One Life, Well Traveled

We probably shouldn’t have been surprised when we rolled up on Saturday to see the frame up, but there it was in all its exciting glory!

I mean, Pete the Project manager did say to us, “Your frame is going to be going up next week, weather permitting.”  And weather permits less than an inch of snow (as you could probably tell from the picture.  It looks kinda like a house, doesn’t it?

How they get the frame up so quickly is not a great mystery really.  All the wood for the house (well, at least for the frame) shows up on pallets and some of it even already assembled.  You have to imagine it like a modeling kit… a really really BIG modeling kit:

You can’t buy that at a hobby shop.

The lumber on the right in this picture is the skeleton of the frame – standard lumber.  The stuff on the right is press board and I am going to guess water resistant given the unusual green color.  I guess it’s kinda like a sub-dermal layer of the house.

That there is our house.  You can see where the  bay window will be on the left and our front door will be on the right.  It looks to me like the beams under the window are a support system that will be removed once the parts of window are assembled, but I’m not sure.  The plastic, I think, is to protect the frame and insulation from moisture, but that’s also just a guess based on watching DiY shows on PBS.

There’s the view in through the bay window.  Not very home-y right now, but you can see through what will be the living room all the way back through the kitchen.  This house is the inverse of the model so the large opening is where the door-exit to the back porch will be.

Here you are looking through into the two secondary bedrooms.  As you can see, we lack a roof at the moment, but my understanding is that is the next step.  We’re due for more snow tonight so I think it’s a good question whether they’re going to try to at least get some cover up there before that happens. “If weather allows” is the important phrase at the moment.  Once that roof goes on, the threat from weather is mostly over.

It’s a bit of a belated update here.  Holidays get in the way with regular updates, so have some holiday updates today, namely, what was wrought with the house over the holiday.

What you see there is the feed of the utilities into our abode in the form of (at that moment) empty pvc pipe.  Water, gas, and maybe electric from the utilities will come into the house via those pies.  One of them, also has the raedon venting system in it, which in the unlikely event that we have raedon helps keep it from building up inside the house.

The holiday season did not stop work on the house, and the weather cooperated enough that they were able to go from this on the 23rd:

To this one the 29th:

And we have a finished foundation.

Next up, at least in theory, is framing.  That is supposed to happen THIS WEEK according to the project manager who hasn’t mislead us yet.  So there may be another update soon with pictures of our wooden edifice.

Once we get wood, that’s a lot more like a house.  Or, at least, it’s going to LOOK like a house.  There’s a lot that goes on inside of it too obviously, but it will look like a house from the outside and that is a huge step forward.

As promised, they started pouring concrete yesterday (Friday, December 17th) despite the snow.  I would worry, but as I understand an observer has to come from the city to ensure that the temperature and conditions for pouring concrete are right.

The wood and metal walls you can see are the molds to hold the concrete, which will need to cure over
the next several days.

Some other things you can see in this picture:

-The two framed bits sticking out in front are where, I believe, the front steps will be.
-the long slab of concrete in the back is what was under the hay in the last picture, so you can see what that looks like.

The project manager informed me when they were doing this yesterday that if the weather cooperated they would be feeding in the water and sewer lines and pouring the slab, which you can probably tell hasn’t been done yet.

We also informed our current landlord that they had gotten started, which means they will probably be able to make the promised deadline of early March.  He’s sending over the paperwork but we’re hoping to find someone to take over the lease on 1203 Greenway on April 7th. That gives us one month to move in, which I think should be enough.

This photo was taken on Saturday, December 11th, but the work you see was done on Friday the 10th, the first day of construction of our house.

What you see, according to the Project Manager, is the footer of the building.  Beneath the hay there is the concrete that will anchor the building to the ground.  If the temperature warms up enough (you can’t pour concrete if it’s too cold) they will remove the wooden frames you can see, put on new frames, and pour the foundation slab and walls for the basement later this week.  On that time table, they’ll run in the plumbing into the building next week.

More pictures to come, as things progress, but it is a start!

The new “deadline” to get started building the house is the end of December/early January.  Given that the units put up recently are almost done (their closing date is December 7th I seem to recall), that would mean that under ideal circumstances we are looking at closing sometime in early March.

Under less than ideal circumstances (meaning snow before early-mid January when framing would be complete) that could be later.

Bear in mind, that last year, Charlottesville had two ginormous snows (see snowpocalypse 2009) by that time last year.

This is my skeptical face.  Can you tell?

Checked on the house recently, but 814 Rockcreek Road is still just some air occupying red dirt.  There has been substantial progress on the other units, which started being built the first week in October (that’s a month ago, for those of you keeping track), but as yet there’s been not one wit of progress on our future home.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there could be substantive advantages for them finishing later.  According our landlord, it is much easier to find someone to pick up the lease on our current place the more into spring things get.  Also, thanks to some good negotiating, we’ve still locked in our low interest rate regardless of when we close (adjustments are the builder’s problem, not ours). I’m more or less just trying to get a “when” but the Project Manager, unlike the Selling Agent, doesn’t like making promises he can’t keep so I’m not going to get a “when” until they get something started.

