The BEST day

You know when you have one of those days where everything just feels GOOD.  Good breakfast, good hair day, the kid are getting along, the laundry is done....just GOOD.  Valentine's Day was that day for us.  We spent it at the property and I couldn't have asked for anything better.

We started off with doing something I have dreamed of doing since we began this project.  We decorated our house with bible verses.  Tons of them...on the insides of closets, on the floors, inside doorways....and I can't tell you how good it feels to know that the FOUNDATION of our house, the supports that hold up our walls, are covered in God's word.  It was such a comfort to know that this house is starting off right.  I know that those words, even though we won't be able to see them for much longer, will be something I remember as long as we live there.  Which, better be for a LONG time because I don't plan on moving :)

After that, we cleaned up the house, boy can a work crew make a mess.  Nails, scrap wood, and a HUGE collection of vitamin water bottles were packed in garbage bags or burned and we spent the whole day just playing and having fun.  The weather was amazing, and I found myself often daydreaming about this summer and sitting in the back yard, with a BBQ going and kids running around the yard.

Once it got dark, it was amazing to see the amount of stars you can see when you distance yourself from the bright lights and big city, er, big suburb :)  And even louder was the frogs.  Luckily our kids like noise when they sleep, there will be no shortage of nature sounds in our neck of the woods!

Next on the agenda is getting the roof on, which will be comforting because of the rain that is constantly looming in the forecast.  The windows and doors are there, so I'm hoping those are going on soon to get everything sealed up.  It's so fun to turn the corner onto the property and see what happened that day.  There are days nothing happens and it's disheartening because you feel like you lose momentum, but there is no sense getting frustrated about it.  If anything, I have learned that.

                   

                           

                       

Morning Sickness

(Let me preface this whole post by saying I am NOT pregnant, so don't freak out.  It's a metaphor, people!)


With almost all of my pregnancies, I went though them pretty easily.  I had light cases of morning sickness, most of it just felt similar to reading in the car too long.  I never had to run to the bathroom when I caught a whiff of something I didn't like.  I could eat meat, I craved watermelon.  I didn't eat crazy things like potato chips dipped in ice cream.  With my last child, I didn't even feel contractions until I was almost 9 centimeters.  That was pretty awesome!  I LOVE being pregnant.  And I miss it sometimes.

So I was trying to come up with a comparison to how building a house feels.  And one day a friend said something that was an 'ah-ha' moment.  'It's like being pregnant.' And just like that two words came to mind: MORNING SICKNESS.  Now, like I said, I really didn't have it.  But I had friends and family who did.  And it sounded awful.  If I had that, I'm sure we would have been a 'one and done' family.  I don't deal with sickness, especially when it lasts, and lasts, and lasts.....so when morning sickness was compared to building a house, I finally can now say I am dead in the middle of morning sickness.

It seems like the building process is a roller coaster.  One moment you are feeling great, then next you feel like running for the bathroom.  You wake up feeling like you are ready to kick butt and take some names, and then you get the call that the crew has the flu, the company is 'reorganizing' and all your contacts have changed, the truss truck breaks down, details get missed and things get framed wrong.....all these little bouts of issues that make you want to rewind, go back to bed, and start again tomorrow.  And for the record, all those things have happened to us in the last few weeks.

I'm being negative, I know.  In the grand scheme of things, progress has been made, we now have walls framed!  And the trusses are re-scheduled to come out tomorrow.  The crew is about 50% better, with most of them finally breaking their 103 degree fever.  A list of measurements that need to be fixed, or noted, or changed has been communicated across the board and should be right.  We got a crazy good deal on a front door that is going to be UH-MAZING.  We ordered granite, sinks, light fixtures and are in the middle of picking out paint colors.  We know our flooring, we just need to order it.  So there are silver linings.  The project is moving forward, if nothing else, by the amount of air miles we are accumulating buying all of these things on our credit card.  (And yes, paying it off every month.)

