Lots of Pictures and a Few Updates

The footings were poured this morning for the remainder of the house. They also backfilled the back of the house. Now I can actually walk around in the basement and picture where each of the rooms are. Travis had to pace out one of his favorite rooms...the media room. I think he is already planning up some big Super Bowl parties!


Looking at the house lengthwise made it feel a bit bigger. The pipes closest to you in the first picture is for the bar and way at the end is for the guest bathroom. The 2nd picture has the bar in front and the powder room right outside the workout room. The last picture is a picture of the garage since I haven't been taking many pictures from that angle. It also gives you an idea of the view from our house, but i still don't think the pictures do it justice.

The Timing Rollercoaster

So today was full of action. They put the tar on the concrete, the plumber laid some of the pipe, and the excavators dug out the area for the rest of our main floor. The concrete guys started laying out the footings, and those are getting poured at 6:00 am tomorrow. I forgot how many corners we have in our house until I saw the new footings. The excavators were going to start backfilling so that they could put the gravel in the basement. After the gravel is level, Travis and I could get started on the radiant. The way the schedule was working out, we were going to lay the foam on Saturday and the tubing on Sunday. Everything was on schedule. Then we found out the gravel company is completely booked and can't get out to the house until 9:00 on Monday morning. That's going to throw us back at least another week since I am going to be in South Carolina next week and Travis will have to do the radiant on his own. It's pretty frustrating, but there's not much we can do.

The Forms Are Off

All the forms were removed today exposing the basement concrete walls. We couldn't stay long to take pictures because if you look at the clouds, a storm was coming fast! We also noticed that the excavator was back and marked off where they still needed to dig for the main floor. Yep, the pictures you have been seeing are not the whole house. It looks so small in person, but we have to keep reminding ourselves that the basement alone is 400 square feet bigger than our old house! The plumber is coming tomorrow, so all the action continues...

Basement Wall Pour

The concrete walls were poured today at 1:00. Travis was able to go out and get some action shots. They controlled the pour of the concrete by remote control! The forms are being stripped tomorrow, so stay tuned for pictures of the actual concrete walls!!!

Radiant Heat Materials

We were busy building the zone manifold boxes for the radiant heat this weekend. The one pictured is a 5 loop manifold, which makes up one zone. Each zone is controlled by a single thermostat. We have a total of 4 zones: the garage, the guest bedroom and craft room, the workout room, and the main living areas downstairs. We had to solder the copper tubing and then build the boxes. I only screwed up once and capped both ends of the tubing. Travis told me if that was the worst mistake I made, that we'd be alright. So, I guess for now, I still can be his little helper:) The remaining materials are starting to come in, including the 3,000 feet of tubing. We managed to fit that in our little apartment, but we are going to wait to pick up the 100 sheets of foam.

Even More Forms

The forms for the 9 foot walls were put up today. It's much easier to picture the walls now. It is still hard to picture how all the rooms are going to fit. It seems so small when you stand in there, but we know that the house is definitely not small!

More Forms

They were setting the forms for the garage on Friday and are going to do the forms for the 9 foot walls on Saturday. The pour is scheduled for 3:00 on Monday. More pictures of the 9' wall forms to come!

Concrete Walls

We went and checked on the house today and they had put the forms in for the frost wall. It looks like they will probably put up the forms for the 9' walls tomorrow. Mocha also helped out and drove the gradall for awhile.

Meeting with the Framer

We met with the contractor who is going to do the framing yesterday. He built a house very similar to our original plan, so we were able to see what our house is going to look like. It was really cool to see because I was having a hard time imagining the double vault in our great room. The framer said that his crew was going to get started on August 4th and the estimated completion date is September 12th. It's exciting to have an actual date because it makes the process seem that much more real.

Update

The forms for the basement walls were supposed to be put up today. Unfortunately, our electrician, who is also building his house, borrowed the forms for his house from our concrete guy and isn't done with them yet. So, everything is going to be delayed a week. Next Monday the forms will be put up (hopefully). There probably won't be anymore updates this week, so for all of you that need your daily fix of our construction updates...I apologize for your withdrawal symptoms in advance:)

Concrete Footings

The basement and garage footings were poured last week. The forms are being set on Monday and the walls will be poured on Tuesday. It will be interesting to see how the corner in the middle of the picture is going to turn out since the two different wall heights are meeting together at that point.

The office has arrived

The port-a-potty was delivered last week, but Travis prefers to use a much more pleasant sounding term...his office. I think both of us hope that there's not much "paperwork" being done in this office!

The View

For those of you who can't easily come to Helena to see the lot, we took a video so that you get to see our great view. It was pretty smokey in Helena today, so it doesn't do the view justice...but you get the idea.

Setting Footings - July 16, 2008

We went out to the lot around 9:00 and the concrete guy was still working away. He was finishing setting up the footings so that they could level and square them out tomorrow and pour them at 3:30. Things are going a lot faster than we expected. The concrete guy will be done in nine days and the framers are ready to start right after that. In the meantime, Travis and I need to get the radiant heat for the basement all laid out. Not too big of a task...only 3000 feet of tubing!

Can You Dig It? - July 15, 2008

Digging was delayed until today because the excavator was sick, which means the concrete guy was pushed back to Wednesday. They were still digging around 5:00 so that we'd be ready for some of the concrete forms to be set tomorrow. The back wall that is showing right now is mostly going to be crawl space. The left hand side above the ridge is where our garage will be. As you can see, they are moving a ton of dirt!

Checking In

The excavators couldn't do any work on Friday because the wind was at least 50 mph and was blowing dirt everywhere. We went to Bozeman for the weekend, so we had to check in on the lot on Sunday when we got back. We didn't expect to see much progress, but we wanted to look anyway...did I say that we are excited!!! If you look real careful, you can see the orange stakes sticking out of the ground. And, if you use your imagination, you can see the garage being built right in front of your eyes...at least we could...

The Official Ground Breaking - July 10, 2008

The day we have planned for so long finally came. They broke ground on July 10, 2008 and put in a culvert and an access road. We are so excited that the process has started. The concrete guy is coming on Tuesday to starting setting the forms, so things are really going to start happening quick!

The Before Picture

This is a picture of our lot looking east. As you might figure by the slope in the lot, we are going to have a walkout basement. The lot is in such a great location. We can't wait to actually live out there. It's minutes from multilple lakes and right next to a golf course. The view looking west which is the way the back of our house will face spans from Mount Helena and the city out to Lake Hauser. It's absolutely gorgeous at night too!