The Construction Industry Stinks
To maintain sanity while building a custom home, you must come to grips with one sad fact: the construction industry is a living mess. It’s rife with inefficiency, stupidity, dishonesty, and...
View ArticlePouring the Footings for the Foundation
Today we saw the first real sign of construction. Sure, we’d had some excavation. But that’s digging down. This was the first, serious, tangible sign of building up. Seeing the forms in place and...
View ArticleSnow Job
My face froze off just taking pictures. How do these guys do it all day? Does their blood thicken? The big storm came in over the weekend. The kids loved it. I didn’t. Here’s the math: SNOW ≠good...
View ArticleFootings Finished
In spite of the weather — we had a high of 14° degrees today — the great crew was out working. They reformed and poured the remaining garage footings, this time at the correct height. When we got...
View ArticlePouring the Stem Walls
The stem walls are poured, moving us one step further to getting the walls going up. What is a stem wall? Stem walls are the supports that are used to join the foundation to the walls. We had planned...
View ArticleFrench Drains Protect Basements
No one likes a wet basement. It renders the rooms uncomfortable and unsanitary — if useable at all. One common feature used to keep basements dry until the surrounding dirt compacts is a French drain....
View ArticleGround Plumbing Stubbed
Don’t get technical with me. I’m no tradesman. But I can tell you that the plumber came and ran a whole slew of black pipes all over the ground. They are poking up everywhere. All kinds, for toilets,...
View ArticleSnow Stops Construction Until 2010
It’s likely that we’ve had more snow this past December than any other in my lifetime. I attribute this to two things: The construction gods are trying to sabotage our building efforts Global warming...
View ArticleConcrete Basement Floors Poured
Today the concrete basement floors were poured! Few things are more exciting to two little boys that a cement mixer shooting rocks and goo out of a tube. So we bundled up in our snow gear and headed to...
View ArticleElectrical Shakedown & Plumbing Gone Wrong
When we were getting bids on the house, the electrical bid seemed unusually high. We were told the plan had too many can lights and we needed to remove “some.” Truth: we had too many cans and needed to...
View ArticleSubfloor Being Laid on Main Floor
The floor trusses are up and the plywood for the base of the main floor started going down yesterday. It’s supposed to be finished today. Since the new house plans have the garage in the basement with...
View ArticleThird Cement Pour in Walls
The construction has been going very smoothly. The first wall section had cut panels that exposed the areas inside at corners. Before each pour, these areas had to be covered with plywood that was...
View ArticleFourth Cement Pour in Walls
The main floor walls have been stacked. We were wondering if there were enough block to finish the job, but the crew made it through the top row. It’s quite fitting, I think, that the fourth (and...
View ArticleStucco Slapped on Basement Walls
Before moving the enormous dirt pile from the back of the house to the front — and filling in the mote around the front porch — the basement concrete panels were covered with stucco. Unlike typical...
View ArticleWaterproof Foundation
Yesterday our builder spread tar over the stucco on the concrete panels. They are preparing to finish off the french drains and then backfill the dirt piles into the trenches. They also did some...
View Article7 Signs That You’re Buying a Money Pit
A house is not only your refuge from the world, it’s also an investment. The recent ups and downs in the housing market notwithstanding, in general your home is going to increase in value. This is...
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