Tuesday May 4

Monday May 3

Friday April 30

Floor deck and basement completed on second house. Truss showed up at noon for the first house. Severe thunderstorms brought work to a halt for the week. Everything's ready to go for Monday.

Thursday April 29

Main floor framing is completed (first house) by noon and truss is ready to be set. The only problem is there was a mix up with the truss company and it wont be ready until Monday. Second house basement fur out started.

Wednesday April 28

Garage poured on 2nd house. Wall framing started on first house.



My first major engineering error was discovered. I didn't account for the brick ledge in the main floor. I should have reduced the main floor footprint where the brick ledge was added. This affected the front two bedroom -- now 4" smaller. Most of the exterior walls are complete.

Tuesday April 27

Framing commences on first house. Floor deck completed and basement furred out.


Garage floor prepped for pour on second house.

Monday April 26

Stoop on first house was filled. Lumber, porta potty and dumpster were all delivered so that framing can start tomorrow.

Weds April 20 - Sunday April 25

No progress made. Lots of rain Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Tuesday April 20

Second house was backfilled with a decent pile of dirt remaining in the front yard. The plans was to truck a few loads to the first lot to fill in the stoop. Unfortunately, this didn't happen in a timely fashion as I had to call on Thursday April 22 to ask why it wasn't done.

Monday April 19

Backfilled first house and was short dirt for the stoop. I found this kind of funny because multiple excavators said there would be 20+ loads to remove.

Sunday April 18

Ox is in the mire. After installing the window wells yesterday, I realized that I may have installed them too high on the 2nd house. I decided that they needed to be lowered for two reasons. One, if I left as is it would probably end up needing an escape ladder because the dept was right at or barely exceeding the 44" max. Two, it would have been way above final grade. Resetting the wells cost me two hours and an extra $40 for additional concrete anchors.

Saturday April 17

I installed 4 window wells with pound in concrete anchors. Chad Aland helped. Only took 1.5 hours! Way faster than I anticipated. Should be back filled Monday.

Friday April 16

Second floor poured. Window wells rocked. Kelly offered to install window wells at $350 each. I'll do it myself.

Thursday April 15

First house floor poured. Second house graded and rocked.

Wednesday April 14

In ground plumbing completed on both houses. Concrete floor should be prepped Thursday, poured Friday. Backfill to start on Monday.

Tuesday April 13

Stripped concrete forms off 2nd house. Plumber was supposed to do in-grounds for both houses, but couldn't because they both had water to the top of the footings. I bought two sump pumps and put one in each house with a house to the street to drain them. Plumber should be back on Thursday. Goal is to pour floor on friday.

Officially closed on construction loan.

Monday April 12

Stripped concrete forms from 1st house. Poured 2nd house walls.

Friday April 9

Wall poured on the first house. Digging completed on the 2nd house. Footings poured. Discovered footings in 1st house were placed incorrectly and needed to be repoured.

Thursday April 8

Started concrete footings while digging was completed. (Around 10 am) Second hole was started.

Wednesday April 7

Started digging 1st hole. Stopped around 2pm due to rain.

Tuesday April 6

Rain

Rain rain go away

We've been waiting for over a week so that the excavator could work us into the schedule and start digging the holes for the foundations. Finally last week they told us they would start on Thursday. Didn't happen. Friday? Didn't happen. The weather was GORGEOUS. It's been 70+ degrees and sunny for the past two weeks. On Monday, they finally got their equipment out to the lots and started digging.


Cue the rain! Not just a little bit of rain. We're talking major thunderstorm downpours. Welcome to springtime in Iowa! If it's raining or too waterlogged, the excavator simply can't and wont work. Which means? More delays. And it doesn't look like the rain is going to let up anytime soon. UGH! We just want to get things started. It's frustrating and discouraging to see days (weeks) wasting like this.

Oh and more bad news? We discovered that the homeowners behind one of our lots have been dumping their pool water down the hill and into our lot. Not to mention it seems to been the path of least resistance for all the rain water draining off the hills. We're concerned about a possible swamp lot situation. We'll have to talk to the developer and neighbors to see if we can come up with a solution that wont flood our house!

We're hoping that getting started is the hardest part of the process and that there are smoother days ahead. In the meantime we watch and wait. Obsessively checking weather maps and sighing with each clap of thunder. So far this project has been one snag after another. But it must get better. It will get better. We've just got to get the ball rolling!

Monday April 5

Trenched in utilities on both lots

Ready or Not ...

Here we go! The funding has been approved. We've signed a contract for the land. Permits have been pulled. And we're ready to begin.

We're building two houses this summer. The houses are on the same street. We will use the same floor plan (1610 sq. ft), but make different exterior and decorating choices to give each house an individual look.

The goal is to build them well and build them quickly. We hope to sell them for about $200-thousand each. Which means we've got to build them for quite a bit less if we want to make money on this project. And staying on budget is going to be one of the most challenging aspects of this endeavor. Challenging. But totally do-able.

It's exciting. And a little intimidating. But we're definitely up for the adventure.

Here's what the lots look like right now:

House #1

House #2

Not very exciting eh? It can only get better from here!