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.

Start of Construction

I stink at updating this blog! As you can probably imagine, with moving (actually, moving twice...thanks current landlord) and work and life in general, I've completely neglected to post anything. But there is actually a lot to post/show.

Since my last post about our pre-construction meeting, which seems like so long ago, construction actually started! Exactly three weeks ago today, they broke ground and instead of having a pile of dirt we had a giant hole in the ground.

Kenny was out of town when they broke ground so I had to celebrate by myself. I can't even explain the excitement I felt when I drove up and saw that we no longer had a flat lot, but a giant hole instead. I FaceTimed with Kenny and then with my Dad and we sat there for about 30 minutes just watching them continue to work. I even got to meet our new neighbors while I was out there.

They started digging the hole for the foundation on a Thursday. I had visited the lot every single day that week hoping they would start and was disappointed every day until Thursday when I pulled up and saw this. Unfortunately, it rained really hard the next day and the hole was filled with water so they couldn't do anything else for a few days. 

A few days later, they started to work on the beginning of the foundation and poured the concrete for the footer.

Things have moved along even farther than this and we're about a week away from scheduling our pre-drywall meeting. I'll save that for another post but I'll try to stay up to date from now on!

Pre-Construction

I'm a little (okay a lot) late on this post but now that we're literally only a few days away from breaking ground, I thought it was the perfect time to share how our pre-construction meeting went.

Two weeks ago, Kenny and I went to the model home and met our project manager, Kyle, for the first time. We sat down with him and our sales rep to go over how the process is going to work once the actual construction begins. They call this meeting the "handing over" from sales to production so the majority of our contact now will be with the PM instead of our sales rep.


We spent the majority of the meeting going over our master selection list and verifying that everything we had chosen was listed and that everything that was listed was correct. The only change we ended up making was moving some recessed lighting. Because we opted to have pre-wiring put in for pendant lights over the kitchen island, it relocated the recessed lights that typically would have been there. We decided to move those extra lights into the living room which we're going to turn into an office. We were kind of disappointed that we weren't able to add an additional overhead light in the family room but since everything is already finalized, it just wasn't possible. We also hit a bit of a snag because our flooring selections hadn't been sent over from the flooring company but we were able to get that cleared up the next day.

We only had a few questions and aside from not being able to add an additional light in the family room, all of the answers we got were good news (tons of outlets all over the house, lights in the unfinished basement, two windows in the master bedroom, garage door opener) .

The PM also went over in detail all the specifics of the HVAC system, the insulation and the way certain things will be done but to be honest, I don't remember a whole lot of that construction jargon. He also showed us the master blueprint plans for the house which was really cool to see. I want to try to get a copy of the plan for the front of the house and frame it and put it inside once the house is complete.

Our next meeting with the PM will be our pre-drywall meeting about 3-4 weeks after the construction actually begins, which if everything stays on schedule, will be this week! Stay tuned!

Snow Problem

Snow.

Snow was not the word we wanted to hear a week before our construction is scheduled to begin. We got about 7 or 8 inches of snow today and construction is supposed to start next week. But with the weather and the frozen ground, that might not be happening. And it's definitely not making either us happy considering how antsy we've been for things to get started.

It's been a little bit over a month since I last posted but to be honest, there hasn't been anything to say. Other than giving the mortgage company the rest of our downpayment, things have been pretty quiet since we picked the flooring and the carpet.

Even with the weather, we are still on for our pre-construction meeting in two days. We're going to meet our project manager for the first time and sit down with him and our sales rep and go over the house plans and verify all of our choices before they begin to build.

Here's a picture of our home site...before the snow came.

Keep your fingers crossed for us that everything stays on schedule!!!

What Did The Rug Say To The Floor?

I've got you covered. 

This weekend we decided to do a little bit of early 
scouting for our flooring options. Our meeting at the StoneMark flooring showroom wasn't scheduled until the middle of next week but since Kenny has a meeting that day, I thought I'd be doing this one by myself. Since I thought it was still important for him to be a part of making the decisions and I was afraid of picking something he hated, we decided to visit the showroom a little early and see what the choices were so come Wednesday, I could make an informed decision without being completely on my own. We got super lucky and the sales rep we had our meeting with had a break in between appointments so we got to make our choices right then and there. 

We had 6 selections within our upgrade level when it came to the flooring and because we had already seen the options when we visited the model to pick our granite and counters, we had a good idea of what we wanted. There were about 9 more choices of colors - both real wood and engineered wood - and options to have different widths in the actual flooring panels but we decided to stay with our original selection. 

Part of the upgrade package that our home came with is wood floors throughout the kitchen, morning room, foyer and in the powder room. Everything else on the first floor - the study, the dining room and the stairs would be carpeted. But we decided to extend the hardwood into the dining room. I was skeptical about it at first and to be honest, if Kenny hadn't been with me I probably would have said no. But after thinking of what could happen to a carpet in the dining room, I was quickly convinced. 

Next up: carpet. Our upgrade level had very few options which was kind of disappointing. There were four different colors and that particular carpet had no stain protection. A kid, a pet, and no strain protection didn't sound like a good combination. With that in mind, we decided to upgrade the carpets to something a little bit softer and with stain protection.

 

We picked a slightly darker carpet. Taupe Stone to be exact. I wanted something a little bit darker that wouldn't show every single foot print and tiny bit of dirt that comes into the house. The carpet we have in our house now shows everything so my goal was to get something a little bit darker but not too dark that it made the house seem dark and I think this was a good choice.

One thing I didn't even consider beforehand was tile for the bathroom. We actually ended up picking one thing and then changing our mind once we were reminded by our sales rep that the toilet and other things in the bathroom would be white. Without any upgrade, the flooring would be white tile. I hate white tile. We have white tile in our bathroom now and every piece of dust and strand of hair sticks out like a sore thumb and it drives me crazy. So white was out. We decided to upgrade the second bathroom upstairs with almond floor tiles instead of white. And the master we upgraded a little bit more.

The easiest choice by far was the vinyl flooring for the laundry room. I can't tell you how excited I am to have the laundry room upstairs. We picked this grayish-brown called Castle Stone that looks nice next to the Taupe Stone carpet. 

We didn't spend too much on the upgrades but the ones that we did decide to do I think were important and well worth it. 

We're pretty much done making selections for the interior of the house. Or at least the ones that the builders need to know about. We stopped by Lowes this weekend to take a look at light fixtures, ceiling fans and a fire pit that we're planning on putting on the patio that Kenny wants to put outside the back door. 

We also got our expected start date for construction. So now we sit and wait. Very impatiently.