home build – Page 2 – Primm & Property

Posted on May 21, 2020May 21, 2020 by Emily · 4 Comments

Day 216

We had a meeting with our contractor this morning. We needed to discuss all kinds of thrilling things like where we wanted the access to the crawl space to be, how we were going to lay out the HVAC units, electric meter, and gas tank behind the garage, and where we would like gas stub outs.

Have I lost you already?

Here’s Josh, waiting patiently for our contractor to arrive…and most likely looking up equipment he’s decided we need for the property.

I decided to take a lap.

They finished filling in around the house. It is now much safer to walk the perimeter. And, they are supposed to start laying block tomorrow – woot!

So much dirt. Our contractor told us they also ran into some “chert”, which is a new term for me.

I asked my landscape architect of a husband what that meant and he dumbed it down to layman’s terms for me:

J: “it’s rocky soil in the substrata.”

Oh, of course. I knew that.

The trees have really filled in. Just a few weeks ago we could see our neighbor’s house through the tree line.

The front yard also looks nice and neat (if you can see past all of the dirt…). Our other neighbor mowed for us this weekend. It took him 4 hours on his tractor.

This is not good news for me as it means Josh will be adding more and/or larger equipment to his list.

We may have no budget left for furniture, but he assures me the yard sure will look great.

To distract myself from the equipment budget concerns, I focused on finalizing selections.

One of the last selections to be made was the chimney brick. I knew I wanted it to look like the brick fireplace in my Grandmother’s house that came from an old jail. This one is pretty darn close!

I’m leaning toward the bottom mortar color. Or I could do a 50/50 mix of the bottom one and the right one to warm it up a little.

The sales rep described the top two as “similar in color to peanut butter”, which immediately ruled them out for me. First of all, it’s to yellow for me. But, more importantly, I just can’t get past the thought of there actually being peanut butter between the bricks as they are stacked. Not only does this gross me out, but it seems like the antithesis of mortar.

So, in summary, we will not be going with the top two options for multiple reasons.

Which do you vote for? 1) light gray or 2) light gray and light buff 50/50 mix?

Posted on May 19, 2020 by Emily

Day 212

We had a three-generation inspection at the property this weekend. My grandmother, mom, and sister hadn’t seen the property in months so it was fun to see their reactions to the big changes since it was just a raw piece of land.

Look at these cuties! I can’t wait until they are coming over for dinner and a visit on the reg.

It’s a little treacherous to walk around the house with all of the rock and dirt, but Grandmother was not about to stay in the car and miss out on seeing everything for herself.

Grandmother, patiently waiting at the front door. I love so many things about this picture.

My seester, Eugene, asking when dinner will be served as she stands in the future dining room.

OK, back to inspecting…

Over the last couple of days, the forms for the basement walls have been removed and the walls have been waterproofed.

They put in a drain so we have a basement instead of an indoor swimming pool.

Thank you.

As we were there, John (earthwork guy) was busy filling in around the basement walls with gravel and dirt to get things leveled out.

I forgot my ladder to be able to get down into the basement and really get a feel for the size, but don’t worry, that will be happening soon.

Grandmother and Eugene were busy watching John in the bobcat…

…Kath was busy watching her firstborn climb a precarious pile of dirt to take this photo.

There’s a lot of rain in the forecast this week, which means it probably won’t rain. I’m hoping by our next visit that some of these block piles will have been rearranged into the foundation.

We shall see!

Posted on May 15, 2020May 18, 2020 by Emily

Day 210

It is looking more and more like we may actually get this house built!

Today, they poured the basement walls. We arrived just as the pump truck was departing.

Check. It. Out.

Word is these forms will likely come off tomorrow.

This whole “forms and pouring concrete” process blows my mind.

This lovely little section is where the exterior steps to the basement will be. There will be a lot of dirt filled in around it once the forms are removed. Thank goodness.

We will probably use this access 12 times in the next 50 years, but hey, we will be glad we have it when we need it.

The view from the top of Pride Dirt Pile.

Also, many piles of split face concrete block have arrived for the non-basement parts of the house where we will have a crawl space.

While I may use the exterior basement stairs on occasion, I hope I never experience the crawl space firsthand.

John (earthwork guy) was busy moving and distributing Pride Dirt Pile because he has to dig a lengthy trench for the electrical that will run from the start of the driveway all the way to the far corner of the garage.

