Dustin.blog

Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen the most amount of changes to our lot, yay!

On Tuesday, July 10, the forms for the basement walls were delivered and set in the basement. It sure looked like enough of them!

The next day, the crew spent the afternoon taking a gazillion measurements, since our basement isn’t four square walls (you can see this in some upcoming pictures).

On Thursday, the team was there all day and they continued to set up the forms in preparation for the concrete.

On Friday, we were scheduled to get concrete, but they weren’t quite done with all the forms and there was no pumper truck available, so no walls on Friday.

Then, on Monday, both the team and the trucks were available, yes! I ended up working from a camp chair in the neighbor’s yard (using their wifi) for the afternoon.

On Tuesday, the team came back and removed the forms and got them all packed up to go to the next project. (Which they said they have 100 projects on the books, good thing we aren’t at the end of that line!).

Wednesday the forms were picked up and on Thursday the walls got waterproofed. On Friday, it poured, so no additional work was done. This week we are scheduled to get the dirt moved back around the walls and the underground plumbing will get worked on.

The pink is where the brick is going to go

Look at the giant window in my office!

Week three started off with a bang as we finally got the footers poured for the basement walls. This was 11 days after the footers were set. The combination of rainy weather and waiting for an inspection was the reason for the delays.

Over the next two days, the forms came off the poured footers and Kellen and I got to see them “sling” rock into the hole. That was definitely cool.

Then all progress stopped.

Another 11 days and no activity. The 4th of July holiday fell into this window, which played a part in the scheduling.

After talking to our project superintendent, it’s not like anyone was purposefully stalling, it’s just that all the crews are building lots of houses this summer. And there’s only a handful of companies that have the forms for the basement walls.

One thing that I did this week (because I’m super impatient 🙂 ) was I set up a Ring doorbell on a stake in the corner of our yard. This way I can see if anything is happening before wasting time driving past.

You can’t see too much detail, but I see if walls are brought in and when framing happens, I’ll be able to see that too.

We’re scheduled to get the foundation this week. Let’s see if it happens!

My wife and I are building a new house and after what seems like months (well, it really was months with decisions and selections to make) they finally made a call to the excavating company to come and start digging on June 12.

The digger was set to be on site at 8:30am, so I packed up both kids so we could see the first scoop of dirt. Turns out, the machine needed gas and they need to do some other prep work, so we weren’t going to be able to see the first bucket full before we had to leave to take Kenley to Bible School.

The operator was super nice and he scooped and threw some dirt around for a bit and little man loved it. I didn’t take any pictures of him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the big yellow machine.

Since we are building a house on a walkout lot, there wasn’t too much dirt (for a digger of course, it’d be a lot if shoveling by hand) to remove and they were done shortly after lunch time.

The next day the same crew was back to dig a channel at the back of the house for the footer wall.

On Friday / Saturday of the first week, a team came in and got the forms all ready to go for concrete. It was neat to watch them get the stakes in the exact right place. It made the basement much easier to visualize.

After seeing so much work done in week one, it was hard to not see much done in week two.

On Monday the inspector was supposed to come and check the footer forms, but there was address on the lot, nor blueprints left on site so no inspection happened. The inspection did happen on Tuesday and that was it.  Knowing that we have a set time when we have to be out of the rental unit we are in, it hard to watch these two beautiful days slip past us with no visual work.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were a wash with rain on the first two days, then too muddy for any work.

Here’s to footers and maybe basement walls in week three!

Digger throwing dirt for the kids

Here’s our basement

Forms ready, check

Little bit of water