House Update – End of October

Another month has come and went and they are still working on our house 🙂

Even though it seemed like there were a lot of days where nothing happened, progress was made. These things specifically:

All rough electrical work
Media rough wiring (for Ethernet and speakers)
Each electrical / plumbing / gas / house structure inspection failed at least once, but in the end they all passed
We had a pre-drywall meeting where I caught a few electrical mistakes
Exterior trim was installed
Garage doors were hung
House was completely insulated
Drywall was almost all hung
The brick crew continued to work, but they were thwarted by running out of sand (one day), then bricks (two days later) and now rain this week.
The electric and gas lines were hooked up to the house
And the exterior painting started

We’ve got a busy month of December, so hopefully all things will be completed this month so we can move during November.

House Update – End of September

September has come and gone and we are getting closer to a completed house.

Not a lot happened at the beginning of the month, with lots of days of no progress. This is because nothing else could start until we got concrete in the basement.

The sliding basement door and basement steps couldn’t be installed and HVAC crew didn’t want to start when there was no basement floor.

While we were waiting, we did get the front yard torn up to get the city water line and sewer connections made.

On September 18th, we finally got concrete. The crew arrived early and since the house was built and bricks were delivered and sitting around the house, the concrete had to be pumped into both the basement and garage.

Once the concrete work finished, activity started to pick up.

The remaining doors (sliding door in the basement and the exterior door off the kitchen) were installed and the last window in the basement was added. The framers came back and added the steps to the basement and then the mechanicals started.

The HVAC crew (just one guy) was there for four days and the plumbers started last Friday.

While the work is going on inside the house, our crew of two came to start bricking the house. They’ve got quite a task ahead of them, since they mentioned our house will have 14,000 bricks!

Hopefully nearly all the work will be done in October and we can finally move in and organize our belongings 🙂

House Update – End of August

There have been a lot of new visual changes in the second half of the month.

On Monday, August 20th, the framers continued framing on the second floor and got all of the interior walls completed. It was a bit wet, so I didn’t take many pictures.

Tuesday the morning was spent preparing the rafters and continued work on the inside of the second floor. The fireplace was frame out and closets were added.

Wednesday was a fun day to watch (which I spent a couple hours at the site 🙂 ) as the roof trusses were put on and they started the adding the plywood.

On Thursday, they finished getting all the plywood on the roof. And it really looks like a house from the outside now!

The framing crew finished up on Friday by getting all the walls ready for drywall and removed all the temporary bracing.

This past week we got most windows and doors (Tuesday) and a roof on Thursday. I’m pretty sure the roofing crew was waiting on a day that was less than 90 degrees.

Up for this week is to get the water / sewer line hooked up from the road and get the basement floor poured.

The basement floor was supposed to get done last week, but there was some “concrete emergency” on another job, so we were pushed back. There’s rain in the forecast this week, so we might get priority over some of the other jobs since ours in all inside.

House Update – Mid August

It’s been awhile since I checked in, but mainly because we’ve been traveling and the bulk of the home work has happened in the last 7 days 🙂

Since my last post, the basement plumbing got completed and passed inspection. Our roof trusses were delivered (weird, since no other wood has been delivered) and the steel beams in the basement were delivered and set in place. And the dirt piles have been moved around the house.

On August 8th, the framers began to form up the walls for the basement. At the end of that week, is when the beams were put in place.

Picture of the area on Sunday night (when we got home from vacation)

On Monday, I had a bunch of reading and catching up on all the things that happened since I took 10 days off work, so in the morning I took my camp chair and watched them frame from the neighbor’s yard.

Here are a few pictures from Monday:

On Tuesday, the first floor flooring was completed and walls started going up:

On Wednesday, they finished constructing all of the load bearing walls and started adding the wood for the floors upstairs. Thursday it rained all day around here, so the framer’s weren’t around, but another steel beam was added in the garage.

Friday started off a bit wet, but dried out throughout the day. The crew was there and they finished up the upstairs floor. They also started to work on some of the walls upstairs.

Today, the worked a “half-day,” but they were still there when we peeked in at 2pm. The steps have been added between the main floor and upstairs and all of the outside walls have been completed.

Panorama at the top of the steps on the second floor.

The guys are super nice and they don’t mind me coming and watching and usually spend a few moments chatting with me. They said today that they’ll be here one more week and they’ll be done with everything. They only handle wood, so that means the trusses and roof will be all complete as well as all the interior walls.

House Update – Weeks 5 & 6

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!

House Update – Weeks 3 & 4

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!

New House Construction – Weeks 1 & 2

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!