They poured the concrete into the forms early last week and took them off within a day. They then came back and cleaned up the job site and let the concrete cure for the rest of the week. I love the view here facing that sunset!
While we were waiting for the concrete to cure we met with our builder and the distributor that they use for their windows and exterior doors. They had bid out the windows based on the plans and we were meeting to go over everything and clarify questions. Before the meeting I reviewed the plans and compared it to the bid and found that they had missed one of windows in a guest bathroom and the bid had mentioned that two windows shown on the elevation plans were not on the actual floor plans and so we had to be pretty thorough. They had the windows drawn in as casement windows but in my mind I had always imagined single hung windows. I didn't know what these were called but I visited the Anderson Windows website and as I looked around I found out about the different types of windows. Because we like the look of the elevations drawn up for us we decided to keep the casement windows in the front for curb appeal and then change the rest of the windows to single hung windows which are cheaper than casement so that was a nice way to save some money on the budget. We stayed on budget for our entry doors and our two back doors. The man door in the garage we were able to save some money on because they had planned on an 8 foot door but I guess that those doors have a deadbolt as well as locks that go up into the beam above the door and down into the floor. Our idea was that we'd have a keypad with a code we can put in for the kids to enter the garage that way rather than adding a keypad to the big garage doors but they can't do that with an 8 foot door so we changed it to a 6' 8" door and that saved us a little bit of money as well, though we may end up paying extra for the keypad so we may just break even in the end. The exterior doors were Therma Tru Doors and they have a nice selection. For our entry doors we went with a fiberglass door system from Waudena and one of the things that they do is they included the handles and knobs. They also let you rent temporary doors so that once they are hung the dings and scratches from the subcontractors over the course of the build don't really matter. Since you don't have to buy a "touch up kit" or the hardware they are a bit more expensive up front but in the end you about break even. The actual doors will be stored at the local door dealer/distributor until time for final installation. With COVID impacting everything still one of the things we wanted to do is get the order in sooner than normal so we don't have to deal with any of the delays. I guess typically windows and doors can take 3-5 weeks to get and some of them are still on time but others are taking up to 6-12 weeks. We wanted to get moving and not have to deal with that.
I went back to the property today just to check it out, not really expecting anything to have changed, but found that they had painted/sealed the concrete. They seal it to protect it from water seeping in from the outside and they have to do that before they can backfill the dirt around the foundation stem walls.
Once they get the back filling done they'll get the framers out here. I guess they are currently working on a few other houses so it may be a while until they get started on framing - maybe 2 to 3 weeks. In the meantime, after they back fill they will pour the slab in the garage so there may or may not be a lot to talk about in the next few weeks.
