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

WOOHOO!

Well, today has been a good day folks...!

That couple who came thru our house in the private showing this past Thursday night called our realtor and asked for a second private showing Saturday (today) morning prior to our scheduled open house Sunday afternoon.

They came thru for their 10am to 11am private showing and were gone by 10:45... Robin and I found it a bit... hopeful... that they'd want two private showings two days apart just before a scheduled open house.

Our realtor called us a bit later. She said by 12:15 she had a signed offer in her hands from today's couple!

She brought the offer over here at 3:00. We went thru it all with her and decided to counter offer for $2000 more than the couple's initial offer. She drove back to her office and prepared the counter offer and emailed to the couple and the realtor working with them.

As soon as our realtor (Lori) left our house, I called our builder Dennis to tell him that we had an offer, and subsequent counter-offer, in the works so we could be very close to giving him the go-ahead on the new house.

During the conversation between Dennis and I some very interesting news came to light:  Dennis doesn't have a home to build for the fall Parade of Homes so far this year.

(he'd been waiting on another couple to sell their current home so he could put their new home in the fall Parade, but they've had no luck selling their current home yet as it was quite a bit bigger than a "typical" home that's been selling quickly in the area). 

It would be Dennis' first year in 11 years without a home to show in the Parade... (Parade showings are huge advertising opportunities for home builders as they get to showcase their entire range of abilities to a large number of possible customers)

Just an FYI here if you didn't know... Robin and I had originally been considering the idea of having our home be in the Parade in fall 2012 for many reasons (some decent upgrades and discounts are to be had by us from subcontractors for the chance for them to showcase their product and services in a Parade home, and this would be a chance for us to get a few features we wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to put into the design), but ultimately it came down to being able to come up with the cash needed to pay for the "extras" that Dennis requires in a home that he has in a Parade. Things like a driveway (which we would have waited until 2013 to put in), built-in sound (which we wouldn't have done at all) in 4 rooms, and an interior designer/stager who charges several thousand dollars to both stage the home for the Parade and decorate it (we'd get to select the decor/window treatments and then keep them after the parade) for the Parade.

So, back to that "interesting news" from Dennis....

Because he is in a position he does not want to be in (not having his biggest public advertising opportunity) he offered us several deals on the above items listed.

He's going to split the cost of the interior designer 50/50 with us, and only require her services on the lower floor of our new home instead of both floors (her cost is per square foot...so not having to pay her to decorate the upstairs cuts her fee by about 1/3). He's also only going to ask us to put in built-in sound in 3 rooms instead of 4 (several hundred dollars per room), and he's only going to require the front lawn be seeded (instead of the entire lawn). Plus a couple other much smaller things he'd throw in.

All this and the effect of it being a Parade home on the subcontractors means we can now go back to them, quote in hand, and look for all kinds of discounts on large ticket allowance items like appliances, flooring, cabinets (countertops), lighting, etc., since all the subs will want their products shown in the Parade as well.

So I hung up with Dennis and Robin and I discussed the stuff Dennis had just told me, and we decided to go with putting our new home in the Parade in fall (two weekends in mid to late August). So I called Dennis back and told him that news (he was very happy to hear that!). He was going to then get the building permit going and I called the septic (mound system and well , no city water and sewer at the new place) guy (Dion) and got him going on the permits for his systems as well.

About 5:30 tonight Lori texted Robin and told us that the couple accepted our counter-offer!!!

So after a somewhat hectic 4 weeks of having our house on the market it's sold!

The buyers will schedule an inspector to go thru our house and when it passes inspection the deal is done.

The closing date is May 17th, so we have to be out by May 18th. This means we now have to focus the immediate future on finding a place to live for the last three months of our new home construction. We'll be looking at duplexes (there are a ton of them in the area) first, then if we don't find any of those we'll be looking at apartments next.

Dennis didn't give us an exact date he'd start digging the hole in the lot today, but he had said way back in the beginning that a fall Parade home would usually start around the 10th of April or so.

This also means that sometime before late April Robin and I will need to begin having meetings with subcontractors to go over their specific bids and products and make our selections for a great many items. (the first of which, believe it or not, is to be the siding / roofing subcontractor)

We have an exciting and very busy next few months ahead of us!

Paul