It's been a busy couple of days...

...both at the lot and for us!

Friday saw the forms come off of the concrete foundation walls and the plastic vapor barrier and exterior insulation board (styrofoam) get put into place. 

You can see the light blue insulation board, and the clear plastic vapor barrier sheeting behind it.Also, you can see the ends of the rebar (steel reinforcing running inside the concrete walls for strength) sticking up on top of the concrete walls.

In the pic below you can see all of this as well as you can now clearly see the cutouts for the garage doors.

Saturday the concrete guys visited the site again and added bracing to make sure the concrete walls don't fall over while they're curing (hardening) for the next 5-7 days or so.

Also on Saturday they installed the drain tile around the perimeter of the basement walls... the drain tile is flexible plastic piping that's intended to help collect any ground water (either from natural ground water tables, or heavy rainfalls/snow melts, etc) and direct it toward the sump pump that will eventually be installed in the basement floor. (you can see the drain tile piping mostly buried in the gravel on the bottom of the hole)

...and of course the girls are having fun climbing around the massive piles of dirt that are all around the site for now (until they backfill next week).

While the above was taking place Saturday at the lot, the four of us were busy running around up to Green Bay first and then back down to Appleton for meetings with the cabinet supplier and then the flooring supplier.

After about 8 hours of driving, meeting, making decisions, we arrived back home with most of the decisions made for our cabinets and the flooring for each of the rooms.

You can see in the following photo all of the material samples we came home with... 

The items in the above pic are:

• The cabinet door.. maple with a glazed "monarch" stain. That will be the finish on all of the woodwork throughout the house.
• The stone sample is the stone that will be both on the exterior of the house and on the fireplace from floor up to mantle
• There will be tile flooring in the master bathroom and the front entry.The master bath with also have a walk-in tile shower that we chose the materials for too.
• A laminate-like flooring in the kitchen, dining, and back hallway. As well as in the laundry room and the half bath downstairs, and the girls bathroom upstairs.
• Carpeting will be in the girls bedrooms, our bedroom, the den, and the living room.

The girls had a large say in the carpeting that will be going into their bedrooms.. and in this photo you can see their selections...

We only have one initial supplier meeting left. The lighting supplier. That one is a couple of weeks away yet.

In the meantime we have to get most of our "final selections" on materials and other items back to all the suppliers we've met with over the course of the last 3+ weeks.

One thing we're still waiting to find out (hopefully this coming week) is if, with the Parade discounts included, we'll be able to afford granite countertops in the kitchen.

Once we find that out, and get the revised bid back from the cabinet supplier meeting, we can go ahead and use the materials selected at the flooring meeting to meet a second time with the cabinet supplier to pick out all of our countertops (laminate and/or granite).

Next week should (weather permitting) see the backfilling of the foundation walls (that's when they'll move all that dirt back up against the foundation walls and we'll actually be able to walk around the exterior house without the huge trenches all around.), and then right after that the framing should be starting.

Paul

The walls have been poured!

First, up go the forms.. then the walls are poured!

I stopped by the lot yesterday after work and was talking to the concrete guys as they were putting up the concrete forms. It turns out it takes them most of a day to put the forms up for a house like this and half a day to take them down.

So they had said they'd come back this morning and finish putting up the forms and figured they'd be pouring the walls by 11am or so.

So after work tonight Robin and I stopped out there and lo and behold we have basement walls!

 

The front entry and porch in the foreground...

You can see the freshly poured concrete sandwiched in between the forms all around the perimeter of the house.

Looking from the back of the house

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the lower left corner of this photo you can see the cutout for the doorway that'll be in the side wall of the garage.

That's the garage we're looking at here.

The stairs from the garage to the basement...

 The concrete forms will have to stay on the walls overnight. Then they'll come back tomorrow and remove the forms and just the bare concrete walls will be left standing.

Once the concrete has been "curing" (hardening) for about a week, the excavators will come back and backfill against the walls with the massive dirt piles laying around. Then the framers can come in and begin their work!

Paul

Surprised on Saturday...

Robin and I stopped out at the lot yesterday and were pleasantly surprised to see this....

