Category: New House

“Do You Have A Big Jack?”

Another week and no shortage of house stories.

I should take a minute to say that I am insanely grateful that my husband and I are in a place that we could take on a project like this. I’m fortunate financially and also fortunate that our marriage is strong enough to survive the stress. I realize this blog is full of crappy stories, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that we’re lucky. And the fact that we are lucky doesn’t take away from the fact that this process is a total nightmare. I’m sure it gets fun when it all starts coming together… at least that is what I keep telling myself. Even if it doesn’t, I get to live in a house with my family that we designed and better fits our needs in the end. And there are so many closets. So so many closets. A mom’s dream!

Monday was Labor Day and the crews were still out working at our house. I took the opportunity of a day off to rip out the garden fence. It was a good stress reliever! There was a new demo guy at the house and alone he got more done in one afternoon than the original crew got done in a day.

Tuesday morning the contractors asked me to stay home and meet with the HVAC contractor. I didn’t realize the bid called for two furnaces and two AC units as the new house isn’t THAT big, but I guess we have a pretty small furnace. We had to figure out where to put them as they don’t fit in the originally planned spot. I’m glad I was there because no one ever realizes the side door is the front door of the house and they were thinking about sticking them right there next to the door. I wanted to put them on the east side of the house where they would be seen the least, but the giant beam they had to stick in the basement when they realized the joists went the opposite direction than was planned for. This beam creates a small bump in the basement ceiling, but a big problem for getting HVAC and plumbing to the new eastern part of the house. We settled on tucking the A/C units at the back of the house where they will be seen more but logistically would work better. The second furnace has a good spot in the unfinished storage room downstairs. The second furnace and A/C will control the new addition on the south side of the house which is good because since it faces the south and west it gets the most exposure and in the past, our living room was always hard to regulate temperature in. Now we can control bedrooms separate from living areas which will be more energy efficient, too.

While the HVAC guys were at the house both of our contractors were also there. As we walked around they kept remarking about how much the floor in the existing house was bowing and kept asking if we ever had problems with it or saw cracks in our tile. We never had any problems! It was very noticeable as you moved from the new addition into the old house and while they could even it out with self-leveling concrete, they were worried about the weight of that, grout, tile and the new walls making it even worse. Based on what we could see, the floor joists spanned the entire length of the house. It was perplexing and the contractors told me they wanted to put in a support beam somewhere downstairs and might even need the engineer to come out. I called Mike and asked him to head home as early as he could because this issue was beyond me and I’d already made too many decisions for the day.

The contractor was going to be there all day moving our dirt pile. I found a guy down the road that wanted it to build up his pasture so the neighbors would stop flooding him out. He recently bought the lot and is convinced the neighbors are purposely flooding his pasture because he isn’t Mormon. He is also a disabled vet. These things combined meant that I was more than willing to take him all the dirt at no charge to him. 15 truckloads!

When Mike got home, our dirt pile was gone, Hallelujah! The contractor had also decided where he was going to rip out the ceiling to put in a metal support beam in the basement. He didn’t think it was going to be too expensive, but he would let us know. Everyone agreed that something needed to be done.

Fast forward to Wednesday night. My in-laws came over because I offered them the large gorgeous sliding door that I forgot to plan for and now can’t use in the new house for them to put in their new garage at Bear Lake. We needed to move it somewhere safer than the house and it was super heavy. Once they moved the door I became obsessed with one particular part of the floor. It was so bouncy and loud. I stepped on it over and over because it just didn’t make sense. It used to be under the kitchen cabinets and would have also supported the old kitchen wall, now it was screaming at just my weight. I couldn’t stop messing with it because it was so bad. I just hoped the beam was the answer.

Thursday morning I am leaving the house and I notice the framers are back which is a little weird because they were done the day before and hauled off all their stuff. They asked me if I had a big jack. I told them the only thing I knew we had was my car jack, but nothing bigger. They said not to worry and I didn’t think much more of it. This is a sign of how strange this process has been that I didn’t even ask what they needed it for.

