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.

Foundations

One of the things I really want is a big, open garage. We planned it all out in the drawings but recently we heard back from the structural engineer that they will have to put a post/column in the middle of the garage. We talked with our builder about what could be done. She asked about a bigger truss but the truss guy says that they can't build a bigger truss. We decided to pay the engineer to do the math and see if a large steel beam could be used because according to our builder she doesn't expect the beam to add that much cost, if its possible. The engineer is currently working on seeing if its possible. If it is possible they will likely have to make the footings bigger and that would add concrete cost but overall the cost can't be predicted until the engineer updates his plans. Once the plans are updated our builder can let us know about costs and at that point we can decide if the increase cost is worth it or not. I feel that paying an engineer a little mo...

Cranes and Trusses

The crane was scheduled for Tuesday so on Monday they got things ready. Early Tuesday morning they were cranking. Here's the crane from far away. The crane in action. View of the back dinning room. Great room with trusses. Great room as seen from the entry way. The upstairs bedrooms were done with this little perch of what became a hallway. This is the "before" so you can appreciate the after. They put the trusses on the upstairs bedrooms over the entryway and you can see that below. Trusses over the main living area and some of the trusses over the garage where there is some more living space. The crane was rented for 5 hours on Tuesday and this is what they got done. They will get the crane again this week and they are hoping to be done with the trusses at that point. They put up the front, east facing, wall of the hallway. Same thing from inside the garage. Back, west facing, wall of the hallway was done. Starting to push out over the garage. This...

Ugggghhhhh...

This was a text exchange with our builder from 2 weeks ago...COVID is essentially over but we're still dealing with the effects... A week after the text above this was done. They really only put the joists above the kitchen, dinning room and the formal living room area and finished the plywood walls. Above is a picture from the entrance hall looking through the main living area (where we will have vaulted ceilings) and into the dinning room/kitchen area. Kitchen looking into the dinning room. Stairs will go here. Front of the garage. You can see the stairwell poking up behind the garage. Full frontal... Looking from the dinning area down the hall to the master. Wood burning fireplace will go between those windows. Looking at the main living area from the kitchen. Looking from the house out into the garage. Same as above just panned right. Exterior garage. In all likelihood nothing will really change until the week of June 14th-18th and from there I bet it'll be a...

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