Pre-Drywall Meeting

This week is the 7th week of construction on our house and we started it out by having our pre-drywall meeting. It's hard to believe that 7 weeks ago we were anxiously waiting for them to break ground and now we're even more anxiously waiting completion.

We met with our project manager, Kyle, at the house on Monday morning to walk through everything and get an update on what to expect next. The whole meeting was only about 15 or 20 minutes, which was a lot shorter than I expected. Because we stop by the house so much, most of the things that he pointed out to us were things that we had already noticed. The PM made sure to point out the location of everything that we had added on - pre-wire for pendant lights over the kitchen island, pre-wires for ceiling fans in the morning room and all the bedrooms, and two recessed lights in the office.

The only concern that we had was a broken window in the dining room. When I pointed it out, our PM said he already knew about it and not to worry, it will be replaced before everything is said and done. Our only other question was making sure the three-piece plumbing rough-in was in the basement because when we had visited the house we only saw two pieces but everything is all set and we'll have plumbing ready for whenever we decide to finish the basement.

Now comes the bad news. We are delayed. We were originally supposed to go to settlement the last week in June and we're pushed back now to the second week in July. Everything with the construction is on schedule but the power company is delayed in coming out and turning the power on, even though all the electrical is done.

Next up:
- HVAC inspection to make sure there are no leaks
- Insulation
- Drywall

We're disappointed that things are delayed but we're crossing our fingers that it's not delayed any more than those couple of weeks (or not delayed at all if we're really lucky).

Framing and Plumbing

Our pre-drywall meeting is officially scheduled for Monday but that hasn't stopped us from going inside and taking a look around (more than once). I probably mentioned this before but our project manager told us at our pre-construction meeting that the windows were in we were free to go inside and look around. In fact, he encouraged it and told us to contact him if we noticed anything that didn't seem right. So far everything looks good.

Here are a few pictures from the first time we got to go inside.

As of yesterday, the plumbing was being completed. We now have a bathtub in the upstairs guest bathroom, a shower in the master bathroom, and water lines for the fridge, dishwasher, washer and dryer and whatever these things are called for where the toilets will go.

 

According to our PM, the plumbing should be finished up today, next will be electrical and then onto the insulation and the dry wall. We're about 60 days away from settlement and starting to countdown the days!

Framing

It is kind of crazy how fast a house gets put together. I think from now on it's probably going to seem a lot slower because we can't see the progress from the outside. The last time I posted our hole for our foundation was completed and they had started to pour the footer. It's crazy how much has happened since then.Because I haven't been keeping up on my blog posts like I had originally planned and I'm trying to get caught up, I'm going to post a series of photos with dates because the amount of progress compared with the amount of time it's taken is kind of unbelievable.

April 7th - Foundation in progress

April 11th - Finishing up the foundation

April 14th - Preparing for the concrete to be poured and lumber was delivered

April 15th - Concrete was poured for the basement and garage

April 18th - Floor deck and starting the first floor walls

April 19th - First floor complete and starting the second floor

 

 April 20th - Finishing up the roof and starting the house wrap and insulation

 April 21st - Happy Birthday to me! - Garage and morning room roof are up

April 24th - Windows are going in and front porch roof is done

Since this point, the exterior has continued to look pretty much the same, except they put the shingles on the roof of the house and the garage. From now on as I'm sure you can imagine, most of the things that are changing are on the inside. It won't be as easy as just driving past to see the progress. But we did get to go inside for the first time this past weekend. That in itself deserves a whole separate blog post.

Last week, I got an email from our project manager saying that things were moving along right on schedule and he would be in touch with us soon to schedule our pre-drywall inspection.

I'll try my best to do a blog post on each step of the way from now on instead of lumping it all together. But I do think its kind of cool to see the progress in a series of pictures and see how quickly it's happened.