Here we are in our new home! ;-)

We have concrete walls! They took the forms off on Friday (April 10th) and it looks pretty cool. We brought our chairs out and sat and enjoyed the ducks and the water for about an hour. It's pretty amazing being 'general contractors'. We have been having the subs who have been bidding on various aspects of the house come to our house and go over the bids with us. We're learning something new every day. We hired our electrician. We're in the process of hiring our plumber (still deciding between two), the waterproofing guy (still deciding between two). We hired our framers who will be start soon. But, first, we have to have the waterproofing and plumbing rough-ins done. We aren't planning on finishing the basement, BUT, we have to basically have it designed because if we don't they'll just put the plumbing in where THEY think we should have a future bathroom and bar and then when you go to actually finish the basement, if you want to change anything, they basically have to jack-hammer the floor to put in new plumbing. It's all so exciting!!! My spring break is over now, so I can't think about the house all day, unfortunately!



The 3rd picture here shows our property from afar. If you look closely you can find our concrete wall. It's pretty hard to find!

April 4th - The start of placing the concrete wall 'forms'

The next few days were concrete guys placed the 'forms'. Forms are these metal double walls that are put in place all around the outside walls. Then they pour concrete in between the two walls. On Wednesday, (April 8th), they poured the concrete between the walls. It's an amazing process. This enormous 'elephant trunk-like' hose is hooked up to the cement trucks (we had 3 trucks on site) and this guy holds on to the big hose while it pours tons and tons of cement between all the walls. Then the concrete has to 'set' for about 24-48 hours. Then they take it off and, voila, you have concrete walls.

April 3rd - This is what they call "footings"!

I have a whole new vocabulary. I now understand what footings are. No wonder they keep talking about the 'footprint' of our home. Apparently the footprint has grown since we first started drawing our house. The footings are the outside walls and the interior load-bearing walls. Anyway, they're in and we can see the shape of our house! They got the footings all poured in one day--they stayed until about 7:30 pm to finish it.

More pictures on ground-breaking day

We are so excited!

April 2nd--Ground-breaking day!!!

They finished the whole thing (the excavation) in one day. It looked great. Barney was there most of the day watching everything. Luke, Lindsey & Rich, and I came after work. It looked huge, but somehow, it kind of looked like it was parallel to the lot lines again. I decided it was an illusion, but finally mentioned it to Barney and he agreed. We mentioned it to our surveyor and he had a talk with the excavator, and the next day they reexcavated it! We don't have the full explanation, but apparently the excavator thought we surely didn't want it angled, so he unangled it. Now, it's back angled the way we want it. It's not angled as much as I would like, but it has to be this way or else it looks weird in the front.

Angling the house on the lot

Here I am trying to figure out how to angle the house on the property. Not as simple as one might think. This nice young man in the foreground had laid it out parallel to the lot lines on March 31st, which I said was fine. Of course, it wasn't--I couldn't sleep all night. I just had to have it angled more toward the lake. So the next day broke the news to Barney (who was none too happy), that we had to have the surveyor's back out to reposition the house. It was tricky because if you angled it too much, it wrecked the way it looked from the street, so we just angled it a little.

The lot is ours!

Here we are on March 21st--the day after we closed on the sale of our lot. It's actually ours now! The weather was perfect so we packed a picnic of wine and cheese and headed out to the lot. We stayed out there until after the stars came out. As you can see, we didn't even need coats! It hasn't been that warm since! Luke came out and took pictures for us! It's so exciting!!! We can hardly believe we're really building!

Our trip to New York

Hi everybody,

I am not sure how to 'blog', but I'm trying! I wanted to put a caption on each of the pictures, but just can't figure it out. The first picture Teresa took of Diane, Bonnie, me, and Sheila enjoying some time in our hotel room. It was great. The best part of the hotel was being on the concierge level--good food and drinks pretty much whenever we wanted.

The 2nd picture is of us on the ferry to Liberty & Ellis Islands with the Manhattan skyscrapers in the background. The wind was really blowing and it was cold, but we had a blast.

The last picture is of us absolutely sardined/jam-packed into the subway car! It was Sheila & Teresa's first time ever in the subway. It was Friday afternoon around 5:00--truly rush hour. We couldn't believe how crowded the subway was. If you have seen the Seinfeld episode where Elaine is screaming (inside her head) about being on the crowded subway, that's how crowded it was--maybe more crowded.

Five Sisters in New York!