Another Week of Crickets

We waited another week for more progress. This was a welcome site on April 13

ONE  WEEK LATER...

 

After another week of sump pump installation and window installation, we have a real basement (with gravel floors but, whatever, it counts)!

In the photo you can see both sump pumps, one is already working overtime, this weather has been insane!

Mother Nature has even provided us with some natural ponds, (mosquito larvae heaven).

Some time in the near future we're going to have to get those holes filled in. They're old pathways farmers used to get back to the fields and also paths used to harvest trees. Basically, our whole site is a swampland right now. We've received 15 feet of rain this spring! (not really, I may be overly dramatic)

Basements...The Next Slow Step.

One more week has passed and progress is dragging! 

On April 7th we found that our footers had been poured and we had a gravel base in the basement.

In case you're wondering, I asked about 15 times what a footer was and I didn't figure it out until I saw it. Again, poor Kyle.

You see those strips of concrete? Those are footers...you're welcome.

 

We once again had another unexpected surprise when the crew was excavating. They told us the front porch would need to be completely excavated due to the unstable ground.

These days I can hear the Wayans brothers in the back of my mind in their classic SNL skit:

Don't judge me, I'm a product of the 90's.

Now we wait for wall forms to be erected and then we get to move to floors.

More Excavating

We visited the job site on March 30th to find a bigger, cleaner hole:

Things were starting to take shape...and fill with water! The trees being uprooted, left pockets of water in the ground, those pockets began pouring into our hole, causing a sump pump to be put in the hole to drain the water. 

The sump pump was pretty effective at extracting the water but it did cause us to make the decision to put 2 sump pumps in the basement. Brown County is completely flat and notorious for  bad drainage. We want to be safe rather than sorry so we paid an extra amount of money to add the second pump.

I tend to ask rather stupid questions regarding the building process and Kyle thinks it's comical. I was concerned that the "Walls" of the basement didn't look like 8 ft. tall walls. Kyle just chuckled and told me they will. Once again, my impatience is starting to get the best of me!

We Have a hole!!!

We decided our little gypsy family needed to get away for a few days. The frustration of absolutely nothing happening at our site combined with the need to give my poor parents a break from having a house-full of people warranted the decision. We headed south for spring break to hillbilly heaven...aka: Gatlinburg!

While in Gatlinburg we received a call from some guy (there are so many people involved I don't even try to learn their names). He told us there were tree stumps on our site. BIG SHOCKER THERE! We were told to leave the stumps and the excavation crew would pop them out. Kyle had a "heated" chat with said guy and I quickly escorted him out of the leather store we were perusing.

That delayed our dig by one more day as we made the decision to let the crew pop them out (as we were told they would do anyway)

On March 29th, our good friends who actually happen to be our new neighbors sent this picture.

Amen! Pass the Tylenol! We finally have a hole!

68 Days with NO ACTION!

So it's been 68 days since closing and this is what our site looks like:

That photo look familiar? It should, it's the same photo taken on January 27. NOTHING has progressed! It's been a pretty mild winter but we've also had more rain than normal. Now we're hearing that because it's so wet we have have to wait for the lot to dry so the excavator can get his equipment back there. SOMETIME BETWEEN NOW AND SPRING!

This has been so frustrating, have I mentioned that we're still living with my parents? I'm sure they will be thrilled to hear this news. There were several nice days that could have been taken advantage of but for one reason or another were not. We were told in the beginning they couldn't dig unless we had our electric hooked up. Ummmmm....do you have to plug your bulldozer in to make it operate? I do realize that they operate pumps once the hole is opened but we did offer to provide generators and that was declined.

Communication has been pretty crummy thus far. Nobody has been proactive in calling us to keep us informed and that is incredibly frustrating, at one point in time we both contemplated just cutting our losses. To say we're defeated is such an understatement.

In the meantime, we're making interest payments and realizing each day that our original June 15th completion date is slipping further and further away. Today we got 2 inches of rain and tonight we're supposed to get a couple inches of snow (imagine that)!

I know God's timing is perfect, I'm trying to rest in that.

We have a driveway and temporary electric!

Our dig date was set for January 18...this photo was taken January 27 :(

It's safe to say, things aren't going as planned.

