October 15th – Write that down.
That is the day we officially started building our new home! It look the excavator, 3 men, and several dumpsters all day long, but at the end of the day – there was nothing left.
Lets boil this down into a re-cap….
The builder told us that the house was coming down between 7 & 8 AM on Wednesday October 15th. Charles and I had 1/2 marathon training scheduled for Wednesday morning, so we got up at 5:00 and made our way over to our new neighborhood for a run. After a 4 mile run around the streets that will “soon” be our new rout, we headed to Starbucks for some much needed coffee and headed over to the house for some necessary documentation…..
The wrecker and dumpster were already onsite, now we just needed the crew. They showed up around 7:45 and got started about 8:15. I am sure any neighbors still sleeping appreciated them waiting until after 8 – as it turns out, taking down a house can be a bit noisy. We were trying to stay outside of the silt fence while documenting the wreckage, so it was hard to get a great video, but our favorite is the chimney coming down like a stack of legos.
After about 30 minutes, we realized just how long this process was going to take, and headed into work after getting some stills of the wrecker doing its job.
As we left, we saw trucks lining the street with additional dumpsters. AWESOME – they are going to “clean” up as they go. We decided that we would come back after work to see what sort of progress they made…. Now I have to take a pause from this account to talk about how amazing my husband is. We met at the house after work, and he came prepared with a coat, hat, socks and shoes for me as well as a bottle of Champagne and apricots. LUCKY GIRL!
Now that I am properly bundled up with proper footwear, we got down to some exploration and celebration! We marveled at the lack of anything left on the property – no lumber, no drywall, no windows, no foundation, no driveway, no barn out back, NOTHING was left. The dumpsters full of 56 year old building materials had been hauled off and we were left with a beautiful piece of Gods green earth and a John Deer excavator that made a lovely table for our snacks!
We took a tour of the land with the sight plan in hand and identified the 4 corners of the house. We discussed where each room would be and what view we would have from each window. All of the careful planning paid off – and our first date “in” our new house was perfect.
Next Steps:
- Tree Removal – Charles and I are in charge of this one – so we will see how well our PM skills translate into building world. Thinking a can of spray paint is in my near future…
- Change Order Needed- Update contract to reflect pricing for additional permitting fees due to new zoning, the actual cost of asbestos removal, and 14 additional Canned light fixtures that we determined we would need after careful consideration.
- Potential Change Order – Additional trim work in the living and dining rooms and adding a whole house water filter.
- Site Plan Red Lines – Placement of additional beams and cased openings we added after we had final copies from draftsman,
Due Date: Next Wednesday: 10/22