Later that morning, my contractor shows up and calls to tell me that the framers fixed the floor. I guess one of the framers couldn’t stop thinking about the floor the night before and decided he wanted to stop by again because he also thought something just didn’t make sense. As he poked around the basement, he noticed that there was an area in the basement that wasn’t supposed to be touched, but the demo crew had taken out a wall that was supposed to stay. The house has no electricity, so now that the framing is all in it’s in a dark corner of the basement no one has really been in since it shouldn’t have been touched. The room is planned to only get new flooring, nothing else. When he got out his light and looked up, he saw a support beam in the ceiling that was now unsupported. The demo crew had not only taken out the framing, they knocked out a large support beam holding up the middle of the house without somehow thinking that beefy post was important.

They used a big jack to lift the now sagging beam and get a new support under it. It instantly fixed the floor in the entire house. We are so lucky it didn’t give out and cause the back half of the house to cave in. And I am lucky my contractor and the framers were so concerned about it. All the subfloor will need to be screwed down again because it sagged so much the screws came out, but in the whole scheme of things that could have gone wrong because of their error, this is pretty minor. I have no idea how exactly this will be made right with the demo crew, but I imagine their pay will once again be docked. At this point, they should be paying us for their work. In talking to the contractor it sounds like they have not called asking for their check so it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

The windows arrived this week and I am so excited about the new living and dining room. The open floor plan and huge windows will make that a great place to hang out and yell at my goats for being obnoxious. The back windows are basically the size of small screendoors and there are 3 of them side by side.

Here are a bunch of pictures in no particular order as your reward for reading!

A boy and his cat exploring the dirt. There’s a reason they are good friends. 

Trixie is super excited about her new window. And really, she is excited about everything.

The back of the house is pretty much all new. 

I am super excited about the patio now, it is covered and won’t get the hot summer sun anymore in the evening which will make it the perfect summer hangout. We are also extending it our to meet the house on the left of this picture making it a little bigger.

The windows on the right look like screendoors, but they are just huge windows.

Someone drew a heart in blood on the wall. Not creepy at all.   No more pocket door in the basement bath! If you’ve ever stayed at my house you will appreciate this as the thing was loud and annoying because it banged into the framing on the inside of the wall. 

Next up is HVAC and Plumbing!

TL;DR My house was slowly caving in because the demo crew removed a load-bearing wall weeks ago and no one noticed. A hero framer discovered the issue and fixed my house!

 

 

Best Week Ever

This week made up for all the lack of progress over the last month.

Day 1: Framers showed up and put up walls. Seeing the walls was fantastic.

Day 2: Even more walls. They also fixed the issue with the trusses running the wrong direction in the floor. We’ll lose a couple of inches on parts of the basement ceiling, but it isn’t too bad.

Day 3: The floor went in and we could walk out in the new space for the first time. Unfortunately, that also meant I realized we never had the architect update the drawings for the new slider doors we have and that meant we need a new slider ordered. Does anyone need a HUGE sliding door? I have one that is now literally just laying around.

Day 4: All the walls were up! Look at those crazy big windows, I love it.

Day 5: The trusses went up! It looks like a house and it only took 5 days. I keep thanking the framers profusely every day for making us a house. I think they think we are crazy, but they have no idea how frustrated we were when they showed up. You can see in the 3rd photo below the vault in the living room and dining room which we are excited about since the rest of the house is 8 foot ceilings.

There is still framing to be done inside, but this week is exactly what we needed. Everything left is dependent on more demo that needs to get done. On Monday the HVAC guys will start and I will meet with them Tuesday morning to go over some details- like the fact that we might need a second furnace? This was news to me, but I guess it was in the bid. They are also supposed to be hauling the dirt pile out on Tuesday as well which should start getting the yard cleaned up and make my chickens, goats, and dog much happier.

We were also supposed to have concrete window wells poured, but that plan was abandon because of the shoddy concrete work that has happened so far. I am a little sad about it because I liked the idea of them being very clean and easy to maintain, but it is what it is. I’m learning to pick my battles.

We also went and saw our granite slabs on Friday morning. We were able to finalize the backsplash and narrow down paint now that we have the slabs.

Here’s a good reminder of who we are doing this project for- these two crazy kids playing on a woodpile in their jammies. Well, one of them. The other refused to wear pants.

TL;DR Two men framed 80% of the house this week and turned our frowns upside down. We also visited our granite which is beautiful. And my kids only sometimes wear pants outside.

It Just Needs Assembly

This week our general contractor jumped in and really took control of what was going on at the house. He pulled laborers off other jobs and got everything finished up to pour the basement floor so that they can frame starting on Monday.