But there’s is something in the way of things getting started, because the Selling Agent needs to sell one more unit in our building.  When that is going to happen is anybody’s guess.

Today we met Pete Rooney, the Project Manager building our unit (well, all the units at Rock Creek).  He walked us through all the customizations we’ve made, double checking all of our fine points (all those plug locations!).  I am fairly pleased to say that we didn’t need to change anything.  One might say that there was little reason to have the meeting, but for one important point:

Pete is now our point of contact for most inquiries we’re making.

My impression of Pete was quite good.  He clearly listened to everything we said and pretty much wrote down every word (including my request that we be notified at the earliest opportunity when our move-in/settlement date would be as we still have to deal with our rental). He seemed very document driven so that was a good sign.  Our Realtor, Jim, also seemed confident that our investment in two housing inspections (pre-drywall and pre-settlement), both also noted by Pete, would reap a better quality home for us.  I hope Pete doesn’t mind our nosy selves poking our head in with a camera because I imagine there will be many parents, friends, etc we’ll be taking for visits and the like as our patch of air becomes more like a patch of air with some wood, steel, and concrete in it.

I will admit that I am still quite skeptical of the ability of a builder to throw up a home in 90 days (that would put move in toward mid January if they break ground in 4 weeks as they plan, that’s still not certain) but that is what they have maintained since we started this.  Who can say for sure at this point.  There is no doubt going to be a lot of nerve wracking moments left, but now that all the choices and customizations for us are done it definitely feels like we’ve passed some sort of invisible milestone. Hopefully this is a milestone on the road to where we want to be.

Our second wiring appointment did not take much longer than the first, though this was not surprising as Marianne and I already pretty much knew what we wanted when we went into the appointment.  The contractor was Trinity Wiring, called that because the people who run it are oh-so-irish.  There was serious debating whether or not the guy we met was first or second generation immigrant his accent was so noticeable.

The matter of in-house networking for this house turned out to be pretty straight forward.  Basically, the wiring for phones and computers is the same now-adays.  We can stick the modem and router for our internet into the wiring cabinet and then plug cables into as many ports as we have ports to use (in this case, 3 in the basement, one on the ground floor, and one upstairs).  We can attach a wireless repeater to it if we want (or if our current wireless router doesn’t reach all areas of the house we can add it in as needed.  I already known how to make that work as a wireless repeater).  They don’t provide any routers or anything, but they do provide the wiring.  Score one for not having to run exposed wires all over the house for pets to nom on.

Some things we added:

-Hardwired ethernet ports in the basement for 3 computers, as well as on the ground floor and second floor.

-Wall mounting capacity for two televisions, one in the basement and one on the ground floor.  That includes hidden HDMI ports so gaming systems and DVD players can get access to the TVs without having hanging cords.

-A wall mount for a phone on the ground floor, so we can be called by future playgroups, pizza delivery, and political campaigns (curse that exemption to the no call list).

Things we opted against:

-Home security system.  We plan to have a dog (aka the best home security system in the world).  There were potentially some useful things there (fire-alarm system that would call the fire department) but between the whole “we live in a townhouse community” and the fact that I have visions of the fire department showing up when all we did was burn the roast – yeah, I wasn’t feeling it for the price they were asking.  It’s not like we can’t get carbon monoxide detectors from Lowes.

-Home theater.  Yeah.  I like TV and videogames and all, but that is so not me.

-Matching luggage.  WTF worthy.  Also, not needed.

-Built in vacuum system.  Really also not needed.  Also, a roomba would be cheaper and double as a cat toy.

-Satellite wiring. Tree-line would mean that getting a satellite TV signal would be difficult.  Also, if we were going to upgrade TV again, we’d probably wait until FiOS is available or Comcast gets busted for being a monopoly.  It’s sad I’m not sure which one will come first.

Next up is the pre-construction meeting next week.

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We had our appointment to pick our flooring today.  Though there was a great deal of preparation (the designer’s website had us filling out quizzes and such, it came as no surprise our primary “style” was country), and paint swatches were gotten so that we could look against future colors.

Fortunately, the selection process was pretty simple.  Either we’re very decisive or just it didn’t take as long as they were saying (it took us about an hour, the website said 3).  In any case, large pictures are after the cut.

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One of the things about buying a new house is some of the things you end up wanting to buy because the house doesn’t come with them, or you want to take advantage of the fact that the workers who built your house are accessible.  This can be an awesomely good thing, but it does have added costs.  For us, most of these are in the kitchen, but there are other notable things that add up.