So, I'm going to try to focus on the little steps forward, have more grace with the big steps back...and I may dig out my sea bands that I used to wear when I did have days when I wasn't feeling so hot in those early months of pregnancy.  They worked when I was pregnant, maybe they'll help while we build this house :)  And I'll try to keep in mind that being pregnant and morning sickness was totally worth it in the end for every pregnant person I've ever talked to.  The hard parts are worth it when you are holding a new baby in your arms, or in my case, a new house key!


I'll end with pictures, because that's the fun part anyways.  Hopefully things will start moving more quickly in the next few weeks and a new post will show tons of progress.  See, look at that optimism returning....writing is so therapeutic!

Lots of lumber!  This is the construction access with the start of the garage framing.  Behind it is the entry way into the laundry room. 

Doors are there, which means they are on deck!

As are the windows!  I'll be happy to get the house sealed up from the rain!

This is mid-framing.  I'm standing in the far north corner of the house, which will be our bedroom. Front door is on the left, with the dining room next to it.  The hallway with the mudroom, kids bath and their bedrooms are all over that direction. Open space is the great room/kitchen. The office is in the foreground of the picture, with the powder bath and closet marked off.

This is the opening for the super-sized door.  Dining wall to the right, school room with french doors to the left.  

And for all of you that missed it on Facebook, the door that will be going in.  It's unfinished, so we will stain it (most likely dark).  Doesn't it make B look tiny?  I was worried about the windows in the door not being frosted or something for privacy, but the door is so big, an adult can't even see in...problem solved!

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.

All I want for Christmas is CONCRETE!

Timing is always something that has been an interesting part of this project so far.  Timing for things to happen on the property, timing for things to change in our personal lives, timing for finances to open up just when the call comes in that we need to add to the budget.  I know it's not a coincidence....

This week was another great scenario.  We got our Stem wall poured on Christmas Eve!  It very well was the most exciting gift I got this year (although the wrapped ones were all a close 2nd).

(this is a view of the house from the left corner of the house.  The garage is right out of site on the right side.)

Thankfully Seth's hard work saved us a lot of extra fees with the re-framing and pour of the concrete. We took a little jaunt over this weekend to check on everything, and it looks great!  It's funny how the concrete makes it feel small, in a strange way.  Luckily I was told to expect that.  I really felt that there was NO way our car would fit in the garage, but I'm sure it's fine.  And, if anyone knows the amount of things we have in our garage, I'm not expecting to drive the car in the garage right away, anyways!

Tearing down to build up

December 12th update: (I accidentally sent this one to draft, and managed to delete the pictures, so this is all you get!)

The last week has seen a few steps in the right direction, but we did have to take some giant steps back to take some baby steps forward.

First of, lets discuss double-dates.  I'm sure most of you would think it would be dinner and some kind of fun activity with friends.  Conversation, laughing...no kids.  Always a night to look forward to.  This week we had a double-date with my brother and his girlfriend.  It involved dim lighting and lots of laughing, but also head lamps, ice, rebar, 2x4's...and some impromptu ice skating.  Fun times.

In an effort to save costs on re-forming the foundation, we opted to tear down the existing forms ourselves.  We learned on Wednesday that our dirt guy was coming out to fix the compaction issues on Friday, which meant we had very little time to get everything ready.  And when that happens, you call in reinforcements.  So we left six kids, chicken nuggets, french fries and ice cream bars in the capable hands of Papa and the four of us went to work.  Surprisingly, it only took about 4 hours to pull up all the forms, and rebar and stack it neatly on the side of the property.  It think it would have went even faster if we weren't working on top of thick layers of ice from the freezing temps we had earlier in the week. There were a few falls and some impromptu skate moves, but we got it done!

So, with that done, we had our dirt guy come back out and fix everything and now it looks pretty and the Geologist thankfully agreed.  So, onward and upward we go.

Patience.  This is something I have never had much of.  I peeked at Christmas gifts when I was young, I always read the back of the book to know the ending...and Seth will probably a very embarrassing story about my lack of patience and the ultimatum I gave him before we were engaged. Yea, safe to say patience is NOT something that comes naturally to me.

