Day 3 - Not much...

Well, the order of the day is rain. Which is fine since the inspector for the footers was fully booked today and won't be ready till Monday. Since Monday is supposed to be beautiful, this works out perfect!

Rainy view while I work...

I'm the meantime, check out some other pics from the first couple of days...

First actual hole.

Enlarging the hole.

Finished product.

Jake decided that he would rather come to the dig site than go swimming...that's a true boy for ya!

So awesome seeing our kids make friends even before any walls are up!

Jake and his new friend Ty.

Day 2 - Finished Rough Excavation

Here are some pictures from the finished rough excavation. Things went really smoothly today which was great! Apparently, most of the houses in the area had tons of rocks that had to be dug out which really slows down the excavation. Our lot had hardly any rocks and actually had a lot of good topsoil. Our excavator Mike did an excellent job making the backyard flat all the way to the woods. During the excavation, we had to lose 5 trees that was in the back yard and discovered that we will need a retaining wall on the right side of the house where the house-on-a-mountain is. Despite these issues, I think the back of the house will turn out great. Enjoy the pics...

View looking towards the back of the house.

View looking towards the front of the house.

Kids having fun running in our future basement...

The footers for the garage wall of our side-entry garage.

Side view looking where the garage slab will be.

Day 1 - First Dig Pictures

So at last, we finally have begun the construction of our house. On May 29, 2013, the first layer of sod was broken and by the end of the day there was a partial hole in the back corner of the house. It took a while to get started because of an issue with the house to the right of our house. Apparently, the house was built on ground 4 feet higher than it should have been and they had to figure out the best way to grade our lot to make sure drainage would not be a problem. This cost us a couple of hours and the first dig didn't start until about 4:00 PM.  Here are some pictures from the day.

Carrie and kids going for a walk while we wait for them to start.

Still waiting...

Discussing the issues with the excavation...the offending house is in the picture.

Bulldozer ready to be unloaded.

Survey equipment to make sure they dig to the right depth.

Clearing the rest of the brush so they can start...

The (almost) first dig.

Sod mostly cleared.

 That is all of the pictures from the first day. Pictures from day 2 and the completion of the rough excavation will be up shortly.

Video of Some Digging

Digging where the living room will be...

House Staked Out...

Here are a couple pictures of our lot with the stakes marking out the perimeter of the house. Really hard to visualize how it will look but it is definitely a start...

Front view of the house

Bump out for the fireplace

Where the front door will go

Waiting to break ground...

After a long wait jumping through all the hoops of our construction loan, we finally closed on May 17th 2013 and are ready to break ground. Now if only the weather would cooperate. At the moment we are scheduled to break ground on Wednesday, May 29th after hoping to break ground during the week of May 20th. Please, God, keep the rain away!