Framing

I am apparently really bad at posting updates. Not having internet at the house coupled with how fast everything is progressing has made posting one set of updates at a time really difficult. Everyone said that once concrete was down, things would go quickly. I really had no idea how quickly it would come together. There will be several posts over the next few days so that everything stays in the same order as it happened. So now you have posts to look forward to over the next few days :-)

First up...framing!

This is what went up on the very first day that framing started. this is when it started to seem real that we were actually building a house. Pretty crazy!

 This is a wide shot of our house sitting on our lot. Our driveway will be on the right side.

 Standing in the driveway looking at the corner of the house. This was at the end of day 1. Amazing how fast it all went up!

There is the second story(bonus room) starting to take shape

 Standing in the kitchen looking towards the living room.

Really starting to look like a house now!

 Close up of the upstairs window

 Looking at the back of the house. Now the roof boards are on!

 There is lots of floored attic space!

More attic space. It is a little unnerving to be able to see straight down into the room below but that will change once the framers get done.

So that is what our framed house looks like. It was absolutely the craziest and best feeling to see something we had been looking at, analyzing, and discussing at great lengths finally become something tangible and real. It was so neat to be able to walk through and see where all the decisions we had made along the way were finally becoming a reality. 

Even though this part has moved really quickly and has been a bit overwhelming at times, I absolutely would not trade it for the slow going we had at the beginning. 

Next up....electrical, plumbing, and air conditioning!

Concrete...finally!

The long awaited concrete post is finally here. The concrete is finally done. Boy, does that feel good to be able to say! Waiting on the weather and then the guys that were pouring the concrete has been quite a lesson in patience. We finally have a foundation! At some points I never thought this day would get here but here we are.

This is what it looks like in the process. The footings have been poured and the rebar has been put down. Next is pouring the rest of the concrete.

Pouring the concrete

smoothing out the concrete and making sure it is level

It is such a tedious job but such an important one

Up close of the concrete

Regular part of the house is done. Just waiting on the porch to be poured

Polishing the concrete

Finished foundation!

So there it is! The foundation of our house! It's crazy how real it is starting to feel. This week they are starting the framing so there will be another post soon! Thanks for sticking with us even when it looks like there aren't any updates. Things should move quickly now!

Progress?

I realize it has been 2 months since our last post and I'm sure you all are hoping to see a framed house, or at the very least, concrete. Unfortunately, we have neither. Poor weather and obscure city ordinances have made this part of the process quite lengthy. Here is what our footings have looked like for a lot of the past 2 months.

But....the good news is that we do now have plumbing in those footings and we are supposed to have great weather for the next week. Here's hoping the post about having an actual foundation is not far away!

Slowly but Surely

I realize that I'm posting an update on the house the same day I posted that there were no updates. I guess that is what happens when you don't post for a month. I wanted them to be two separate posts, though, since they are really two separate events in the building story.

So here's a little photo timeline of what has been going on. The dirt guys finished clearing the lot, added drainage under our future driveway, and built up the dirt where our foundation will go.

Driveway drainage

Building up the foundation

After the dirt work was done, the rains came and they did not go away. We had so much rain, the side of the yard turned into a small swimming pool. We had to dig a ditch to make the water drain out of the yard.

It's hard to tell, but the ditch runs from the back of the lot all the way to the front. We had to dig it all out by hand with shovels. It was HARD work!

It was finally sunny and dry enough to start on the foundation. I've learned way more about foundations this week than I ever thought I would need to know. It isn't just about pouring concrete. There are several steps that have to happen before concrete can even be poured. The first step is putting up the wooden forms for the concrete and digging the footings. 

First step of the foundation

The footings are those deeper parts around the edges

The footings and the forms.

So that is where we currently are. The next step is for the plumber to come and lay out all the pipes for the house. We've had more rain the past couple of days so it could be next week before that happens. Hopefully it won't be another month before you hear from us again!

P is for...

This blog is brought to you by the letter P for Patience, something I have been learning a lot about the past few weeks. If you clicked on the blog today hoping to find some dramatic update on the house building front, well this may be a disappointing post for you. This is what our town has looked like for the past several weeks and why the blog has been so quiet. In the building world, no news does not usually mean good news.

Rain, rain go away!

I had no idea that we had a rainy season but apparently we do. It just so happens that this rainy season fell right about the time we wanted to pour the foundation. I know the rain is good for the farmers in the area but it was just frustrating for us. Because of the rain, we basically hit the pause button on the build. Every day we would wake up and look at the forecast. For more than 2 solid weeks it was rain every day. I always thought of July as a hot, dry month instead of a soggy, rainy month. 

I know we have a long way to go and this is just the first of many little bumps and delays along the way. The good news is we have a place to live until the house is complete so we aren't under a huge time crunch. In the meantime, we'll keep doing the opposite of rain dances, hoping it will stay sunny and dry long enough to make some progress.

Stay tuned! We have actually made a little progress in the past couple of days!

We're on the way!

We are back with a big update! We took a trip to Birmingham this weekend for a wedding and when we returned, our dirt work had started. It is starting to look like an actual building site and not just an overgrown forest! Here are some before and after pictures. It is so much easier to picture a house on the lot now that I can actually see the ground.

BEFORE

The Jungle

Hard to picture a house here...

AFTER

You can see the dirt!

Starting to look like a home site!

Our first picture in front of the lot. So excited!

We are starting to see progress which makes this whole thing seem real. It is supposed to rain this week so we may be at a standstill for a few days. That is fine though. We are getting used to being patient with the whole process. 

Next step: Surveying and foundation pouring!

Our Story

So now the story of how we started down this path of building a house...

When we got married 2 years ago, we knew we wanted to find a house to buy pretty quickly. We were fortunate enough to have a place to stay that was close to where we were both working so we didn't feel rushed to make a decision. We checked the real estate websites daily and drove around our little town looking for any houses that were for sale. We looked at any house that was in our price range and that had the amenities we wanted. Each time we looked at a house, we would talk about the things we liked and the things we didn't like. Eventually the conversation would always turn to the option of building a home.

 I will be the first to say that I was completely opposed to building a home. I dug my heels in and refused to budge. More than anything else, I think, I was scared. Building a home was something we had never done and no one that I was close to had ever done it either and that made me nervous.

Fast forward to this February. We started a challenge at our church where you prayed for the same thing every day for 5 minutes. We were still trying to decide about building/buying and it was starting to cause us a lot of stress. We were both ready to be settled somewhere. Brandon decided that he would pray for the housing situation and through a series of things, we felt the Lord leading us in the direction of building a home. The more we talked about it, the more excited I started to get. We had picked out a possible house plan a while back so we made a few changes to it and considered it done.

Here is a picture of our future home!

Courtesy of House Plan Gallery

So where are we in the process? We have secured our building permit and our funding. We are waiting for the lot to be cleared so that we can pour a foundation. We are so excited and just can't wait for it all to start. The Lord has been faithful through this process and we can't wait to see what is in store for the future. We would love for you to join us on the adventure as we build our first home. I'll try to update our progress as well as give you little stories about our daily life.