This included fixing some previous work. Most importantly of which was pouring a footing, the previous subcontractor had simply missed. Glad it got fixed, but seriously, ugh!

It was also discovered this week that the engineer thought the trusses in the basement ceiling ran the other direction so the contractor would have to get with the engineer again to figure that out.

The moral of today’s story though is that we have a basement floor and a huge order of lumber (it’s seriously EVERYWHERE).  Next week, we should start seeing the house really come together- it literally just needs to be assembled. Thank goodness!!

The contractor called me late Friday and wants to have a meeting next week to have a little bit of a project reset, review budgets, timelines, etc. I’m happy that’s going to happen because I feel a little paralyzed in making decisions right now because I don’t know where we are with the money. We’ve tried to put the emphasis on space, not finishes throughout the house, and been smart about the budget, but since we aren’t the ones writing the checks so it’s a bit of a black box right now. It’s all overseen by the lender, so it’s not out of control, it’s just not in our control which causes some anxiety. The lender also called this week and I asked if I could see all the details on the money that went out so far, but I haven’t heard back.

I’m hoping that between the contractor meeting and seeing actual walls next week it will be a turning point. Fingers crossed.

Trixie is getting much more mobile and interested in exploring.  If we can survive 4 more months in a trailer with her we will deserve a new house! I cannot wait for her and Darwin to start running up and down the halls. I will threaten them over and over that if they don’t behave we are moving back to the trailer.

A few other things have been happening around the house that I haven’t included in my updates. First, the neighbors across the street listed their house a few weeks ago. It’s been funny to watch people look at it and stare at our disaster across the street. I’m hoping a young family might move in over there as we haven’t had the best experience with the current neighbors. Sorry for living in the front yard in a trailer while you are trying to sell your house!

We also haven’t had a big power problem in a few weeks. Occasionally, the fan will kick on and off, but nothing like before, so that’s good. Other than that the biggest issue with the trailer is that Darwin found a big spider outside the window.

There was a huge rainstorm this week and it was the first time we really got to see how leaky the detached garage is when it pours for more than a short time. Our entire house is stored out there. We knew there were some leaks and everything is tarped and the water didn’t seem to be enough to cause an issue. There is a gap under the garage door that also lets a bunch of water in, but fortunately, we put everything in that area up on blocks and it stayed pretty dry. The rain also caved the dirt pile in on one side and now we can’t get into the chicken coop. Fortunately, Mike had thought it might happen and pulled one of their feeders out last week, but it’s not very convenient and the dirt doesn’t seem to be moving any time soon.

There have also been some house decisions we are working on making. Specifically granite, backsplash, lighting, cabinet knobs, and paint. These are really the only things left to pick and the hardest to coordinate. I’m excited though. We are going to have things like a patio fan and our master bedroom has a walk out to the patio. We will have a master bedroom. I will have a closet. Holy hell, this new house is going to be AMAZING!  Mike and I have put so much time and thought into it that it will be fun to see it when it’s real. The tides are turning.

 

Two Toddlers, Two Months In

I told my husband that we are now officially living in a trailer with two toddlers. He said that sounds like a horrible idea and he isn’t sure why we ever thought it was a good idea. A baby and a toddler seemed not so bad. Two toddlers sounds like a circus. It mostly is, but honestly it still really isn’t that bad.

Here’s the thing, we are somehow both pretty easy going about the situation. Those that know me (especially at work) are probably thinking (or even expressing out loud) BULLSHIT, but it’s true. I’ve never been afraid of dirt, camping, port-a-potties, bugs, etc. Having kids has taught me that I am never actually in control of any situation anymore so there’s no need to try so hard to be 100% in control. Those two combined have somehow translated into living in a trailer and not having once thought “what the hell were we thinking, we have got to get out of here!”

I keep getting asked how many times I have just burst into tears and there was really only one time on my way to work this week that I was so frustrated about the situation that I cried. Then I got to work and there was enough other issues popping up that I just compartmentalized it and focused on those issues. Work has been a good distraction to chaos at home.

My husband told me that this blog is sad. I asked him if he thought it wasn’t sad or if I was making it more sad than it was and he said no, it’s just clear how frustrated we are, which is true.

