Merry Christmas!

A little late, you are thinking?  Nope...right on time.  Today is the day framing starts and it feels just like Christmas morning here-maybe even better because the night before I wasn't up until 4am wrapping and frantically getting things just so for the kids.  This day is for the big kids...Seth and I.  It's been a labor of blood, sweat, tears and an 'open bar' tap on our bank account for the last few months.  Now that framing has started, our home builder takes over.  This means that from here on out, with the exception of a few finishing steps, we are not as involved in the daily activities.  I can do what I do best, which is taking pictures, picking out paint, re-purposing furniture and buying decor.  Yay!

The past 30 days have definitely been a stress.  I completely understand the understanding nods and sympathetic looks from people when I tell them we are building a house 'Oh....really.....'  After getting the stem walls done, the footings quickly followed.  And then we worked with our general contractor to determine if back fill was the real next step.  Because of the wet dirt, he thought the better option would be to compact the garage and use that for their main 'walkway' to the house to build so that we can avoid making the surrounding dirt a mud pit.  The plan made sense, but of course, it now added a delay to the lumber being delivered because they needed a place to put it.

Backing up a bit, our initial 'dirt guy' came recommended, but unfortunately we did not have a great relationship with him.  He caused a good majority of our delays, accidentally cut the power to our neighbors, cut a corner too closely and took out a fence and a gate and drastically underestimated the cost of the land prep that we needed in order to build.  While I can't say that some of those issues wouldn't have come up with even the best contractor, he has been a proverbial thorn in our side.  And even though his work is done, there are still fixes that need to be made to the fence and gate which might have to involve some legal persuasion on our part to get him to do the right thing.  Thankfully the neighbors are understanding, but I think we will need to host a few BBQ's complete with steaks and beer in order to be sure we stay in good standing!

So, because we essentially fired our first dirt contractor, compacting the garage wasn't exactly a 1-day job.  We had to re-hire, re-bid, re-visit and re-explain the plan and then wait for their schedule to have availability.  I suppose the fact that they needed a week to schedule was a good thing, showing their popularity.  And they did a great job, came in right on budget and everything was what we needed it to be.

If anyone else dares this adventure, I can definitely throw you some names of who, and more importantly, who NOT to hire :)  So, today marks Christmas morning for our new house.  Visions of hammers, nails 2x4's and busy bee workers are dancing in my head.

So, here you go....the calm before the storm.