Power on

Power was brought down the driveway at the end of last week. There's now a big transformer on the side of the driveway near the pond, and a temporary power supply on the opposite side. The temp box will eventually be buried when we have the garage built and the breaker box installed in there. For now, the temp box will serve whatever power is needed for construction.

Transformer

Temp power

This week is pretty damp-looking and today is a holiday.  Wednesday/Thursday shouldn't be too bad, but there may not be many good work days otherwise. Next week, however, they might be able to start framing.  Matt will be in CA for work so I'll try to stop by the property every day after work to take progress photos.  He set up a photo station where we'll take regular photos from a consistent viewpoint - maybe at the end of this we can put together a little time-lapse.

A straight shot of the house

In other news, our pond is still holding up, despite lots of turbidity (the water is very brown - though as we've said all along, it's not significantly worse than when we first looked at the property). After construction is over and runoff is less of an issue, we'll look into bringing county stormwater services or a private company to help figure out how to get the water clearer and keep the pond healthy long-term.  Matt took our friend Jon out to see the lot this weekend while he was here visiting from out of town. They managed to capture a couple of huge snapping turtles enjoying Saturday's sunshine - and they didn't seem to mind the muddy water at all.

What caught their attention

Big snapper

TWO big snappers

Basement walls are up

They did remove the forms and you can now see all the basement walls for the new house. There are some pillar bases poured in the area for the garages and the retaining wall at the back corner of the house as well.  It looks good!  It feels weirdly smallish (moreso to Matt than to me) but we've read that is a very common phenomenon with new construction. There's nothing else to provide a context for scale so things feel out of proportion.

Next steps will be waterproofing and roughing in the plumbing for the basement; then they'll need to backfill with dirt in the remaining space around the fountation. After that is pouring the basement slab and the foundation will be complete... We'll be onto framing, etc.

Are you tired of walking down the driveway yet?

We are not.

Front porch foundation

Garage footings/piers

Back view towards the main part of the basement

Retaining wall and back corner behind garage

The bumped out area closest here will be a storage space
with a dedicated playroom above

Waterproofing/drainage work in progress. That tall smooth
wall is the wrap around porch and will be covered
in stacked stone later in the build.

This bumped out area is the "craft" room aka extra guest
room and there's a little bathroom tucked in next to the
retaining wall

And looking back down the driveway again

Basement starting to take form

As of Tuesday the crew had set up the wall forms for the foundation walls and were ready to pour. We've been sick this week and didn't go to the lot yesterday, so we'll try to stop by today after work to see progress. They should have poured concrete yesterday and probably the forms will be off by today or tomorrow. We'll be ready for framing very soon, assuming lumber is ordered/available (we need an update from our builder as he's been working on that). Some of our framing requires the use of LVL (laminated veneer lumber) beams and we asked for multiple quotes to ensure we could get a competitive cost on those.

Current view from top of driveway

Wall forms from garage/parking pad viewpoint

View from back corner, opposite side from garage

Walk out level - that bumped out section will be
one of our guest rooms!

A view from the top of the dirt pile

Brick mold pattern for the concrete forms - will give the
exposed concrete above grade a textured finish.

Exterior Paint

We've had a hard time trying to figure out exterior paint (interior too, but that's content for a later time).  It's such a commitment!  Our original thoughts were a true gray scheme like our inspiration house. But we're using a fair amount of grays inside the house and didn't want to be too monochromatic. We came across another combo thanks to some internet searching but wanted to see each combo in person, side by side, in different lighting.  So we bought some paintable birdhouses and samples of the colors and tried them all out.

Which option do you prefer??

Option 1 - Sherwin Williams March Wind (SW7668) below,
Pewter Cast (SW7673) above, and Nacre (SW6154) trim.

Option 2 - Sherwin Williams Chatroom (SW6171) below,
Hardware (SW6172) above, and Muslin (SW6133) trim.

Side by side...Sun was bright so they look similar.

Footings in place

Had another brief break in the weather, which allowed time to pour the footings.  Weather next week is looking great; we're hopeful that the basement walls can be poured.  Things are starting to come together! =)

View from the front center

Front left looking in

Front right looking in

View from the back left

Another view from the back left

Looking toward the front from the back center

View from the back right

Another angle from the back right

Foundation ready

Last week's weather fortunately wasn't as bad as forecasted. Good progress was made on the grading and driveway work, as we saw last week. They also began cutting out for the basement. We stopped by on Saturday morning to take a look around for ourselves. The biggest change was being able to drive down the driveway! But you still have to back out right now, which is tricky.

Looking down from the cul de sac

Rip rap in the ditch to the left of the drive 

Looking back up the driveway from the low spot

Future basement!

Some kind of front corner

Long view of the driveway

Pond still doing okay - erosion control is in place to minimize mud

It's a long walk up hill for little legs

We went back again on Sunday to meet with our builder and talk about house placement/positioning.  The way our lot lays out with septic fields, well location and space requirement, stream buffers, pond buffers, and the property line, it's not as easy to figure out where to set the house down as you'd want to think. We had some big concerns about the placement pushing too close to the west side property line - putting our back deck basically in the trees and making for a very weird back yard. After a lot of back and forth between Sunday and today, I think we've finally got it right.  Matt went over today after work and what a difference one full day of work made.  They finished the digging and final grading. Everything's looking much smoother and we should be ready to pour footings. 

Big dirt piles will become topsoil once the foundation is in 

New, final cuts for basement

Seed and straw to keep the mud down along the driveway for now

More gravel laid down on the driveway

The drainage ditch/rip rap on the right side of the
driveway still needs a bit more work

Another Day of Sun!

Our grader was able to start spreading the crush and run gravel today.  Starting to look like a real driveway!  Hopefully we'll be able to drive back to the build site by next week.

That time we got the deal of a lifetime on dogwood trees

We have been talking about planting dogwood trees along the driveway once construction winds down. We will have a pretty limited landscape budget so we were going to order some small saplings from a seller in Fuquay on Etsy this week. We made a quick run to WalMart to buy some large nursery pots and potting soil in anticipation... and instead we saw a whole bunch of big, healthy dogwoods on clearance for $15 each.  So we bought up all 6 they had in stock.

The only thing we didn't consider was getting them home. These things are easily 8' tall and all in good health.

Realizing it's not ideal to keep trees in their nursery pots, we will move them into some slightly larger pots with a bit more soil asap. We'll monitor them closely and keep them shaded and watered all summer. Hopefully they can handle 4 months or so in the pots until we can plant them on the lot.