We are two months in and they finished pouring the foundation yesterday. This is exciting, but the sloppiness of some of the work just pissed me off. It’s not like this is a small project and a few thousand dollars, it’s a huge investment and it’s a home for our family that I hope to stay in and make memories in until the kids move out.

On Monday, I got a call from the contractor that they officially put the subcontractor on notice that he needed to be done by Wednesday or would get charged a daily penalty. This naturally lead to some nasty phone calls between the two and my contractor called me just to make sure I was aware and to ease some frustration about the pace of work.

They sped up their work and they did some things that were down-right sloppy and they continue to damage all sort of things on our property in the process including caving in the street at the water meter, running over and knocking loose some curbing around flower beds, and my personal favorite, damaging our walnut tree to badly with the excavator that a huge branch came down in last night’s storm. This is sarcasm for those wondering.

I’d post pictures of the foundation, but I will be honest that I don’t want to because I don’t need anyone else’s opinion that it’s not good work. We already know.

The result of this work was a very frank and forward email to our contractor basically saying we expected more and are overall disappointed. Our contractor responded well to this and sent us a very reassuring email that they will work to make it right and address any issues.

So here we stand with a foundation that is almost finished and a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed and a long list of repairs to make as a result. It’s sad and frustrating, but I am hoping this is the bottom of the barrel and it’s only up from here.

I initially hesitated in starting this blog for this exact reason which is that I expected there to be super crappy parts of this project and sharing them all isn’t exactly fun, but it’s honest. I’m pretty sure this process will be like pregnancy and childbirth where you forget just how shitty it was later and when people ask you about it you tell them it wasn’t that bad even though it was awful. At least I have this blog to show them and it’s not as graphic as a child birth video!

 

 

 

 

Need Door —->

There’s been lots of progress at the house this week, but instead of being excited I have been mostly annoyed with the lack of attention to detail. It’s all getting done, it’s all passing inspection, but it would be twice as fast if it was done right the first time.

I won’t go into all the details, but one of the biggest issues is that they left all the windows and doors out of the foundation rebar. My contractor caught it pretty quickly, but when I stopped by the house at lunch the other day I noticed they were leaving out a window where they had a form and had to point it out and they had to redo the entire section. It’s truly a blessing and a curse that we are there.

They’ve also made way for new plumbing into the addition by cutting out the basement concrete.

Lola isn’t concerned about waiting for the addition to be complete, she has already moved back in. I find her lounging down there often.

The forms are mostly up on the south side so now all we need is a little concrete. Or a lot of concrete. 

This will eventually be the stairwell down to the new outside entrance to the basement. We don’t intend to finish it as a mother-in-law now, but it will be nice to have it as an option in the future. For resale it’s also a valuable part of the addition since many people run businesses out of their houses down where we are since the lots are large.

In order to not have to remove part of the existing patio, they’ve used cinder block on part of the foundation. It is not my favorite solution and it looks terrible, but I’ve been promised it is not only structurally sound, I won’t be able to see any of it when we are done. Notice that this side of the house also has no windows… it should have 2 down there in the foundation.

This is our third dumpster, or maybe even the fourth. The lawn is still littered with things that will need to get hauled out like window wells that were ripped out and some of the demo is still not done on the inside. It’s an amazingly large amount of material that is being taken out even with reusing as much as we can.

My lawn is dead, my entire yard is a pile of dirt. This is a summer I want to forget in terms of enjoying our house, yard, and lot. I feel the worst for our poor dog who is used to roaming around, chasing chickens, and harassing goats through the back fence. This, too, shall pass Luna- I promise!

 

“It Looks Like A Bomb Went Off”

I’m at the laundromat again which means you all get another update. I like this place more than I should and today it’s completely empty which makes me like it even more.

Our contractor stopped by to leave a check for on of his subs right after my last post. It was the first time we’d talked to him in a little while. He said this project was taking much longer than expected. Not what we wanted to hear, but not unexpected. They told us up front that demo and getting the foundation in was going to be something they wouldn’t even put a timeline on because it was so hard to find subcontractors to do it, much less get them scheduled. He also said, “It looks like a bomb went off here.” Again, not exactly what you want to hear as the homeowner, but again, not unexpected. It validated how I’m feeling lately that the house is truly a total disaster and I’m not just hypersensitive.

He answered a few of my other questions and we talked about a few things that aren’t on the plans that we needed addressed so he asked me to write them on the plans.

