My intentions were to do several house 'update' posts over the last few weeks, but things have been happening so fast and have been so busy that I decided to wait and do one big post about the last few weeks at the house.
We last left off back HERE when we had dinner at our lot - the very next day we had this big hole.
We have a hole!
I know that does not seem very exciting, but it is! Like McKay said, "there is no turning back now"
The picture above is of me, McKay and Bodie standing in the sub-basement. The picture does not do justice to how deep the hole is, it is about 12 feet deep.
Looking back towards the cul-de-sac.
That is one good-looking pile of topsoil if you ask me!
When Dutch Fields {the community we are building in} was developed every lot was covered in about a foot and a half of topsoil. We paid our excavator a little extra money to spend the first day scraping the topsoil into this nice large pile in the back corner of our lot. It is about $5,000 worth of topsoil that we will use to spread out over our lot after we level and contour it the way we want. It should be worth the extra money in the end, and convient to have it ready to go.
Gregg standing at the back of the future garage.
I took this picture to try and show how deep the hole is, that is McKay holding Bodie at ground level.
When we were checking out our hole our new neighbor came out and yelled over "Hey Gregg, do you think you could dig a bigger hole?" He is a funny guy, and we are excited to be back door neighbors {they have five boys}.
This picture shows the basement {in the back ground} and sub-basement {in the foreground}.
Again, sub-basement to the left and basement on the right.
McKay in the basement.
The next day we had this going on! Footings.
We could have sat all day and watched the pumper truck.
Those are some extra large footings.
The footing had to sit for a day and then they were stripped and the walls started to go up.
One afternoon I met Gregg and the boys at the lot and when I pulled into the cul-de-sac this is what I saw!
They were so excited to see all the big trucks working.
See what I mean, things are moving quickly!
The next day the forms for the foundation walls started to go up. I think there was a crew of 12 guys working for two long days to get them all up.
Steel for the foundation walls =lots of $$$
We were working really had to get the foundation walls up so that on Friday they could pour the cement, but due to weather and the amount of work it took we didn't quite make it.
Bright and early Monday morning the cement trucks started showing up and we were pouring foundation walls. It took about 18 cement trucks
They poured all day long and the cement trucks kept coming!
The very next day they have to strip the forms off the walls - I can not believe they were taking the forms off 18 hours later. You can tell the cement is still wet - at this point you have to let it set {doing no work at all} for four days - now you know why we tried so hard to get the walls poured on Friday so part of the curing process could be over the weekend. Oh well, its okay, there were a few small things we worked on.
At this point it kind of felt like our house was going to be too big seeing all that cement exposed. Gregg said he felt like we were pouring a foundation for a small hotel!
Just about every morning Truman wakes up and says, "Lets go see our house, I bet it will be done today."
They think it is fun to explore around the construction site.
This is Gregg up at what will be ground level trying to check out the view from our front door.
At this point we started meeting with the excavator again about how to back-fill around the foundation and how we want the back yard to lay out.
The kids found some grass and wanted to play ball in the back yard!
He is holding his mitt in the air and quoting "The Sandlot",
"Please let me catch it, please let me catch it"
{The part when Smalls first starts playing ball at the sandlot and he holds his mitt in the air with his eyes closed}
Watch out Bodie!
Bodie is learning how to catch the ball in the mitt. Good job Bodie - and Truman for throwing it right to him.
Next the water proffers came. I swear, if any water ever gets into my house one of these contractors is going to be in big trouble! This is some serious money being spent and materials used {cement, steel, tar, back-fill, french drain}
And now it was finally time to bury the footings and foundation.
The french drain attached to the foundation.
This is about where we are at right now, it is really fun to see the back yard take shape.
This is Truman running around in the future back yard.
This coming week retaining walls will go in and the contouring of the backyard should be pretty much complete. We can finally see the house on the lot, the views, the front yard and back yard and we are starting to figure out where we want things in the backyard to be.
So far we are really happy with our decision to be the general contractors ourselves. We have been able to get subcontractors lined up to do their part very quickly and easily - its nice to be in charge of our own schedule. We actually passed our neighbors in the building process they started a few weeks before us and now they are a few weeks behind us. Gregg has done all that work and he has done such a great job - it has been way smoother then either of us anticipated - so far!
Very exciting! What's a sub-basement?
ReplyDeleteIndoor basketball court, Audrey!
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