...and so it begins

For those of you that we haven't talked to yet, we had our pre-build meeting with the project manager on Wednesday. During the meeting, we met our project manager (Trent) and went over all of the options we ordered to make sure they all made it into the prints and the job package. We also found out our address and got our dig date. They started digging yesterday!! I stopped by and took a picture in the morning, before they started.

Early morning: Day 1

I stopped by for a picture on the way home from work:

Afternoon: Day 1

They dug the entire basement and got started digging the garage in just one day!

This is what things looked like this afternoon. There is not much difference from this perspective, but with no excavator in the way, you can see how much dirt they actually removed.

Afternoon: Day 2

It may not look like much, but today they finished digging the garage and poured the footers for the basement walls.
The lumps that you see covered by tarps would be our footers. They also put up our lot sign. I guess that means they are officially building our house.

If all goes according to the construction schedule, our pre-closing walk through will be February 27. We don't expect everything to go according to schedule, so we should realistically be closing in early March. The earlier in March the better. That way, we can keep this shoebox until the end of March and take our time moving stuff to the new house. That will also give us an opportunity to put up some paint before we put big, heavy furniture in front of the walls. Anyone reading this who doesn't want to help move or paint should probably not answer their phone for the entire month of March. You may want to think twice about answering the phone in April, too. :-)

Next week, they should be putting up the forms for the basement walls, pouring the concrete and might even get started putting in the first floor.

Now that they have started building our house, I should be posting pictures and commentary a lot more often. My intention right now is to stop by every day after work and take a picture of the house from roughly the same spot. That way, when they are done, I will be able to do a slide show and see a time-lapsed representation of our house going up. Thanks to my brother-in-law for the idea.