Let’s talk about these plans for a second. These plans are the builder plans and there are a few sets of them. One they keep back at the office and one that stays at our house, the Field Set. It’s the Bible of the project. I love these plans and I have every intention of keeping them when we are done- assuming someone doesn’t accidentally throw them away. It’s fun to see all the notes on them, the dirty hand prints, and the wear and tear.

The contractor asked me to draw on the plans exactly were the plumbing that was left off the plan goes in the basement. This plumbing is for a kitchen that we could potentially put in later as a mother-in-law apartment, but don’t plan on finishing now. This is more nerve wracking than I can explain. Based on where I put it, it will be exactly there because the plumber will come in and do EXACTLY what I write. I got our my ruler, my pencil, and quadruple checked my math.

This was actually a good exercise because it got Mike and I looking at the lighting schematics and realizing that there are a few things that got left off of those as well. Looking at the plans and realizing that is what this place is going to be in a few months makes me excited. Even if every time we look at them we seem to find one more thing that got left off or end up with 10 more questions.

The other thing that is exciting to see if the building up of things, not just the tearing down of things. It’s emotionally more satisfying than anything. It feels like a sign that this place is going to actually get finished at some point. I don’t think I’ll Be super excited until the framing is done, but it’s weird to look at the foundation starting to come together and realize those are actual walls and they enclosed space that will soon be our home. The foundation rebar is in so forma should be in early next week. I’m really hoping by next weekend we have a foundation!

There are lots of goofy, quirky, and sometimes frustrating stories that go along with having crews at the house all the time. We never really know when to expect them so occasionally I’ll be chasing cats in my pajamas and they’ll roll in or I’ll find them sleeping in their van while parked directly in front of our fire hydrant while they wait for their boss to arrive.

One of the crews has this van that needs a jump every day. We’ve jumped them, my in-laws have jumped them, and they’ve used our jump box a few times. Yesterday they took the jump box with them and went to another job. Annoying. Especially when Mike realized his own truck wouldn’t start and he needed it to go get hay.

We asked the two teenage boys that were at the house working about it and he said the other crew would be there “soon” and bring the box. This was around 6. This van was also the guys ride so we knew they’d be back eventually.

They finished up the work they could do alone and waited. I talked to them around 7 and offered them some water as it was clear they didn’t really have anything with them. I also made sure they had power for their phones.

Around 9 we finally offered them a ride home. They said they couldn’t leave the tools or they would be in trouble. I felt bad. It’s hard to be terribly hospitable when you are living in a trailer. We didn’t even cook dinner last night to offer them something and don’t have a lot of food around right now as we were on vacation last week and have yet to go shopping. We fed kids their food last night and split a bag of pretzels for “dinner” because that’s just how the night worked out.

Finally, right around 10 and well after dark, the guys pulled in with the van, the jumpbox, and seats for the guys. I was happy, annoyed, and glad I could go to bed without worrying about them. Until this morning when I looked in the hole out back and saw that they just discarded all the empty water bottles I’d given them without even throwing them away in the dumpster. Then I was mostly just annoyed as shit.

I’ll still offer them water if it happens again, but I’ll probably point out to them that the courteous thing to do would be to thank me by not using my new house as a dumpster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Concrete Cutting, Inspections, Loan Draws, Footings, and Power Woes

It’s been a few weeks since I updated and it was, frankly, because work was happening at a snail’s pace and it was super frustrating to stare at the same house with the same progress day after day.

There seemed to be some confusion or communication issues that resulted in the concrete cutter being delayed which basically kept everything else from progressing. The concrete cutter was needed to remove the existing foundation walls. Fortunately, when it finally happened my in-laws were at the house checking in on things and caught a video of the last wall coming out. The 2x6s that you see are a temporary wall that is literally holding up the house since they cut out the foundation wall. There is also a closet wall that they left in place for now to bear some of the load. I am now afraid to walk into the house for fear the entire thing will come down. It’s a little freaky to look at the house in this condition.

Once the walls were out, they worked on getting the footings in place and the city came out to do an inspection yesterday. Mike got a call from the contractor asking if we were ever in contact with the engineer or if the engineer worked with the architect. After answering some of the questions Mike asked why they needed to know and it turns out we failed inspection because of the size of rebar used.