It sure is great to have so much space until you have to put in the infrastructure for utilities.

On the bright side, “Meadowcrest”, as we’ve named our property, is looking super meadow-y out front.

Can’t wait to see what’s next!

Posted on April 25, 2020 by Emily

Day 186

We have a basement!

Well…a hole for the basement, that is.

We’re doing a partial basement, approximately 500 square feet, to house the water heater, HVAC system, electrical panel, etc., and to serve as a storm shelter. We decided against a full basement because we will have plenty of room in the house itself and we do not want to be tempted to “collect” a lot of items we do not use. We’ll see how that pans out, but we have high hopes for our anti-hoarding selves.

Or perhaps we could turn it into an indoor swimming pool…

Check out the different layers of soil. It looks like a medium/medium rare steak to me.

Miraculously, we didn’t hit any rock. You never know in Tennessee so we got lucky.

The basement is supposed to be poured next week! I’m as excited about this as I was about Santa Claus coming when I was five years old.

Screen Shot 2020-04-23 at 9.06.17 PM

The only critter of note on the trail camera was a coyote. It’s been very windy the last week or so and thus we have 79 videos of the branch shaking in front of the camera. I think it’s time to reposition the camera….

Posted on April 9, 2020April 9, 2020 by Emily

Day 171

Things haven’t changed much in the last few days. Apparently, the ground was still fairly wet under the surface, so earthwork dude was letting it dry out.

We had a safely distanced meeting on-site with our builder to discuss the next few steps. There is some more grading to do and then the digging of the footers and the basement. I must find my pink sunglasses Josh got me before it’s time for me to inspect these items.

I did a little practice inspecting today.

Looking good and level.

I had to check out the view from Pride Rock…er…Pride Dirt Pile.

Josh decided to have a little too much fun with photoshop after I started calling our pile of dirt “Pride Rock”. Here I am presenting our house cat, Bu, to the kingdom.

cat

I blame it on the quarantine.

Moving on.

We moved the trail camera back to its original location because I have recently learned about myself that, to me, watching dirt being moved is like watching paint dry.

The usual suspects showed up: Bambi, house cat, opossum, and a few curious neighbors.

Screen Shot 2020-04-08 at 6.50.28 PM

Then came one of the funniest videos yet.

Screen Shot 2020-04-08 at 6.52.44 PM

It started with a young lady turkey casually strolling by. I’ve just learned this is called a “jenny”.

Hey, Jen.

Screen Shot 2020-04-08 at 6.52.55 PM

Then a few seconds later she inexplicably picks up her pace and exits stage right…

Screen Shot 2020-04-08 at 6.53.39 PM

…because here comes Tom!

I think the quarantine is getting to them, too.

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Emily

Day 167

It’s really happening!

I got butterflies as we turned onto our easement drive and saw the big pile of dirt in the distance.

Have you ever seen such a beautiful sight?!

(*Fighting back tears*)

This is where the garage will be.

And guess what? We will actually PARK in the garage, unlike the other 99.3% of Tennesseans who have garages and never park in them. I don’t understand it.

That looks like fun!

But, I will say, after reviewing the SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN 10 second videos our trail camera captured from the first day of moving dirt, this is a very VERY monotonous process.

Though having seen many a hot mess of a construction site, I think our guy is very methodical and trying not to disturb things any more than necessary.

Please cross your fingers for clear days so we can make good progress!

Posted on January 26, 2020 by Emily

Day 101

Greetings!

Well, the house isn’t done yet…or started for that matter.

We did, however, close on our construction loan. Our plans have been submitted for our construction permit and we’re hoping to get the green light this coming week.

Though there’s not much to see just yet, we still make regular visits to the property to check on it and collect the footage from the trail camera.

After reviewing last week’s footage, it seems we aren’t the only ones eagerly awaiting construction to start:

Screen Shot 2020-01-26 at 2.02.36 PM

Hiiiii….

Screen Shot 2020-01-26 at 2.05.13 PM This is the second time we have seen this truck. If there’s a next time, I’ll be running their plates and sending them a note with the blog URL.

This is also the second time we’ve seen this little guy/gal:

Screen Shot 2020-01-26 at 2.02.05 PM

The first time we saw him/her, Josh had reviewed the footage before I did. I asked him if there was anything noteworthy and our conversation went something like this:

J: “A few vehicles, a coyote, and a house cat.”

