Electricity was done a week ago. I would have written about it then but I haven’t felt like writing. They put in a 2 outlet box in one place where they were supposed to put a 4 outlet box but other than that everything electrical is fine from what I can tell and they’ve already corrected that problem.
Some guy also cut one of the wires in the crawlspace while he was cutting a hole for a vent. Supposedly that will be fixed when the electrician comes back to finish everything.
Plumbing was installed today. For the most part it looks like they’ve done a fine job. It’s amazing to me that they got so much done in one day.
The concerns I’ll be brining up tomorrow are that there’s no insulation behind the second bath tub, there isn’t a drain pipe for the washer / dryer tub thing, and the master tub seems to be missing it’s protective liner.
Update: They’ll get the insulation in soon, the plumber is coming back to put in that drain, and if there’s any damage to the tub they’ll replace it. Awesome.
I should also mention that it rained a fair bit today and, because there are no shingles on the roof yet, the place got a little wet. I hope that’s okay (it probably is…).
I finally got down to see the crawlspace. I’m sure that once the plumber has done his job there will be a few more obstructions down there but for now it’s actually quite the nice wide-open space, about 7′ tall.
A little muggy at the moment though — I think it rained the day before they started framing.
They’ve been framing for a few days now and the progress looks good. It’s very exciting to see your house taking shape like that.
Somehow I’m going to have to get down there more often. I completely missed seeing the first floor come together. The second floor is pretty fun right now ’cause it’s about half done.
The driveway has been poured and the framing materials delivered. The garage looks bigger now that it’s got a concrete floor. The driveway has a nice perfectly gradual slope down to the street. This is something I was really concerned about after taking a closer look at some of my neighbor’s houses, one of which had a driveway which sloped down and then back up. It turns out this is yet another benefit of a west-facing house. In my case the land slopes down to the west so I had a much better chance of a decent driveway.
Sorry the picture isn’t spectacular. It was taken by camera-phone and I wanted to get the rainbow in there rather than just the slabs of concrete.
We went down again to see what progress has been made on the house, hoping that the foundation was done — it was, and we’re pretty happy with the results so far. Contrary to our former fears it looks like the crawlspace will be deep enough for me to stand in.
We’d been warned by some friends that the foundation will make you think you’re house is way smaller than it actually is, so we were prepared for the worst. It doesn’t really look all that bad, except the garage. When we walked into the area that will become the garage we both thought, “oh no!” Even after parking in it to try it out we’re still a little worried. If we keep it clean we’ll probably be able to park in it but it doesn’t seem likely that a lawn mower or a freezer will ever live there. That might be okay ’cause I’d already decided I probably want to own a shed eventually.
Luckily Rebecca thought we should go look at a framed garage and see where the walls come to. We walked over to a house behind ours and found our neighbors sitting in their garage, which really doesn’t look all that bad once the walls are up. I was afraid that the walls would come all the way to the inside edge of the concrete but they don’t, there are a few more inches on either side. They told us that the house looks bigger once it’s framed, and even bigger once it’s finished. We’ll take comfort in that. They also said they’re probably going to finish their crawlspace eventually but I find myself wondering how you get a sheet of drywall down through a hole just barely big enough for me.
The other encouraging / scary thing our neighbors said is that where our house is right now their’s was a week ago. We may indeed be moving in October rather than December if things keep up the way they’re going. This could be good because we’d love to move in while the weather is still good but it could be bad because we won’t have as much time as we thought we would to save money. I may even ask them to let our schedule slide a little if they can. We’ll see.
They began work on our house on July 13. So far the hole has been dug and the footings poured. It looks like our crawlspace will be just that and no taller, but it will be deep enough.
They’ve set it back further than I hoped they would, so the back yard won’t be very large and the front yard will be larger than I wanted it to be but it’s probably just the same depth as the rest of the houses on the block and it may even be required by the city that it have a front yard that large.
It also looks like ours is the first one on this block to be poured. This is very good news since we were the very last on the block to sign a contract. Then again we were one of the first (maybe the very first) to finalize all of our options. We’re a little nervous about the colors we chose for the interior but it would cost way too much to change them now.