Construction Day 1

This morning Colleen and I were awoken to the sound of silt fence being hammered in. Before we had even rubbed the sleep from our eyes, the earth movers were already doing their thing (i.e. moving earth). The previous blog had a couple of quick shots of what had been done by 8:30am.

They did hit some snags as the day wore on. Not long before we headed to work, we heard someone say "We've already got a problem." The power line runs into the house in a place that needed to be covered by new construction. This had already been discussed two weeks ago when we had everyone out at the house for meeting. We were a little annoyed THEN that this was a surprise to our both our architect and project manager, who have been to the house many times over the course of the process. Apparently this discovery was not taken by anyone to be an action item when there were two weeks to remedy the problem, and they were forced to get an electrician out to the house on the fly to reroute the lines in order to continue.

In the meantime, the water line running into our side of the house was found to be far closer to the surface than expected, not made of copper which would show up on a metal detector, and hiding inside a corrugated plastic drainpipe. This was of course discovered when a shovel was driven into what appeared to be an innocent drainpipe and water began pouring out of it. The water had to be shut off to the entire property until they could get the pipe capped late in the day (try as they might, they couldn't get ahold of their plumber to fix it immediately). Colleen's parents' side now has water, but the goal of the addition was to be at plus one bathroom, and for tonight we are at minus two. This is supposed to get fixed tomorrow, but we've been given no promises.

Despite the problems they managed to get a huge hole dug in the backyard and poured all the footers. Not bad for day 1.

Here you can see the rebar being laid in prep for the footers. That guy is kinda short, but the hole is still impressively deep.

If you look closely in this picture you can see that the concrete truck at the house across the street at the same time as the concrete truck in our yard. Two loads of concrete have gone in so far!

Here is the finished product for Day 1. If you look closely, you can see the rebar along the back wall where the retaining wall will go.

They're heeeeeere. . .

Views from our windows this morning. More pictures to come after work today.

(FYI: Komcast never called me back).

If at first you succeed. . .

. . . try, try again.

Given our two week deadline from the excavator, we've been trying to take care of a few loose ends so the digging will cause as little disruption to our life as possible. To that end, I called our cable provider about a week and a half ago. [I don't want to mention their name, so for the purpose of this blog, I'll just call them Komcast.] Komcast gave us a pretty quick appointment (only two business days later), but a 'window' of 8am to 8pm. Fortunately, Colleen's dad is on his summer schedule so he was able to hang out until 4:30 when they showed up. The original intent was for Komcast to run a cable from a different pole in a different corner of the yard so as not to cross directly underneath the future addtion. When they came out, they said that wasn't possible and instead ran a very long trail all the way around the yard so they could avoid the digging area. They guy didn't bother to bury the cable saying that it would be fine to drive over and when the construction was done Komcast could come back out and run it into the addtion. Cool deal, good experience, all is well, check that off the to-do list.

Four days later while no one was home (makes you wonder why they give you a window at all), they came back out and buried the new line, but not where it was laid. They burried it directly over the old line. For those of you keeping score at home, that's two lines in the wrong place, zero lines in the right place: Komcastic! I called them back immediately and was promised a prompt return phone call. I'll let you know how that goes.



In a completely unrelated story, here is a picture of my grill. I spent two hours cleaning it today and wanted to make sure someone got to admire it.

Missed Utility

Apparently the lines that I thought were from Miss Utility a few weeks ago were actually our architect laying out where the silt fence should go. That does answer a lot of unexplained questions about the lines that were there. So, again, I present the picture of the lines (this time with cute little flags).

We're Permitted

The architect, the project manager, and the excavator were all out for a big pow-wow. Excavator told us that it would probably be about two weeks before he could start digging at our place, so a little longer than we had hoped. One more sign of progress though, the Permit was posted.

You Have to Start Somewhere

I think today was the first physical sign that construction is taking place. Miss Utility was here to mark water lines. So with these few painted blades of grass, we are underway (hopefully the groundbreaking pictures will be more exciting).

Where to Begin?

We got an email on Monday that the permits were approved! That of course left Colleen and I with the obvious question, “Okay, now what?” Fortunately, our new Project Manager (which is way easier for me to spell than Architect) was there to help us through. According to him, they will need to get Miss Utility out here, put up some silt fence, and get on the excavator’s calendar. Also, Colleen and I were assigned some homework: pick out doors and windows. So with a little bit of guidance from our PM, we think we are going with the door pictured here, or something similar. We don’t really know/care enough about windows, so hopefully he can pick something for us that will do the trick.