Kyle & Judy's New House

Welcome to our new home construction! Here we have a week by week progress of the house from a vacant lot to the final closing. Be sure to check back regularly since I won't be sending out updates via email.
	I found an aerial photo of the area done in March of 2000. Our lot is approximately where the red square is. The dark area to the left of it is a nice stand of tall trees, the reason why we picked the lot. The previous phase of the subdivision development is near the bottom but our current portion is still a field. The farmhouse near the road is still there but the other buildings are now gone.
	Here is our 'Photo Album' where I will place pictures I take each week.
06/18/2004 - Long time coming It's amazing how sidetracked one can get when one has way too much stuff to work on. In my case it was finally getting around to taking a few pictures of the finished and furnished house. It is now summer. The woods behind us have filled out beautifully, we been visited by a few deer and coyotes already, and we still don't have a driveway or lawn due to all of the rain we've been getting. Fortunately the problem child basement has held up well to the amount of water running through.
02/25/2004 - 'Home' stretch Well, here we are. A little over a week away from closing. The house itself is being cleaned today in preparation for the final walkthrough on Friday. Then we take possession of it the following Friday. It is definitely a remarkable experience having a house built--having your house built--the way you want it. All of the details that go into it and being able to see it develope at each step, wondering what a partially finished feature will look like when it is complete then seeing it finally completed is something to remember. Now the ardurous task of waiting until we can move in. I'm sure it will seem longer than the entire building process so far. The electrical is now fully complete as is all of the plumbing. All flooring is done and the remainder of the tile is up. Still waiting on the bartop and the shower door, though. Late ordering of these items have delayed their deliveries.
02/15/2004 - Tile you were out... Remember that thing about the house completion being pushed out by three weeks because the ceramic tile was on backorder? Funny thing about that because I went up this week to find the backordered tile already installed on the floor. Turns out there was a miscommunication as to actual versus worst case scenario and we now have a tentative close on the first week of March again. Found out that the mysterious door redo was caused by the framers measuring from the wrong point causing the door and most of the adjoining wall sufaces around it to be shifted 4" too far to the left. They caught it when they tried to install the main bathroom's vanity top and found they would have to cut a notch in the door trim to do it. All better now though. As you can see from the pictures they have some more stuff done. All of the trim is complete. All of the electrical is wired and only one faceplate needs attaching. All of the lights are also up. The water heater is in place but needs hooking up. This leaves the carpet and wood floors, the tile grout, the bartop, the island countertop (the wrong size is currently resting comfortably on the island at the moment), a shower door, a majority of the plumbing, and a whole mess of cleaning up to do.
02/08/2004 - Or not... I suppose it is inevitable that when you get your hopes up really high about something, like moving into a new house in less than a month, it ends up not happening. Case in point with the final touches of our house. It would appear that the ceramic tile we picked for the two bathrooms is on backorder and they don't expect to finish the floors until mid March. So much for our leisurely three week period of moving. They did, however, get all the cabinets in place and all of the interior doors up... then one down. Along with the drywall surrounding it and a few 2x4s it would seem. Not completely sure why other than the door didn't have enough room to open maybe. Well, they got 4 weeks to figure it out I guess.
02/01/2004 - Getting Close Now Siding is mostly finished on the front of the house. Just a bit on the garage to finish. They also have the garage door up and in. Painting is completed inside the house and all of the debris is gone. Also got word that they will be ‘significantly done’ in two to three weeks and fully completed either the last week of this month or the first week of March. How they will manage to do it I have no idea but the next few batches of pictures should show some amazing progress.
01/23/2004 - And Over the Wall Drywall is now up, most of it already taped and mudded. What they didn’t put on the walls (which would probably be enough to drywall an entire other house) was left in massive piles in each of the rooms, making for fun and games trying to take pictures without breaking anything significant (edit: apparently my neck is not included in that group of items :/ ). They still need to mud the garage and sand everything else. The siding is also now complete on the back and both sides. Waiting for the front to make it not look like a house under construction. Also a nice and toasty 80 degrees in the house all the time. Once again thankful am not paying the gas bill yet. : )
01/11/2004 - In the Basement What do you get when you take two massive propane heaters, place them on a gravel floor underneath a framed house, and turn them on full blast for a whole week? A thawed out basement, a reasonably warm first floor, and one heckuva gas bill (that we don't have to pay). What this all means is that the concrete crew is about ready to pour the new basement floor! And the front porch while they're at it apparently. Plans will be to have strobe lights, big neon signs, and bright colorful balloons all around the now-very-visible water main so we don't have a little mishap again that we all know about. It also looks like plumbing and electrical is mostly done as well as the siding being started. The house also passed its first of three Energy Star inspections. And I bet you thought I was going to say something like the house caught fire or blew up. Pashaww. That won't happen for another 2 or 3 weeks at least!
12/31/2003 - Happy New Year! This week we have the completion of the framing and the roofing in addition to all of the exterior doors and windows being placed.
12/27/2003 - Christmas week The trusses and roof plywood is all up, making for a more complete looking house.
12/20/2003 - Wood. Lots and lots of wood. I visited the lot on Wednesday at noon to see how things were going and I found that there were two guys working. They had managed to get a baseplate of 2x4 around the entire perimeter of the house and about 20' of some outer board piece. I figured that they would probably be able to get the floor joists and subflooring down by the weekend. Today we went up there and found that they had not only finished the floor joists and subfloor but managed to get every single wall up and cut out almost every single window opening. (They didn't do the one in the Master Bathroom but since it was kinda cold out I'll let it slide just this once.) We had a wonderfully odd feeling when we walked around in it. While we had been in another house just down the street that is the exact same model but is about a month and a half further along, it was different finally walking around in ours. What had once been just a bare lot, then a hole in the ground, then a foundation finally took on a personalness when we were able to walk around inside it instead of staring at it from the edges. The next two months should prove to be exciting indeed! This week also brings about comments underneath the newest pictures since things are a bit less obvious. (That and I finally learned how to use more features of the Photo Album software)
12/10/2003 - One step forward... Basement floor is completely removed including the gravel underneath. You can see the drain tile now and it is cracked in a few places, sliced through in one other, so I presume they will be replacing it all at some later date. We also have framing materials parked next to the house. It looks like all of the other houses are done with their framing so I am expecting for them to start on ours within the week.
12/06/2003 - One step back... Work is again underway on our house. As the pictures will show in the Photo Album, however, the work is to remove the basement as opposed to further developing the house. Their plans are to completely remove the basement floor, then proceed with the framing of the house to get a cap on the basement itself, then later on they will somehow get the basement warmed up and will pour the floor again. How bad was the floor? The 11-26-03 group of pictures will show that while it wasn't completely messed up the floor is a bit wavy and the water is indeed settling in areas nowhere near the floor drain.
11/26/2003 - Update A lot of activity is going on in the subdivision. Many homes have been started and there are three framing crews that are putting up walls at an incredible rate. Unfortunately none of it is happening on our house. Two weeks ago (11/13) they poured the basement floor and the garage slab. From what I've been able to piece together it seems that when the crew was done with the floor one of them backed the truck over the water main cap which resulted in a nice river of water rushing down the outside of the foundation (wasn't fully backfilled yet), through the drain tile, and up through the still wet concrete. It is still being determined if the floor is ruined and if it will need to be replaced. So if you find no new pictures for the next week or so, you now know why. :)