If this had happened a few weeks ago, I would have been on the phone tracking everything and everyone down, but I’ve almost become desensitized to “today’s issue” already and finally last night just asked Mike to text the contractor to see if he got it resolved or not. He said they did, but we didn’t even ask what the resolution was exactly. I’ve also started to become desensitized to seeing things I didn’t expect to get ruined to be ruined. There are parts of the fence I didn’t expect to see ripped out and also fence posts the crews have backed into that would have been upsetting at first, but now it’s just adding to the list of things that we’ll just figure out as we go.

We had another inspection scheduled for today at 12:30 and we must have passed because when I got home today we had footings in place.

When I got home there was also an inspector at the from the construction loan company. The way our construction loan works is that there are several loan draws and the inspector comes out at each draw to make sure the work that the contractor says has been done is actually done and acceptable. He seemed very nice and asked me some questions about the temporary power and work being done. I’m anxious to see the details of the first draw because it will be the first time I start seeing how the bid compares to actual amounts spent.

We also started having some power issues this week on the trailer. We noticed that our phones were suddenly losing power when charging at night, like the power is almost cycling high and low. It was noticeable because my phone vibrates each time it gets plugged in and it was vibrating every few seconds. We also noticed that the fans run at high speed then for a second seem to run at a lower speed before picking back up. This has happened a few times that we’ve noticed and then last night the power went completely out for a few seconds. I remember Mike getting up and walking around, but I was so exhausted I remember nothing other than that. It came back on and seemed fine for the rest of the night.

A coworker of mine recommended a mobile RV repair guy when he found out we were embarking on this journey and I called him this morning. The soonest he can come out is next week. I had no idea there were mobile RV repair men until just a few months ago, but I’m thankful for them right now because the thought of having to take the trailer to the “shop” for a few days is daunting. I would have to pack it up so that stuff wasn’t flying everywhere when we moved it and then also get us moved out for a few days- instead, he’ll come to us!

In the middle of all of this, the baby turned 1 yesterday! I am not sure how it’s been a year. She is teething like crazy and super grouchy at night when she is sleeping. As a result, so she often ends up in our little trailer queen size bed with us. I don’t mind the extra snuggles during this period of total chaos. Except when she open hand slaps me in the face to see if I am awake.

Can’t you live in the house during the renovation?

Lots of people have asked me this question and I think this video pretty well sums up why that isn’t possible.

The house, for the most part, is being completely demolished other than one room upstair and downstairs and the garage. This, combined with the fact that our Construction Loan doesn’t allow for it are the main reasons we couldn’t stay in the house and also had to move out all of our stuff. We can’t move back in until the city issues us a certificate of occupancy.

When Inside Becomes Outside

I know you are all losing sleep over this like I am, so here are your updates!

First, the insurance saga continues. I think we are close to figuring out a solution, but it’s a few more hundred dollars out of pocket to make sure we have the appropriate insurance to protect the entire property and our belongings. The long and short of it is that there never should have been a change requested to our policy, but since there was the insurance company rejected the new coverage which resulted in the cancellation of our homeowners insurance.  It’s extra complicated by the fact that we have out buildings (barn and detached garage), not just the property under construction. Lesson for those at home that ever take on a project like this is that you should talk to your insurance provider, figure our if it makes the most sense for you to carry the policy or your contractor, have them document everything, and never close on a loan when your insurance guy is on vacation.

Also, the labeling didn’t really work on everything in the house, I almost cried when I discovered this cabinet had been junked. Not because I was sad about the cabinet, but mainly because Mike was right when he told me the week before that we should just take the time to remove it so nothing happened to it. I kid. We saved all the upstairs cabinets to potentially be reused downstairs if we put in a mother-in-law apartment and this was the last one to the set. Heartbreaking.

Last week they got the east foundation dug out. See the house plans here if you aren’t familiar. It’s a crazy big hole even though the house is only coming out about 5 feet on that side.  The gas company hadn’t come out to move the gas yet, so they couldn’t finish that side out completely.

A few more photos from that stage that I never got around to posting last week are below.

Darwin took one look at the hole and wagged his finger at the excavator and said, “No, no, no.” He told me that the tractor made a huge mess and it was in trouble. He still tells me that the tractors stole the house, but they are going to put a new one in the hole so it’s okay. Poor little guy, it’s a lot to take in!

