Foundation and Plumbing

It has been a busy two weeks as the lot has gone from staked, to a hole with footers, and not the foundation is in. Our PM told us that the lumber will be dropped off on Tuesday and that the slabs should be poured on Monday. It's coming together quickly!

The house is wrapped in water proofing. This is from the back of the foundation.

Some of the plumbing from the rear.

We added the Egress window in the rear of the finished basement.

Straight ahead are the rough ins for the basement bath. It is a 3 piece rough in.

Footers In

Footers are in and the forms have been delivered to pour the basement walls.

Right behind the morning room. 

We will have a great view from the back yard.

This will be cleaned up, but we wanted to keep some trees in the yard. 

Temporary Driveway

Pre-con meeting

We had our pre-construction meeting yesterday. The meeting ran about two hours and was very informative. Our PM led the meeting and our SR attended as well. This was our first meeting with the PM and he seems to be very knowledgeable and experienced. He started by going over the placement of the home on the lot and explained in entirety the exterior of the home including draining, utilities, electrical, and water bid locations.

We went through all of our selections to confirm we were on the same page and everything checked out. This was definitely the time to speak up and ask questions. Even though our selections were in, we went over small details that can be tweaked which is good to know. Our PM was accommodating to our requests and it was clear he is focused on making his clients happy.

We walked the lot and talked about what would be cleared. We are keeping a few of the nicer trees and they are going to clear our the undergrowth. We should have enough trees for shade and privacy which we are very happy about.

They are shooting for the 13th to start digging just as they mentioned previously. We will finally start to see some progress! I'll upload some pictures next week once we have a hole!

Pre-con

Tomorrow is our pre-construction meeting. We should be going over the plan and what our timeframe will be. Our sr told us that digging is scheduled for October 13th. Hopefully we will be confirming this tomorrow!

The Lot Is Staked

The Lot has been staked. Here are photos from the street view as well as from the back of the lot.

Floor Plan

This is the floor plan we are going with.

The Beginning

I have looked at several blogs online about the experience of building a home. It has been very helpful to my wife and I to understand and be prepared for the process. We decided we would like to pay it forward and create a blog of our own that may help shed some light on what to expect.

We are actually right at a month into the process since we first signed our contract to build. We have since chosen our lot, elevation, floor plan, colors, flooring, surfaces etc.... Today we recieved our "green light" which means we have been approved by NVR mortgage, the plans have been submitted,  our hand money is in, and we are on the start schedule.

The first two weeks were very busy. We met with our SR to pick several of the features inside the house as well as the exterior colors and materials. (I will post our selections separately) We also met with Guardian and RiteRug to make our low voltage wiring and flooring selections. After getting all of the selections in, not much happens for a few weeks while the mortgage is underwritten for approval.

I will say the process has been very exciting so far and our SR has been fantastic. The only regret we have is rushing through our selections. We scheduled our appointments very tight and didn't take the time to consider everything. Once you sign off on your selections, the plans are submitted and it is difficult to make ANY changes. Doing so could cost extra fees, so take your time and ask a lot of questions... You will be glad you did.

Our timeline has been established and we are looking forward to seeing progress. We stopped out to the lot to take a look one more time before everything starts and we were amazed at how fast the other homes are going up. Our home was staked out and set onto the lot. We could tell where the garage would be, the porch, morning room, kitchen etc... We are starting to be able to visualize our new home. We have our pre-construction meeting on October 7th and digging should begin on October 13th. This is almost a month ahead of when we thought we would start so we were pleasantly surprised.

We will have updates as they happen. I will post the floor plan we chose as well as a list of the features to help follow along.

Thank you for joining us on our Journey, we hope our experience helps yours!