Week Four - Batter Board & Tree Cutting

Phase One - Week of 6/23/08 - We ran out to the property yesterday and today and have evidence that our foundation guys have been there. Our Porto potty is finally getting some use and soft drink cans & other trash are littering the brow! The stakes in the ground are now hooked to lots of string and boards surrounding where the house will be and we can see the elevation of the prowl area (looks about 7 feet high, but is actually about 5.) We are having hot tub visions. Our builder, Sammy, came out and told us we had to cut down over 20 more trees so that the logging trucks can get it. We also don't have enough room for the entire packet to be delivered at once, so he is going to talk to our log home company about making an extra trip. We really like Sam, by the way. He is very responsive, easy to work with, a perfectionist, and a great builder (we've seen his homes & spoken with the owners). He is also going to do most of our subcontracting.

Week Three - Stake Out!

Phase One - Week of 6/16/08 - After a two-week delay, our house is finally staked out! We were told that our foundation, Charles, would be out there "this evening," to stake it out, so decided to take a run over to the property at about 4:30PM. No signs of anyone. As we were leaving, we saw a truck coming towards us on the main road with a couple of guys in it who said they were lost and were looking for (our property). We led them to it, showed them where our house needed to be staked, then left. We wondered how they would have known where to stake it if we had not been there, but guess our foundation guy (these were his hirelings) knew things would turn out somehow....Tomorrow these same two guys - Carl & Uncle Dick - are to return to set out the batter boards. On another note, we had to go ahead & shell out the money for our wood floors. They had run out of the #2 grade we had settled on, so we bought a #1 grade for a bit more as the price is going up and up & our supplier already had it in stock & sold it to us for the "old" price.

Week Two - Site Clearing & Gravel Trucks Falling

Phase One - Week of 6/9/08 - The week started out well, with our foundation sub, Charles, doing a beautiful job of completing the site clearing and leveling. However, he informed us that he is still delayed on another job and may not be able to start the foundation this week. He also let us know that the guys installing our water pipe placed it too close to where future field lines are going to be and it needs to be moved about 15 feet, something he can handle and says is easy to do at this point. On another front, we received calls from our roofer and HVAC subs indicating that prices are going up so we need to go ahead and shell out some money now to lock them in. Good thing we just took out another 0% interest charge card! On the bright side, Norman says that if we can charge up to $35,000 we can earn enough "points" on one charge card for me to fly to Puerto Rico with him on a 4-day business trip. (There is always a silver lining to every cloud, right!?) Oh, one more thing. The guys doing our driveway delivered one load of gravel then fell off of the mountain. No kidding. They were returning with a second load of gravel, driving up the mountain, when the engine sounded weird so they pulled over to the shoulder. The shoulder didn't like that and gave way, toppling them ovder and down into a culvert. Luckily, no one was hurt and they hope to be back with a repaired truck next weekend. Pretty good excuse for knocking off early, huh?!

PHASE ONE, Week One - Construction Daze

Phase One - Week of 6/2/08 - I'm dividing our log home construction into five phases, the first being that of our site and foundation work. The site has already been cleared for the most part, but needs some touching up. Next our foundation will need to be staked, our block for the foundation laid, our driveway graveled, our waterlines put in, and our underground temporary electric installed. This involves no less than three separate contractors, Charles, Terry & Gib, and their crews. Our foundation builder has been delayed on another job, but Terry laid approximately 1300 feet of water pipe was laid over the weekend. He also put in two additional hydrants to use for landscaping our entrance and the roadway. Norman helped by doing some digging and running out for parts. He also got a scare when he was trimming around the bluff and realized he was standing on the end of a straight drop!