Yup, the concrete trucks were out Saturday morning and poured the footings for our basement (first pic) and our garage (second pic). Dennis said they might surprise us and show up yesterday to try and get caught up from the rain late last week, but he figured they wouldn't pour the footings until Monday. Well, now that the footings are poured this should mean that they'll be back on Monday to pour the foundation/basement walls!

You can see in the first pic all the gravel in the bottom of the hole. That's mainly there so the workers don't have to stand/work/set things in the mud or dirt. You can also see all the long 2X pieces of wood laying around. Those are the forms for the concrete footings. They place those in the proper locations, forming a hollow "frame", and then fill that frame (or "forms) with concrete. Once the concrete has dried enough they strip away the forms and we have what you see above.

The forms for pouring the concrete walls tomorrow are more of the same, except they'll be anywhere from 4 feet to 10 feet in height, depending on the wall they're pouring.

Once the foundation/basement walls are poured, not much will happen on the site for the rest of the week (a couple small things will probably be going on, but nothing really noticeable) as they allow the concrete to cure. Once that has happened, then things will begin to look different almost daily for the rest of the life of this project.

We had our meeting early yesterday morning with the supplier of the fireplace and the exterior stone on our house. We got all our decisions made there. We haven't actually seen our selected stone since last fall's Parade home that Dennis used it on, so it was nice to get to see what we'd picked again.

This coming Saturday are two big meetings:  The cabinet supplier and the flooring supplier. Once those two are done we're almost done with sub contractor meetings, having only the lighting supplier left about 2 weeks after that.

Paul

Dig dig dig!

Houston, we have a hole!

The excavator came out this morning with the intention of starting to dig the hole for the basement.... the problem was that it was raining.

So he decided to come back after the rain stopped.

In the early afternoon, after the rain ended, I got the call that he was starting! So I ran out there to get some pics of the progress....

Here's some shots of the "first scoop" when he was beginning the hole.

After he got going, the dirt really began piling up as the hole got bigger and bigger...

Terry is the guy running the bucket, while Larry is the guy holding the long stick...

Larry's job is to measure the depth of the hole at all times and in all areas of the hole. They need the hole to be at a certain depth (determined via GPS) and completely flat on the bottom.

All the above photos were taken in the afternoon. The next few photos were taken after work... it's amazing what a difference a few hours can make!

You can see the laser level that they use to set the depth of the hole. Larry told me that due to the slope of the natural grade on the lot, the hole they're digging will be about 7'-8" on the front side and nearly 10'-0" deep on the back side.

They were still digging when we left the lot at about 5:45 for our meeting with the plumbing sub-contractor.

There's rain in the forecast for tomorrow afternoon, so the excavators figured they'd get a good start on it today and finish in the morning. The concrete trucks are still scheduled to arrive Friday to begin pouring the basement footings and walls.

There's a massive amount of dirt piled up around the hole, alot of which is going to be used to raise the overall grade in the front yard. (there's roughly a four foot difference in grade from the back of the house to the front of the house, and it slopes downhill more yet from there to the roadway)

More to come soon!

Paul

It...has.... begun!

Today was the first day of any real activity on our lot....

The excavator showed up this morning... he put in a gravel driveway over the culvert in the ditch, moved the huge pile of wood chips off to the side, dug up all the stumps and hauled most of them away.

Tomorrow is when the real fun begins!

He'll begin digging the hole for the basement and garage footings tomorrow! The forecast is 80% chance of rain, and so he may not work in the rain. But he has until the end of the day Thursday to be finished digging the hole as the concrete trucks are schedule to show up Friday morning to begin pouring the basement walls and footings.

I'll be getting pics of that when it happens, believe me :)

Paul

Rental search is OVER!

Robin received the call this afternoon.... we're approved for our choice of the apartments that we looked at on Saturday!

So the search is finally over.

We'll have a ground floor apartment in a very nice, quiet little area with a two car garage. We should be able to start moving in stuff before the date we actually had planned on as well.

In new home news, the excavator will be on site tomorrow morning. He'll start with moving the culvert to its proper location, building the gravel driveway, and digging out/hauling away the numerous tree stumps that dot the site.

Then on Wednesday he'll dig the actual hole for the basement of our house!

We also now have an appointment this Saturday morning with the supplier of the exterior stone and the fireplace components.

