DONE!!! Officially!

Holy crap I'm exhausted. Curtis and his guys just left after finishing our yard. 2 days to do it and YAY I am excited. I really wish I had the energy to plant my flowers in the front... LOL! But I helped seed the lawn and spread straw all day. So here are the results... for those of you in CA (my hubby) and not close by to see it!

Side Yard - from the middle of yard

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Side yard again from front corner of lot

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Back of house from other side:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

The front and driveway:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Time for a strong drink and some time to relax... then back to life as usual... weddings to edit! :)

The Innerds

Went up today to pay Curtis to start the septic, and for the first time in a long time, things were going on while I was there. The electrician was just finishing up all of the wiring in the house, and the plumber had finished yesterday. But the surprise came as we were driving down the road and half of the siding is up!!! The back and the side with the fire place is done!!!

I am so happy with our choice of colors. I was a little nervous since they give you a 1 in square to compare colors... and then imagine your whole house in that color... but we did good! Its called Kakhi, and its a darker beige. The shudders are a darker brown.

The dump trucks were bringing in loads of sand for our septic and taking out loads of our dirt from digging the foundation. Busy bees!!!!

The fireplace in the Family Room

One of the bathtubs... they are the same in both bathrooms

The well...

The back of the house fully sided

The Sunroom

The electric panel in the basement

Most of the tubing for the Pex system

Side of the house... they were just finishing up the siding

Lots of updates...

Sorry its been a little while since I've updated, but things are nuts here. We have relocated to my parent's house to get our house ready to sell. BUT as we have been moving things up to Sarver to storage, we have been making stops at the new house. Last week when we got there, all of the lumber had been delibered as well as the shingles. They also had on Friday, inserted the steel beam that supports the house.

Last night when Lenny and dad stopped by to check, THE WHOLE HOUSE WAS UP! The walls, the steps, the flooring... everything! I am so incredibly jealous that they got to see it, but Mom and I are headed up tomorrow and I'll post pictures. Stay tuned!

Back to the other house... we close next Friday! Wahoo!!!

Established 2008

We no longer have just a hole in the ground with a side of huge rock to compliment it... We have a foundation! I think they poured it this week, but with so much going on here with our current home, I didn't make it up until today to peak. Here are some photos. The walls of the foundation are all done, but hmmmm.... where are all of the workers at 1:30 in the afternoon!?! Oh yeah, and we have our first official complaint from the neighbors... our dirt is washing onto the road... pic below!

From the front corner of the garage

From the back - look closely and you'll see the kids climbing the wall on the right!

From the back corner near the bilco

The crawl space under the sunroom

A view of the other crawl space going into the basement

After being contacted about a not-so-nice complaint from one of our neighbors because the dirt that we excavated was washing "ALL OVER THE ROAD AND COVERING IT", I drove up today to find this! Barely a dusting of dirt that had washed onto the road in a torrential downpour yesterday. Geesh! But we have to put up a fence because of it. This could get interesting!

Video of the progress so far... just a little clip I took today on my camera... gotta love how the kids pop into this one too!

And of course...

Things NEVER go as planned. After I left on Thursday, I guess the excavator hit a huge rock. I got a call yesterday from our CM and this massive boulder is going to cost us another 2-6k! Shocking, right? Things never go perfectly, but I totally wasn't expecting this. Especially since most of the digging was done when I left on Thursday. The rock is under where our bilco basement door will go and the sun room. Lenny and I stopped today to take a peak at this fine piece of rock and we got to see that they started our footer! They outlined parts of it, but they still have some work to do on the ginormous rock first. I'll post pics on Monday... too much to do with a bridal show tomorrow. G'night!

Footers on the front side of the house (the highter part is the front porch)

Ever wonder what a $6k rock looks like... well here you go...

The hubby checking out the progress for the first time.

Looks like Lenny is thinking about busting up that rock himeslf...

The footer in our basement crawl space with the "rock" in the background

It's official!!! We have a...

HOLE! We broke ground today around 9 am, but because my kids wouldn't get their butts out of bed, we missed the first dig. We did get a chance to go up shortly after though and watch for a bit. Benjamin kind of took over the excavator and worked for a while. Its so exciting to actually see things being done. The guy told me that they will start the footer tomorrow! Our CM is saying now that we'll have our house in 3-4 months! Can't wait! Here are some pictures of "the dig"!

Ben at work!

The construction site

Me and Caitlyn... and Ben in the background

Look closely... you can see the ouline of our new house... this is from the back and the square on the left is the sunroom

I took some video too... give me some time, I'll edit a clip to show you!

BREAKING GROUND!!!

I have been busy so didn't post this, but we just found out on Saturday that we are breaking ground on Thursday, August 7!!! It has been such a long road to this point, but we are so incredibly excited to start our new "nest". I plan on taking the kiddos to watch for a little bit, and be being the psycho videographer person that I am, plan on doing a little video and pics to document the progress of our home. Hopefully I can post something soon!!!

WE HAVE A PERMIT!

As of Saturday, July 19th, we were made aware that we were approved for our building permit! We just have to get onto the building schedule and we are ready to break ground! The waiting continues, but at least we have made another step toward our new home!

Pre Stake DONE!

Well, after months of waiting - we were originally scheduled for the 3rd week of April, we have FINALLY completed the pre stake! Yesterday, June 24th, we headed up to our land and met our Construction Manage, Chuck. We go to work, marked the corners of the house and that was about it!

