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.

Finding our Lot

Finding the Lot

Our next step in the process was to finalize on our lot that we would build our house on. Originally we planned on building on some land which is family owned but it's not in the exact location we wanted.  Plus, we would also need a well and septic system installed. So before deciding on the lot, we decided to take a look to see what land was available in town by going to realtor.com. The selection wasn't great online but we did find a lot we liked.

After much debate and back and forth between living farther from work and out in the country we thought we were ready to make an offer on the lot in town. We called the realtor to inquire about the land, after talking with the realtor we found out the land had recently been foreclosed on because the owner ran into some hard times. My first thought was cool, I can contact the bank and get a really good deal! I contacted the bank and tried to get to the right department to discuss buying the land, ultimately after multiple calls and multiple hours talking with people we came to the conclusion that we wouldn't be able to purchase that piece of land for at least 6 months but that was not guaranteed and the guy I talked to said that he has seen land sit in foreclosure for years before being listed. Great, back to the search... I tried using the internet again, then even tried calling all of the realtors I could think of to see if they had known of any land for sale that wasn't online, ultimately we found that by just driving around town and driving down subdivisions was the best way to find land for sale. We ended up finding a very nice corner lot in a quiet sub division close to the school and catholic church.

Finally our minds had been made up so we called the developer who owned the lot and made our offer, unfortunately there was little wiggle room with the lot price, but after some back and forth we came up with a number where we both agreed. Awesome! We setup some time that Friday to sign the purchase agreement, then called Wayne Homes to make it official and get the process moving!