Day 12

Tried my best not to visit until the weekend but as I drove by the highway exit towards the build, I could not resist.  Here's what I found: 

I can't understand why this part is so open.  I do have a walk out basement, but I've compared this to other blogs with walks outs and none are this open. Any thoughts?  Dont laugh, I know, I'm totally clueless!

A little waterproofing.

View of the lake.. I'm going to talk to my PM about the trees.  There are way too many as compared to my neighbors

Day 10: It's going down, Basement!

Finally.. drove by the lot and saw that the forms are going up for the basement walls!  With the time change, it's usually dark when I drive by the lot so this morning I went early and got a glimpse of the action. 

Day 5: Nothing

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.  Sadly, there has been no progress since Monday.  Of course, I didn't expect any work to be done on Thanksgiving but we've had some pretty great weather the last few days so I thought we'd see more progress.

I guess I was just soooo happy that they started clearing the lot that I thought, ok, this is it.. better luck next week, I guess.

Day 1: Clearing the lot

I was so happy to drive by this morning and see work being done. I'm embarrassed to say though that I was too shy to snap a picture so I got a drive-by pic (LOL). Can't wait to go back this evening (once they're gone) to get a good one.

WooooHoooooo! My Monday is going to be a great one. I feel like a kid on Christmas.

My Palermo Peeps... I have a ? for you

I'm so confused about the stairs & railing. I'm getting a capped wall??? No clue what that is. Even after asking for an explanation, I'm still not clear.


What did you choose? If you chose something there.

**Update** I think I figured it out. I guess the capped wall will have to do but I'd really like the balusters.

Here is a photo from the Palermo model. 

Here's an image from Google.  This is the capped wall .  

At The Starting Line

All went well today at the pre-construction meeting. It took about 90 minutes to go over everything.  My PM seems like a pretty thorough, Get-Ir-Done type of guy.  One slight hiccup though, my last change order didn't make it into the plans.  Luckily, I save everything so I provided a copy of it to my SR like "Here it is, I signed it and delivered to you, SR".  Quick fix. 

We'll be breaking ground on 11/14 and our ETA for completion is 2/21/2013.  Not bad.

Our lot was staked and was much bigger than I expected.  Since our home backs up to a natural lake our backyard will only be cleared back by about 25ft.  Anything past it falls into what is called an Environmentally Protected Area designed to keep the lake in its natural state.  With that though, we gained a decent amount of buffer space to the left of the house where the drainage easement is.   For us, it just means that if we build a fence we must make sure that runoff can flow freely down to the lake & for hubby, more grass to cut

I'm praying that everything goes smoothly & stays on track.  So far, I'm pleased with the experience.

Preconstruction Meeting Scheduled!!!

My SR just called me (yes, this late) with good news.  Plans are in and the Pre-construction meeting is scheduled for Wednesday @ 4pm.  We'll break ground the following Monday 11/12/12. 

Going to bed with a super smile on my face & doing my happy dance. 

To all of you who've done this already, what should I expect?  How should I prepare?