WAIT... you know its not that easy!! Well the actually staking part was, but then we were enlightened in on a little information that just basically pissed us off! WE DIDN'T HAVE TO BENCH THE LAND! The CM said we wasted the time and money and ruined our land, as we tried to discuss with the !@#$ Wayne at KHOV several times before! We we are out a couple thousand for nothing, and now on top of that, they are charging us for a few extra hours labor because they have to push dirt a little further, due to the benching! AND they are charging us for an extra truck of gravel! Boy, we just got screwed from all angles, didn't we!? Maybe those guys should have sent Chuck to do our pre-lot meeting where we were told that we had to bench the land, and we'd avoid any extra costs! Can you tell we aren't happy!?

Well on we went to meet our buddy Wayne. We did what we had to do, made some changes to the prints and signed and home we went. We met at the land at 7:30am and didn't get out of the office until after 4pm! What a long... and aggravating day! But its done and we are happy for that... on to the next step... BUILDING PERMITS! Thank God that isn't my responsibility! No pics for this day cause we were too tired to get the camera out... we'll take them next time we go up!

June 14th, 2008

Well, things look a little different now at our beautiful land. Its, well, not so beautiful! HAHA! Curtis benched the lot over the past 3 days, as well as laid the gravel for the driveway. The kids had a blast playing in the dirt. Moving right along now! Our pre-stake is scheduled for June 24th and from there we can work on our building permit!

May 28th, 2008

WE DID IT!!! Last Thursday we closed! What a relief that was! So now we own 1.82 acres of land... all of which is nearly flat... none of which is treed... and all of which needs to be MOWED! So on Monday (Memorial Day) Lenny, the kids and I headed to Sears for our first "home" purchase... a TRACTOR! Lenny headed up to cut the lawn with our current neighbor (thanks Paul!) and I stayed home with the cranky kids.
Today I went to Buffalo Twp to get our grading permit for the excavation that has to be done before our prestake. Of course, they didn't tell me that I needed all kinds of stuff to go with it, so we have to drive 40 minutes (with gas averaging at $3.93 per gallon) back up there after Caitlyn wakes up from her nap to drop off the application. AHHHHH, and to think I specifically asked her if I needed anything with the application before I left the house this morning! Get it together people!
And now for the tractor..... TADA!

Craftsman 21 hp 46 in. Deck, YS 4500 Lawn Tractor

May 19th, 2008

WE HAVE A CLOSING DATE!!! Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 2:30pm! Hopefully now we can move up our pre-stake!

May 16th, 2008

FINALLY... after 3 times to the underwrite, we are CLEAR TO CLOSE!!! Wahoooooo!!!! It kept coming back for dumb things like our electric bill and one of Lenny's dad's credit cards. So incredibly frustrating. BUT we should be closing at the end of next week! Now to buy a tractor to cut our new 1.82 acres! We also got our land survey in this week from Ron. The bill was a little higher than we'd desire, but he was great to work with and got things done in a timely manor. Here's his info:

Ronald Bole 724-287-7825

We rescheduled our pre-stake until June 24th, with hope to move up in line. But with the way things were going with underwriting, we were afraid to keep the date we had set (May 22). We would have never had the land excavated in time. Lots to do, but at least we can breath a sigh of relief with our clearance to close!

April 30th, 2008

Just got the "clear to close" from our realtor. We were waiting for Curtis to interpret our results of the perk test and after speaking with him today we were comfortable to lift the last contingency. Our loan went to underwriting last night, so we should be on a roll within 2 weeks! Ahhh, the waiting game continues!

April 19th, 2008

Today we got the perk test results in the mail. This is all we have been waiting for to get things ready to close on our land. I have no clue what the results mean, so hopefully Curtis can help us with that. Looks like we'll be moving forward shortly!

April 2nd, 2008

After a conversation with the Zoning officer of Buffalo Township, we found out that we no longer need to do a lot line revision. We were going to combine the 6 individual lots within our 2 acres, as our house overlaps lot lines. BUT because the land was established so many years ago (in the 60's), we are grandfathered from having to do so. YAY! That's $1000 we can save! So once the perk test is done, we can close and as soon as a survey is done, we can start the excavating (benching) so the building process can begin!!! WAHOOO!

March 24th, 2008

Today we had the Pit Test completed by the SEO of Butler County. We were approved for a sand mound and now we are waiting for the Perk Test to be done. After this, we can close on the land! We hired Curtis Jones of C&D Jones Excavating in Slippery Rock, PA for all of our excavating and he has been wonderful to work with. It was freezing cold (can't tell by the beautiful blue sky), and the poor kids were freezing, but after about 2 hours, we were done.

Benjamin in the "pit"

February 6th, 2008

WE FOUND LAND! We met our realtor today to put an offer in on a piece of land in Butler County (Sarver, PA) - yes the one mentioned below. Its just shy of 2 acres and completely usable. They were asking $35k for each lot (there are 2) and we offered $10k less. She countered only $2k higher and we accepted. We're under contract! Now for all the contingencies!

February 1, 2008

Today I decided to take a ride with the kids to check out a piece of land in Butler County. We had an ice storm this morning, but surprisingly, I had no problems getting there. AND I LIKE IT! I called Lenny to tell him about it and he was excited too. Here are some pictures from my cell phone.

January 26th, 2008

Today we returned to K. Hovnanian to sign our agreement to build with them. Darlene has been great to work with. We went through and selected all of our "add-ons" and will probably have to take some out later, but it is nice to dream, even if only for a little while. It took almost 3 hours to go through everything, but we are really looking forward to it! Now, if only we could find a place to put our house!