Remember the Foundation

This month has been full of some ups and downs.  And I'm told this is the normal for the building process, so I'm just going to go with it.

The ups were when we got the forms placed for the foundation!  It was pretty exciting to be able to stand in a place and say 'this' will be our view from this room...'this' is what we will see when we open the door...things like that!  For a visual person like me, seeing the outline of the house really made it feel like a reality.

On the day of the pour for the footings for the concrete, we had the inspection and everything looked well and good....until he asked for the compaction report on all the rock we put under the foundation to fix the drainage issues.

Dum, dum...........DUM!!!!

For reasons I'm not going to dwell on, there was no compaction report done by our dirt guy.  So, we had to cancel the concrete and get the inspection done.  Which naturally meant more money and more time delays.  When the report came back it was noted that certain spots in the rock were not compacted as tightly as they would like-mainly around the edges- and there was more space between the forms and the rock than they would like to see.

What does that exactly mean?  It means that our dirt guy has to bring in more rock, re-compact certain areas and then bring in even MORE rock to elevate the edges of the dig out to be closer to the bottom of the forms.  Which means more money.  But, obviously, this can't be done without moving the forms that have ALREADY been laid for the foundation.  Which, again, means more money to re-place them once the rock is correct.

Add in some crazy cold temperatures so the ground is frozen and we have to wait until it thaws a bit and you have a scenario of 'two steps forward, TEN steps back'...and a very frustrated me.  I'm beginning to understand why we get those sympathetic looks when we tell people we are building a house!

But, with all the setbacks, I'm still trying to stay positive that there is a reason for it.  In fact, God has blessed us in many ways during this time, as if to say 'Remember, I GOT this!'.  So, I am trying to be diligent to remember OUR foundation and the blessings He has given us, especially in this season!  The baby steps forward on the house are still that...steps forward.  And even though it's not necessarily in the timeline we'd like to see, it's still a goal that will happen and this labor of love will be so worth it in the end!

Cha-Ching!

Big Progress is being made on moving forward on the house, and with the big machines out there and people actually doing things, it makes it feel so much more real!  This month was a month of a lot of 'behind the scenes work'.  Power is in, water is running and we have made strides in getting the foundation ready!

Lots of activity happening this week!!

Power is a beautiful thing!

Silly Bennett...he loves watching the big trucks!

Before all of this started, I was looking at the calendar and realizing that we would probably be building in the rainy season, and I really contemplated having a conversation with Seth about waiting until the Spring to start building.  I've heard nightmares about building in the rain, from foundation issues to creaky floors to warped walls....not something I really want to think about when we are investing such a big part of ourselves into this project!  But, I pushed the fears aside and believed this was going to work and we moved forward.

Muddy day

The Result of stepping where I shouldn't have, thankful for tall boots!

We had  a crazy amount of rain in October.  I think it rained, and by rained I mean down poured, for about 10 days straight.  There was flooding happening all over the place and we had our own share of issues with the property.  Building in that area, the water table is really high.  We had been warned to be sure to do a good grade away from the foundation from our neighbor to avoid any water issues on the property.  As it rained, we realized what a he meant and what exactly a 'worst-case scenario' looks like and had to make some quick changes to get it fixed.  We had to bring in a ton of rock and will also have to instal a sump pump on an automatic float to be sure we have no issues under the house.  It ended up resulting in about a 6k increase in the cost of the land prep to do all this, but could you imagine having to take care of it AFTER the house was built?!?  So, in hindsight, I'm actually really thankful that we are building in the rainy season because we can be prepared for whatever mother nature throws at us and not have to worry about waking up to water under the house.  Whew!

Foundation dug!!

Lots of days of doing this!

Bennett loves running into the 'big hole'.

              

So, as of today, we are set to pour foundation and that should happen sometime this week.  Thanksgiving week is approaching and we have SO much to be thankful for.  Once the foundation is poured, walls and floors will be going up and we should be moving forward with the countdown and finishing in about 150 days!!  Spring can't get her fast enough :)

Looking forward to driving home and seeing this view!  (We don't have a view from our house, but this is good enough for me!!)