E: “A house cat?”

J: “Yeah, a house cat.”

E: “As opposed to what? A leopard? A lion? A bobcat? Isn’t it just a cat?”

J: “No, you can tell it’s a house cat.”

This went on for a while and we eventually determined that while I would categorize all domestic felines as “cats”, Josh grew up with farm cats that lived in the barn and did not come in the house so therefore just “cat” as a descriptor is a little too vague.

I am assuming this critter’s full figure is what led Josh to determine that it is clearly a “house cat”.

Hopefully by the time the house cat returns, construction will be underway!

P.S. This is not the first time the term “house cat” has come up in our marriage. When shopping for shampoo to bathe our (house) cat, Bu, all the pet store had was “show cat” shampoo. Josh rolled his eyes and exclaimed, “We don’t need “show cat” shampoo, we just need “house cat” shampoo!”.

Posted on January 9, 2020January 9, 2020 by Emily

Day 83

Well, 2020 is off to a strong start!

Items of note:

We close on our construction loan next week.
Our septic permit has been approved.
We should have everything together to apply for our building permit by the end of the week.

We drove out to the property this past weekend and Josh poured concrete markers for the property corners. I helpfully supervised from the passenger seat of the truck and documented the process:

Our new equine neighbors decided this was pretty interesting and came to the edge of their paddock to see what on earth we were doing:

They pretended to eat hay when I caught them checking us out.

After the second property corner was poured, they lost interest.

I don’t typically go all the way to the property corners to take photos so it was neat to capture this angle from the front corner. You can see a sliver of the easement road on the right where our driveway will start, our gorgeous, orange septic field fence to the left of that, and then finally, a little farther to the left is the location of our future house, as indicated by the giant green arrow.

I decided I really like this angle and I think I will make a point to take photos from this angle throughout the building process.

Let’s keep those permits coming so we can break ground soon!

Posted on November 12, 2019 by Emily

Day 26

Well, it’s a good thing we’re not trying to break ground today because it’s a whopping 17 degrees Nashville.

We do, however, have a stamped site plan. Woohoo! I’m ready to move some dirt!

….rather, I’m ready to see some dirt moved!

Untitled

This is the area around the house and driveway that will be graded. To the naked eye, this area looks relatively flat, but from the garage side of the driveway to the front corner of the house, it’s nearly a 10 foot drop.

See that orange star I put on the site plan? That is the location of the tree that Josh’s truck is parked next to in this photo below (taken facing East). Looks pretty flat, right??

Meanwhile, final rounds of redlining continue on the house plans. We are 99.37% there, just catching little things here and there to tweak.

I love finding these notes from Josh. Can’t wait to see him discover other details in the house as it is being built!

Posted on November 4, 2019November 4, 2019 by Emily · 2 Comments

Day 17

Now that it’s November, it is time to get serious. We are SO close to getting things rolling on the house build. This week, we met with the bank to get the construction loan process going, which is NOT for the faint of heart. To my knowledge, they will need at least the following to approve us for a loan:

Paperwork detailing all of the money we have, have had, and will ever have
13 forms of identification
How many pieces of lumber it will take to frame the house, +/- 5
What color we intend to paint the dining room
Our first born child as collateral (I suppose we’ll have to offer Bu, the cat, at this time.)

That is by no means a comprehensive list. It may take us longer to get all of that together than it will to build the house.

In other news, during our car ride design plan review session on the way to visit family this weekend, we solved the butler’s pantry dilemma. The section of the house with the powder bath, pantry, butler’s pantry, and broom closet just wasn’t feeling quite right. My sister and brother-in-law suggested we get rid of the broom closet and enlarge the butler’s pantry so it is more open and inviting. Eugene (sister) said with the revised layout, she would love to come and mix drinks in that space. I agreed, because after all craft cocktails are more important than cleaning supplies.

In closing, I’d like to share a photo that will not be making the cut for our holiday card from our attempted holiday card photoshoot at the property this afternoon. We were hoping to catch the 5 minutes of Fall foliage in Tennessee as well as the golden hour lighting. There weren’t many leaves left on the trees and the sun was especially blinding, but we did manage to get a few good ones for the holiday card.