where the utilities would enter the house from based on the positioning of the house. Towards the end we talked with Curt about getting us some quotes for the PPI items we had to complete and mentioned that we would like to have a weekly status update on the progress of the house, he said that wasn't an issue and at the beginning that would be fine but as the process moves forwards our calls and talks may be more frequent which I am excited about as I want to be in close communication throughout the process.

After sitting down and talking with Curt for an hour or two we had to run to the Cygent office and run through our final Pre-Construction Meeting. When we got to the office we met Keri who went through all of the details on our house line by line and item by item. She had all of the CAD Drawings for our house so this is where we started, we went through all of the outdoor details such as where the electric box, AC, and water spigots would go on the exterior of the house. Once we finished on the exterior we went through each level of the house, basement, first floor, then finally second floor. We pretty much kept everything the same as far as positioning except for the furnace we wanted it moved slightly so it wouldn't affect our future finished basement plans. Other than that we basically stuck with our initial plans. Once we had finished going through each story we went line by line through the extra items we had added to the house, we kept everything the same as far as the add-ons. Finally after all of that was finished we went back to the show room and pulled out all of our choices which we had chose during our color meetings and verified that we had not changed our minds. The one thing we did change was our carpet, we decided to go with a tier 3 carpet instead of the original level 1 choice, we also decided to upgrade the ceiling texture. Once we finally finished going through all of the choice we were finally given our dig date.

The date we were given was Dec 15th!!!

We were beyond excited, but we also had a lot of things to complete between the pre-construction meeting and our dig date. Below is a list of some of the items we had to have finished:
  1. Close on the loan
  2. Stake out the property
  3. Install Temp electric
  4. Install Construction Drive
  5. Get all building permits
Alot of items to complete within a 3 week period.

Here are the interior floor plan drawings.