Forms and Footings

Things are moving right along. This week they poured the footings. They got the forms up and poured footings within a day or two. One day later they took the forms off the footings and started setting up the forms for the foundation walls.

Here the common foundation is not slab like I'm used to from homes I worked on back home when I was in college or high school. We will have a crawl space but it will be about 4 feet tall so its more of a crouch space than a crawl space. This picture below is my daughter who is 4' 6" tall walking around with me on a site visit after soccer practice.

In other news, the price of lumber keeps climbing and we have a new estimate on cost, which stinks, because it's a bit higher than the first estimate. Because we had the delay with the financing issues in November/December and we pushed the start date out to late February/early March the costs went up about 35%. This totally sucks but we really have no choice at this point. Below is a screen shot of the lumbar prices I've been following on nasdaq.com - I have no idea how it actually translates to lumber prices at the store but, clearly, things have gone up on the website and compared to the prices when we got our first estimate in October 2020 ($482.4) vs now ($867.10) apparently the price at the store has gone up too.

Luckily, we made some other changes on the doors that will save us a hefty chunk so that the increase in lumber cost is negated somewhat by the savings in some of the other areas. We had the plans drawn up showing several exterior doors but really we just wanted them to be windows and the windows are expected to cost significantly less than the doors.

We are meeting with our builder this coming week to talk windows and doors and get those all picked out and ordered so when they start framing they have the exact specifications when it comes to those items.

Things keep moving along and I'm pleased with the pace thus far. I hope they can keep it up. They told us they expected 10 months from day 1 until the day we move in but I'm hoping it will be faster than that.

Wrapping up the framing - Plumbing and HVAC

Garage is open and now that the framing is done they uncovered the windows. The final awnings were being built. Final set of awnings are now over the garage. Blue roofing material went on parts of the roof this week. I imagine it should be done by the end of next week. We showed up and found a bunch of mechanical heating/cooling equipment in the garage early in the week. We changed the stain color for our beams to Dark Oak with the tongue and groove being stained at 50% of the same color so we have some contrast. More of the roof. Most recent photo of the front of the house. Back porch is done. See the pictures below for the process. Picture from the inside with the upper wall still open. Picture from the upstairs bedroom looking into the backyard and onto the new pack patio/porch. Chimney was added! Heating/cooling and plumbing coming along nicely below the house. In the crawl space it is clear that they've been working but not much to show in the actual house as of yet. T...

Here we go again!

Trusses arrived today! This was the first of two loads! That's a lot of trusses. This week, in preparation for the trusses the crew came out for a few days to get some of the upstairs done that didn't need the truesses. This is looking from the great room into the kitchen and above the kitchen and front room we have some bedrooms. They started the staircase and I noticed that under the landing there was A TON of wasted space. See above and below. I asked our builder about in and she said she'd talk with the crew. The steel beam arrived for the garage. It is very big. The crew finished the stairs and opened it up BIG TIME! I was super happy about this. It increased the storage in our house dramatically. I'm six feet tall and can walk into the farthest back part of this closet standing straight up. IT IS AWESOME!!! More closet. Where the ladders are stored is about 6 feet tall! Landing on the staircase. Down this hall will be another bedroom and a loft and my music roo...

Foundation Prep

The soil on our lot was not great for a foundation so we had to dig a deep hole and then back fill it with soil that can compact well enough to support the house. We had to put 3 feet of backfill in! We watched them bring load after load of dirt and then smooth it out and compact it and then do it all over again until the full 3 feet were filled in. Last night I took my daughter up there after soccer practice and we walked around on the final grade. Footings and forms should be going up next week!

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