Off we go

by Ed Rozmiarek

Last Friday, with a day off from work and school, we were able to get out the new house site before heading out of town for the round trip to the grandparents’ houses. We were greeted with hard evidence that the house is actually going to be built. As I mentioned in my last update, all we saw in our previous site visit was a hole in the ground. This week we actually had the first construction.

The foundation starts! This will soon be our dining room & living room.

When we arrived at the lot we were met with the sight of wood. The forms for the foundation had been laid out and the initial fill dirt (crushed stone?) had been added. This was a significant step in the building process as it set the location for the house. As such, the builder would not go any further until Susan and I signed off on the location. If they needed to move the forms, they wanted to know now, not after they started laying the pipes or worse, after pouring the concrete.

As such, we spent a good deal of time walking around the foundation thinking about what would be where. I know I mentioned this in the last entry, but the foundation just seemed too small. However, I paced out several of the rooms and it was right (at least as far as I could tell). I know things will seem better once the walls are up, but for now, it seemed small.

The view from the southeast corner. This will be the back porch, living room and master bedroom.

The southwest corner, the garage.

The good news was that we liked the position of the house and were ready to sign off. So, on the way home from the lot we stopped by the builder’s office and dropped off the foundation approval form. We also took the opportunity to chat with them and get a list of our “to-do’s”. The top of the list is picking out the counter tops and appliances. Those trips will be on our list for things to do the week after Christmas.

I don’t expect a lot to have been done this past week being that it is Christmas week. The weather here was really nice Monday and Tuesday (the high was 76 on Tuesday) so maybe they were able to get out to the site and do something. However, the weather turned really cold Wednesday and has been in the 20’s and 30’s for the last three days. (Yea, I know, that’s not cold to some of you, but it’s pretty cold for Central Texas.) At least there was only a little rain before it went below freezing and no frozen precipitation the last couple of days.

A last bit of irony for the week came from the mailbox today. The only piece of mail we got today, Christmas eve, was a Christmas present from the bank, the first bill for the construction loan. How nice.

Posted by Ed Rozmiarek at December 24, 2004 5:39 PM