foundation on the "Rock"...

My brother & sister-in-law, Daniel & Brandi, are here & we took them to see the "house" tonight. They poured the concrete slab today! Jeff went by there on his way to work this morning and was able to get some photos (on his camera phone) of them actually pouring it from the truck & smoothing it out. Then when we went tonight, all the concrete had been poured & was dry - we were able to walk on it & everything. It looks gigantic, doesn't it??
The next step will be putting the frame up. THOSE will be exciting photos & things will really move fast from here on out!

...he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.
--Luke 6:48 (ESV)

getting ready for concrete...

Today was an overcast, dreary day but that didn't stop our "faithful workers" from progressing on our house! They leveled off all the dirt within the form of the house and then laid plastic sheeting over top of the dirt. They then put this wide wire mesh over top of the plastic sheeting (you can kind of see it in the photo). Rebar is laid in the ditches all around the perimeter of the house form. All of this serves to create stability and strength in the foundation of the house right before they pour the concrete slab.

plumbing...

We headed back out to the neighborhood tonight to see if anything has been done to the site in the last couple days. They put the plumbing lines in. There's ditches dug out of the dirt inside inside the "house" & PVC piping is laid out. Then there's also white piping as well as red & blue piping sticking straight up in certain areas - places like the bathrooms, kitchen & laundry room. It's kinda neat to see how all the piping goes under the house.
I'm frantically searching for a scrapbook to use to document this milestone in our lives. Can't seem to find anything I like yet but I need to soon because I'm getting quite a collection of photos just in the first week of construction!

more dirt...

Wow, I had no idea that so much d-i-r-t goes into the foundation of a home! We rode out to see what's going on at the house site tonight. Not much has changed since Friday (no, they didn't work Saturday), but they did put up some more wood forms to kind of mark off sections of the house. It's still not marked off by rooms, just areas of the house. You can see where the garage will be; that's totally marked off. And the front porch is all marked off with wood. I'm not real sure what the point is, but I'm sure there is one!
The other thing they did is bring in those HUGE mounds of dirt that were piled in the back of our property. They pushed the dirt into the "house" to kind of build it up, I guess. It's my understanding that the dirt will stay & the concrete slab will be poured over top of it - so the dirt serves as a kind of "filler"so the house sits up a little. It's hard to explain...

3 more months until we close!

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain...
--Psalm 127:1a

dirt & forms...forms & dirt

We rode out to the house site tonight (on the bike...it's been so nice lately!) to see progress that had been done in the last 2 days. They had put up what Jeff called batterboards, or forms, to create straight edges for when the concrete slab will get poured. They had also piled 3-4 HUGE mounds of dirt in the back of the property. Jeff says that will be for bracing the boards when the concrete is poured so the batterboards don't move with the weight of the concrete (makes sense...only how does he KNOW all this stuff??)
There are a few sites in the neighborhood that are under construction & it's kinda neat to be able to look at those, knowing how far ahead of ours they are, to see what the next step in our house site will be.
I hope they work on it all day tomorrow (Saturday), but I don't know if they will...we'll have to check it out.

"staking" our claim...

So we signed the contract almost a whole MONTH ago (April 21). We got the elevations (floorplans) back to them by that next Thursday (April 26). They applied for the permit on Tuesday, May 1, and JUST TODAY they began work on the lot! Jeff & I were getting pretty anxious for them to get started...
Jeff went by after work and they had graded the land and staked out the lot. We hopped on the bike after dinner & rode up to the site so I could get some photos. There's still not much to look at (as you can see from the lovely shot there...), but they definitely started work on it. It looks like they stake out the perimeter of where the house will be and then they pull strings across in some sort of pattern than marks off rooms & such (like my technical "construction lingo"?). We were able to see how close the house will sit next to each of the houses on either side - not too close. We have plenty of room that we're not right on top of each other.
After walking around the area & getting a few more photos, we hopped back on the bike & rode down to Surf City to get some ice cream at Dairy Queen. To celebrate.