We had some hold-up getting the proper permits and then there was confusion as to who set up the temporary pole for electric. We finally got all that worked out and we now have a driveway...and a portable toilet (not pictured)!

Have I mentioned that I'm not the most patient person? Well, I'm not.

Choosing the colors for siding, flooring, cabinets, etc!

Decisions, Decisions!

So, this past week has been interesting! We are still in the process of getting our loan closed. The loan officer called to ask for verification of closing funds and that came as a surprise! We really thought we had until our closing on Dec. 18th to gather the funds needed but it turns out that the underwriters needed verification 2 weeks before! We scraped together the cash to deposit into our savings account only to learn that you cannot use cash for closing funds! There has to be a paper trail...

I thought I was being smart and asked if I could give the cash to my parents to write a check and we were told that you may also not accept gifts for closing funds!

I HAVE ALL THIS CASH....PLEASE TAKE IT!

So, do your homework while saving your down payment, don't expect to roll into the office with a bag of cash on closing day :)

We jumped that hurdle and our closing is still scheduled for the 18th (God willing)! During this time, we also had to ensure we had the proper insurance before we could move forward.

I do realize that most people have sold a house and actually walked away with money (unlike us) so this isn't a major problem for most. We started 7 months ago with literally NOTHING!

So.....tonight we met with Jeff, our sales rep and picked out all of our options! I was super excited for this meeting and luckily, Kyle and I are on the same page design-wise so this was a piece of cake! Here are some poor photos of some of the items we picked out. It is important to note that we started our plan with the Valu line that TK offers and we added options to that in order to keep the cost manageable. We did choose to upgrade our cabinets and carpet.

 We chose to go with Flint for the vinyl siding along with black panel shutters. You have the option to choose the panel or the louvered. The louvered are shown here, we decided those may be a pain to clean and we all know we don't want to be cleaning shutters all day! Flint is more of a gray, it was one of the darkest options in our price point.

This dark cabinet is what we chose to go in each bathroom. To the left of the dark cabinet, you can see the corner of the kitchen cabinets (Cabinet Upgrades (Schrock Brand) Princeton Maple Glaze Style-Arch Color-Amaretto Creme) I originally wanted all the cabinets in the house to match but the standard bathroom counter options are cream or white so the white cabinets would look awful! This is the same style as the kitchen cabinets with a different glaze. No biggie! I also have no idea where my kitchen counter top/cabinet picture went! We went with a black-ish laminate counter.

The brick was the absolute hardest option to choose! There were a lot of choices but this is what we went with. I think it's Tudor Grey, I may be wrong. We also chose the darkest stain to go on the mantel and beam on the vaulted ceiling in the living room.

We upgraded the carpet and padding so we went with this carpet, it will be throughout the house except in the bathrooms, kitchen and laundry room. It is more brown than the photo shows and it has black scattered throughout. Our dog has black hair so...

Again, my vinyl floor choice is missing but there were a lot to choose from!

I'm not really a vinyl/carpet fan but we figured money was better spent upgrading the cabinets now and we can do the carpet/vinyl later.

These are the coach lights that will go outside at the garage, porch, back door and garage service door. We went with black because we chose black shutters. We could have chosen, bronze or nickel as well.

We decided to go with bronze fixtures throughout the house. The bronze dome light shown here is what will be in each bedroom. The two light fixtures above the dome is similar to what will be in each bathroom except ours will have 3 lights and it will be bronze. They place these over each sink bowl.

This is the entry way light

This is the dining room light but it will be bronze. The kitchen will also have 4 or 5 recessed lights.

This is the fan that will be in the living room.


The only thing that was slightly annoying was that all the door knobs come in nickel. In order to have the door knobs match the light fixtures, we had to upgrade which cost an extra $300.

We did ask to make one minor change. Kyle suggested shrinking the laundry room so we could stretch our master bathroom just a bit. His eye for design is so helpful!

The options have been chosen and it was pretty painless!

Our next step is to wait patiently for closing while our sales rep gets our permits. We scheduled our pre-construction meeting for Dec. 23rd, two weeks from today! If everything goes as planned, we think they'll start digging around the first of the year!