We have to pay to have all this dirt trucked out of here, so I am working on finding people on Facebook that want it all. Who knew that dirt brokering was such a lucrative business? Tomorrow we hopefully have a couple coming to get it all for their back yard and that will save us some money.

Fast forward to today and now all the sudden inside is outside and outside is inside because windows and walls are coming out!

A lot of demo has been done, but there is still a lot to do. Both the bathrooms still need to come out, the exterior of the entire house is coming off, and there are exterior walls that need to be removed, including large sections of the existing foundation. We are on our second dumpster already and there is so much more that needs to go.

We don’t have internet again. When they took the utility panel off the back of the house, the cable apparently ran through it. Darwin is devastated that Netflix is not working. We do have a port-a-potty though, so that’s a pretty good trade-off, right? I am hoping Darwin never discovers what it actually is or I will be taking 11pm trips to the port-a-potty, I guarantee it!

We met with the contractors and are finishing up most of the color selections and finishes. We have all the flooring, all the tile, the exterior finishes, and the cabinets picked. We just need to finish up by selecting countertops, backsplash tile, and a paint color. It’s a lot of work and it’s hard to visualize it all coming together so it will be exciting when it does. I feel like every time we meet we think of something that we didn’t specifically include in the bid like window well covers, an outside railing around the new basement stairs, egress ladders, etc. I really like our contractors though. They are very on top of things and pretty calm and collected which makes me feel better.

Trailer living is trailer living. I think the only part I really hate is dishes. Our sink is so small and the kitchen really has no space to dry everything. I need bottles for Trixie so it’s a bit of a never-ending process. Showers are similar, the shower has hot water and works just fine, but it’s just so small and I love a good bath so it’s hard to get used to really fast and cramped showers. Laundry is sometimes a problem, but not too bad. Mike had to run to his parents and do an emergency load of kid bedding on Monday for the first time, but at least we have options. We accidentally unplugged the trailer this weekend when we went to the lake house and lost all the food in the trailer fridge- we just weren’t thinking about it and were so used to closing everything up like we did before when we were hooked up to a converter. It’s been hot in Utah this week, a few days in the triple digits, but we’re decently comfortable all things considered. It just takes a while to cool the trailer off when we get home at night. It has pretty good storage everywhere except the kitchen and in our room, but having so much space in the garage and that being so close means thats not too big of an issue.

I’ll try to update again this weekend as I suspect there will be lots of big noticeable changes around here the rest of the week!

 

The Hole

Excavation officially started today! We are having to hide this fact from our toddler because his obsession with tractors will result in so many fights about how often he can go see the tractor and if he can go ride the tractor.

This window is in the basement and will be eventually replaced with a door leading to the new basement storage room. Here’s to hoping that window doesn’t get broken as it’s the window that will go into the front of the house in Trixie’s room. We’ve done a good job of repurposing all the windows in the remodel.

It’s like a very complicated paint by number in the house with everything labeled as to what stays and what goes, including walls.  

They must have also been interested in seeing just how much work it was to take out the exterior walls because one now has the tiniest of holes in it. I can see daylight inside.

Most of the basement flooring is also out now. Walking on broken tile is slippery and dangerous. I took Darwin in the house for the first time yesterday and he kept asking what happened to the house. I told him tractors came and took it. He seemed a little upset so I told him that we were going to build a new house and he said, “that seems fun.”

Late last week we ran into an additional issue with insurance. I am thankful we have a great agent that is a rockstar because it’s so complicated. The construction loan requires certain coverage, but he was out of the office when we closed and it was not properly taken care of so now we are working it out. Even more unplanned money, but it’s only a few hundred dollars at this point and it’s piece of mind to know we are properly insured for the house, trailer, property we have stored in the detached garage, the detached garage, and the barn. We also need renter’s insurance at our own house since we are not living in the insured dwelling- we are renters and tenants at the same time. As mentioned, it’s complicated!

Today Mike got home and the contractor was here on the phone with the gas company. They haven’t capped their line yet and it sounds like a request was missed, but it’s not clear yet how much of an it is and who dropped the ball. This could cause some delay on digging the east side of the house out for the foundation.

The good and bad thing about being here all the time is that we are here all the time. It’s nice to see progress, it’s frustrating to see no progress, and it’s anxiety inducing to hear some of the conversations. It’s good to not be totally in the dark, but a little bit of me understands the benefits of not being around and instead just being completely in the dark.