Construction Week 4

We made some pretty good progress this week and we are finally almost ready to pour our slab! Woo hoo!

On Monday, after the pier engineer passed the piers, our excavator came back and leveled the pad since for forms truck messed it all up with all the dirt they dug up.

The pier truck also came for the workshop and dug all the piers for that!

Then on Wednesday the trenchers showed up to trench the beams for the foundation.

The plumbers started on Wednesday and finished up on Thursday. The inspector came today (a private inspector we hired since we don’t have city inspections) and the plumbing passed inspection. yay!

Hopefully next week the foundation company will come back and fix all the forms, dig out the trenches, and put the moisture barrier up. Then we will have a soil moisture test and one more inspection by the foundation engineer before they pour. Exciting!

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Construction Week 3

Well, it was a very frustrating week with set backs. We were supposed to get our piers done on Tuesday but the pier truck  got there and broke down after 8 piers =( We were so bummed but it happens. So they weren’t available to get the piers done and have the concrete lined up again until Friday. We finally got all 66 piers dug and poured on Friday! It was crazy watching all these concrete trucks do their thing! It was such a relief to finally get it done! Even though, we probably would already have a slab if we didn’t do these extra piers, I am so glad we will have a nice strong foundation that hopefully will never have to get fixed. We had to fix our foundation in The Colony twice in 7 years so doing this now was a no brainer! Now, we can move on to plumbing!

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Construction Week 2

Not much happened this week as far as construction. Apparently, concrete is in high demand right now so there was quite a wait for the piers trucks and concrete trucks. The only thing we got done this week was the Form Survey which is basically just a new survey of our land to show that the forms were on our property and not encroaching on any property lines. We were all good there! We did go this week and pick out our brick and stone. We choose Old Hickory for the stone and Commercial Antique for the brick. I hope it ends up looking great! It is so nerve-wracking picking things!

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Construction Week 1

We have made a lot of progress in just the first week! First, we got the excavator out there to level an area for the workshop and the house. Then we had him bring rock in for a temporary driveway and parking area in case it rains. Next we met with the workshop guy to get that all squared away and pick out our colors and options. He should be able to start building it in two weeks which Shannon is VERY excited about! We also got a port-a-potty delivered. Sorry I don’t have a picture of that but you can use your imagination =P.  Lastly, we got in touch with the foundation company and got on their schedule. They already came out today to get started on placing all the forms. So exciting to see it coming together! I think we did a lot for just the first 4 days!

The boys loved watching the bulldozer and dump trucks.

Next week we will have the piers put in for the foundation (we have a ton of those), rough in the plumbing and floor electrical and get a form survey. After that, we will be ready to pour the slab!

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Construction Loan Closing

We closed on our construction loan! It was a long process of planning and tons of work but we finally closed! Woo hoo! Time to start building. We are super excited to get started. I will try to keep updating the blog through the process!

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New Chicken Coop and Chickens!

We decided to upgrade our chicken coop because we haven’t been letting the girls free range as much as we used to since we lost one of them to who knows what (we are guessing a hawk??). So now they only get to roam when we are there to watch them. I wanted to give them more space and a little more shade because it has been so hot here so I found this adorable coop on craigslist and fixed it up to work for us. We tied the old coop in to the back with a little tunnel so now they have lots of room to explore and nest. They seem to be happier with all their space. We also got 4 new chickens so we could add some different types. We wrapped chicken wire underneath to prevent anything for trying to dig in and get them.

They LOVE to get watermelon treats!

 

The boys posing in front of the new chicken coop. We had to add a little decor =)

Here are our new girls!

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We appraised!

I just got word from the bank that our house plans and land appraised for more than we are spending to build! YAY! One less possible hiccup on the journey to breaking ground. So now our loan enters the final processing stage and then once that is done we should be 5-7 business days from closing our construction loan. We can’t wait!!

 

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Cost Review Meeting

We recently had our cost review meeting and we were under budget!! YAY! So last week we got everything submitted to the bank. They say 30-60 days from this stage we will be closing on the construction loan so hopefully by the end of July we will be getting our slab poured! I am so happy that it came in under budget even with all the nice stuff I picked out. I CANNOT wait to see our dream house in person! Pray that this funding process goes smoothly!

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Final Plans and Spec Meeting

Last week we received the final draft of our plans and we approved it! Yay! Our architect was able to finish them up by the end of the week and then we got to have our long spec meeting on Friday. We are one step closer! More about the spec meeting later but first looks at our pretty house!

It is an L shape so that front stone/brick area to the left is the garage sticking out towards you. It has a nice big front porch and a huge back porch/screen room. I can’t wait to sit out and relax on my porches! haha! I am not sharing the inside of the floor plan online for multiple reasons so if you are a friend or family member that wants to see it message me and I will e-mail it to you! Some awesome features include a huge kitchen island, over-sized pantry, stone fireplace with wood burning stove, tornado shelter/safe room, bonus room over the garage, and a big vaulted great room with wood beams. So we had our spec meeting on Friday which is where we basically sit down and pick out every detail of our house so we can get a ballpark budget. The nice thing is we are not locked in to any of our choices since we will be the ones actually ordering everything we can just change our orders as we go if needed. We picked everything from type of insulation, stone, siding, all the way to the floors and style of the cabinets. So exciting! Now we send all the options out to bid and when we get all the bids back we will make sure we are within our budget and submit it all to the bank to get the construction loan closed. Hopefully everything will come back good there and we won’t have to change anything with the plan. We will see! Since the planning stage took a little longer than expected we are looking at possible July for ground-breaking unless the bank just closes extra fast. The construction loan can take 30-60 days to close. It’s so awesome to be able to see our actual plans and be able to visualize it!

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The Chickens are finally giving us EGGS!!

It felt like the longest wait ever but on Thursday when I got home I checked the coop and we had our first egg! I was so excited! I couldn’t believe it. The next day we had 3 more and then every day since then we have had 3-4 new eggs. It hasn’t even been week yet and we have already gotten 15 eggs! Crazy! I can’t believe just 4 chickens can lay that many! We are planning to get a bigger coop after our new house is built so we will really be in business then! The boys enjoy looking every day for the eggs and also giving the chickens special treats like mealworms and blueberries which seem to be their favorite so far. We let them out to free range a lot and they enjoy that!

We have had some beautiful weather to do lots of yard work and Shannon finally got a water system in place for the fruit and nut trees which he has been wanting to do for awhile. Here are a few pretty pictures:
The orchard:

One of my favorite spots… the back woods:
Pretty clouds during sunset

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