Paul

Somewhere to live...

Yesterday was a pretty busy day for us....

At 10:30 we had an appointment to see 2 possible rental properties. We met with a woman who had 2 apartments to rent out, and then as we were talking to her it turns out she may also have a condo to rent out.  We're waiting to hear back from her on the condo, but we put in an application and security deposit that should give us the first choice of any of the two (or three) units once our application goes through on Monday.

This complex is a nice place;  it's set back in its own little development area so there's very little traffic other than the people who live in one of the units and the property manager lives in one of the units and she knows everyone there by first name, so it's pretty safe/secure there as well.

We finished up with that appointment just in time to make our noon appointment with the exterior door/window supplier. With our new home now slated to be a Parade home we were able to get some free upgrades (upgraded hardware finishes and the dividers) from the window supplier, which is very nice.

We were able to get all the selections figured out for the windows (trim color, hardware color, window style {all casement style}, and that the little dividers in the windows will be between the panes of glass {versus removable interior units}).

The only thing we didn't decide on yet was the style/color/finish of the front entry door and the sidelights that go with it. We have a few weeks before that needs to be ordered.

Next up is our appointment with the plumbing fixture supplier. The first thing he'll need us to decide on is the "framing items";  bathtubs, etc., so he can get them ordered and the framers will be able to see exactly the dimensions they need to frame around.

Busy, busy, busy!

Paul

Meetings, meetings, and more meetings

Our first meeting with a sub-contractor is under our belt!

We had our meeting Monday night with the supplier for the shingles, siding, soffits, interior doors, trim, and stairway components. This supplier also will be providing all the lumber for our house as well. Things like the trusses, subfloors, studs for the walls, etc.

Robin and I were able to pick out the siding and the roofing that we wanted. We also confirmed the styles for the doors, the trim, and all the components of the stairway and railings that we want to have on our house. We didn't pick a stain color for the doors or the trim yet. We'll wait until we pick a stain color for our cabinets and then we'll match the trim stain color to that color. Likewise we didn't pick a color for the soffits yet either, as we'll pick a window frame color and then decide what color soffits we want after that.

This weekend is our next meeting... we'll be meeting with the window and exterior door supplier. In this one we'll confirm the style of windows we're after and choose a color for the frames. We'll also get to pick out the style of entry door that we want as our front door.

Next week we've scheduled the initial meeting with the plumbing subcontractor. For all of the above we have a couple weeks to make all our final selections before things have to be ordered for delivery to the site.

Also, today was the big inspection day... the buyers of our current home had their inspector go thru our house today. If the house passes inspection then the sale is officially a go... well, it passed! :)

So now Robin is working feverishly to find us a place to live for a few months for the time between us moving out of this house and the new one being completed.

As things stand right now, we're still on schedule to break ground next week!

More to come!

Paul

Getting ready....

The day of ground-breaking is fast approaching!

After a massive flurry of calls between myself, our builder Dennis, and our lender over the course of this week we appear to have arrived at a (hopefully) firm date for breaking ground on our new home.

If things stay as planned (and it sounds like now, after all the phone calls this week, it should) Dennis will be breaking ground on Tuesday, April 17th. The hole would be dug that day and the 18th, with the concrete trucks showing up to pour the footings that Thursday and Friday.

As you can see from the pic below, the trees are all cleared (thanks for all your help with that over the winter Dad!!), the wood piles are gone, the logs have been sold off, and the brush piles have been turned into large piles of wood chips.

The guys in the survey department where I work came out and staked the 4 corners of the house Thursday of this week, and I have a meeting early Monday morning at the site with Dennis and Joe (Joe will be the day to day on-site guy.. he'll be completing the staking of the house this week, shooting in every corner and wall of the foundation) to go over a couple things.

Robin and I have a Monday evening meeting with the siding, roofing, and lumber supplier where we'll go over our options and bring home samples of roofing and siding so we can make our selections on both.

We have more meetings to set up for the coming weeks, the next big one after this will be the meeting with the window supplier.

While all this is going on, Robin is searching for a place for us to rent from May through August. It's turning out to be a tough search as decent rentals don't seem to be easy to find.

Below are some more pics of our cleared out lot....

Paul