Excitement builds

The roof is finished.  A lot of progress is being made inside as well.  The HVAC is is place, and the plumbing is roughed in with tubs in place. Things are moving quickly.  So far the weather is holding - we are almost in the clear.  We've had awesome 60 degree weather - amazing for November.

Decisions, decisions, decisions

We are swimming in decisions this week, trying to make final selections for the house.  Building a custom home means you can have it just the way you want it - well within your budget at least.  But the choices can make your head swim a bit.  The last time we built a home, the selection process was basically pick your shingle color from one sample board, your siding from another, and your carpet color from yet another.  Then choose which of these three cabinet finishes you want -- all done.

This time around, we can practically pick any style or color that we can dream up for cabinets.  Walls and walls of tile and carpets await our decision.  The stone yard was full of exterior stone styles, textures and colors, and then that could be matched with any paint color to mix in to the stucco.  There have been hours spent pouring over the lighting catalog, and multiple trips to appliance stores.  And then, there are shingles, window frame colors, glass textures, door knob styles, faucets, wall textures, molding styles, and on and on.  This really has been the fun part, and it's going to be so nice to have our home truly reflect our tastes and style - it's just been hard to identify exactly what that is amongst the seemingly endless options.  Honestly, our heads are swimming a little and I have been obsessing a bit - ok a lot.  But, we feel like we 're narrowing it down, and we've only changed our minds at the flooring store 3 times now.  I've been spending a bit too much time on Pinterest  collecting ideas that exceed our budget - too many cool kitchen things.

We have a roof

Walls!!

We have all the walls now -- so cool.  It is also awesome to have all my kids home for Thanksgiving!!

Oooo, and a cool arch!

Framing

This week the progress on the house has been amazing. The framing has gone so quickly - it seems that the house has just sprung to life. We love seeing it take shape and finally getting a feel for the spaces that so far have just been dimensions on paper.

Monday - Basement

Of course another fascinating big machine - "mom take a picture of that one"

Tuesday - main floor

More progress

This week they placed the window wells, back-filled around the foundation, used a machine to vibrate/settle the floors,  and today, poured the cement in the basement floor and garage floor.  It started raining about 2 hours after they finished, but didn't seem to cause any problems. I feel very blessed to be building a home in November, and so far to not have weather cause problems.  Quinn liked the big pumper truck, but he still loves the backhoe (he calls it the claw) the best of all the big machines so far.

Drains

Today they laid out the drain pipes in the basement floor, and did the tar coat.  I know - exciting huh.  Sadly, every little thing is incredibly exciting to us.  It snowed several inches over the weekend, but it has all melted and should be good the rest of the week - hope the weather will hold out through the framing process (fingers crossed).

Basement view

We can see windows now.

Foundation Stones

Something cool is happening every day.  The foundation walls were placed today, and the great big pumper truck was filling it all up!  So fun to watch.  Quinn says now he wants to be that guy that runs the cement truck.

There was a great little story in the October 2012 Friend that we read for Family Night.  It was called Abby's Scripture Rock.  The children received rocks, and then wrote the reference for their favorite scripture.  The rocks were then included in the foundation for the Newport Beach Temple.  Since we are at the foundation stage for our house, we decided it was a perfect activity for us to think about what scriptures we want for the foundation for our home.  We each came up with a scripture or two, and even got the kids away at college involved.  We wrote them on our rocks and dropped them down with the foundation before they backfilled.

Footings

We have footings.

Hooray they finally started digging today!!!

The construction of our new home has finally begun.  Digging started Nov 2.  Our builder says 90 days from the time they begin digging, maybe sooner.  It has taken so long to finally get to this point.  It was a long summer of ups and downs trying to get our house sold - it only took 4 different contracts, but it finally worked out. We originally had a lot in American Fork that we loved, but had to back out when our sale failed and then we lost it.  Somehow, through a series of interesting events, we ended up with this lot in Orem.  We are delighted with our builder so far and are excited to be able to watch the construction - waiting for the permit was torture.

Here is the lot before:

Here is the beginning of the digging (Quinn says he wants to be that guy using the big digging machine when he grows up)

Here is the big hole - can you believe all of those rocks?