piece(s) of dirt

The site development is almost done, and we're amazed at how much soil could be scraped from the front yard to create a pad for the house, and also for a flat backyard.  In retrospect, even if the oak tree in front had been healthy, it would never have worked out with this site plan.

On Wednesday, they begin the install of the foundation.  

Let's hope we have another rain-free week.  

We were surprised that the diggers were out both days this weekend.  

Guess they aren't Irish!

What we've been up to this week

Given that this project has drained us of all $, we used our week off as a(nother) stay-cation.  Actually, it was very nice, and I'm sad that the week is just about done.

The week off did afford us the chance to watch, closely, the progress with the building site.  It really is moving along quickly, as evidenced by the video below:

If that's too painful (or too grainy) you can just look at this photo:

We have also occupied ourselves by looking around for closet systems and for a light for our dining room.  In our naiveté, we'd imagined that closets are just "rooms" with bars for hangars, and a shelf or two for old college sweatshirts.  Little did we know that there are fierce allegiances and rivalries within the world of closets:

On the one hand:  IKEA

They offer a PAX system for your closet which is at least as entertaining to create on their website as they are nice, with sliding doors to keep order to the chaos.  Still, it's IKEA and the hinges will probably crumble within 6 months, right?

This is one "unit" that I created on their website.   You can easily add/remove components as you see fit.

On the other hand:

elfa (via the Container Store)

This is more like the organizers you see in nerdy people's garages so that the paintbrushes all stand up nicely, the screwdrivers are all arranged by race/creed/gender, etc.  But the modules are pretty nice and it keeps everything in its place:

These systems look fine as long as you stay organized.  
So, they could be a challenge for us.

These systems are great if all you own are green, brown, and beige clothes!

What a difference a couple of days makes!

The word "demolition" doesn't quite sum up what's been going on our property over the past 2 days.  

Benjamin loves to drive by the property so that he can watch all of the huge trucks doing their thing.  Despite the noise, or because of it, he is entranced for 10-15 minutes at a time.  

So....that happened.

Add caption

Where did the house go?

Here we go!

Well, the port-o-potty must signify something.  We'll call it progress!

Theoretically, this week we get the old home demolished.

The orange plastic roll-out fence and silt barrier were placed this weekend, so now we can cut proceed with the demolition and site development.  

Benjamin had to check it out today to make sure it all met his expectations.  And by the way, there were snowflakes out today!

so much to do, so many months where it isn't happening

It's been a slow winter -- there are virtually no outward signs of progress on the home building front.  We are fairly resigned to living in our overpriced rental forever (well, another 12 months).

We did select a builder, and we have come close to closing on our construction-to-perm loan.   There are myriad financial acrobatics involved in building your house, so if you haven't done this before -- educate yourself as much as possible ahead of time.  

At any rate, demolition could potentially happen in the next 3 weeks, and then we would start the building process.  The first thing to happen would be drilling of geothermal wells.  Among the many things which hold virtually no interest to us, this is a cool exception!  We will (hopefully) be heating and cooling our home with the help of good ol' earth, who's temperature just 10 meters below is a relatively constant 55 degrees!

Here's how it works:

A nice review of the process is available online...wikipedia has an overly technical explanation that made me pine for conventional gas-burning technology.

This is not one of the deer we saw.  But it does appear to be a deer, possibly with mange.

As an aside, Benjamin and I went out to the property this weekend to collect some firewood to use in aforementioned overpriced rental.  We found a nice hiking trail in the back woods and walked back within the nature preserve for about an hour.  On our way back home we crossed paths with several young deer!

Someone to build it...

We have spent the better part of the last month trying to find someone to build our house.


As Nina puts it, our experience was very Goldilocks And the Three Bears.  

-- One builder was far too expensive
-- One builder was a little cheap
-- One builder was just right

I'm not sure what we would have done if we'd interviewed an even number of builders.  Interestingly, there are different schools of thought, from what I've read, on when to interview the builder.  We did it well after interviewing architects, finding property, and designing the house.   Others, however, would say to interview the builder up front (pre-everything else) and find an architect who can work alongside the builder.

In our experience, selecting a builder after the home was planned made perfect sense because of the architect we hired.  Cara is so detailed and precise in her plans that we were able to make fairly accurate comparisons between builders.  Also, she was a bulldog when it came to negotiations with them!  It was great to have a knowledgable and strident advocate on our side.

Time will tell what kind of fruit our approach will bear.  

Some of the handiwork of our chosen builder.
Note the butterfly roof (our home will have a more subtle version of this).

Another home by Cablik.  I really like the orange.

At any rate, our builder will be Alan Cablik -- and he's someone we actually met over the summer.  We are hopeful that with his personal involvement, we'll get a well-built house and one where the roof doesn't leak eternally (like our beloved but soaky old Houston home).

Anyway, here's the website for Cablik Enterprises.

Next tasks:  financing and finalizing the city construction permits...