I can't believe how quickly they can work--they put the forms up and poured the foundation in one day (Wednesday). This is significant progress any way you look at it.
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We now have a bunch of gravel in the basement. Plus the county seeded the shoulder along where they graded the road.
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When we went out last night, the footings were poured. Things are moving along pretty quick now.
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How much dirt is in a hole that measures 61 feet long by 35 feet wide by 10 feet deep?
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I just added /casa to the GeoURL database, as much for the amusement factor as anything else.
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Today's the day Excavator Mike got busy. There was a lot of action on the site today as Excavator Mike started in digging for the foundation, plus the county road crews dumped a couple truck loads of gravel at the end of my drive and packed it and graded my entrance quite nicely for me. I'm not sure they had to do that, I think my wife may have sweet talked them into it.
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I followed the example of my friend Stan and went the "Classic" tractor route. I bought a 1952 Ford Model 8N yesterday from this guy named Homer who lives out in Holden (that's way out in the country--an hour and a half drive from us). So now I'm a member of the tractor owners club.
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What a hassle--we thought we'd get to dig this week, but the bureaucracy has thwarted our plans. Since the kids get such a big kick out of coming out to the place, they were as impatient as we are. So, we figured, why not let them get a head start on the digging?
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This weekend our excavator graded our driveway and laid down gravel. Since our building permit hasn't been issued yet, that's about all that we can do. It's a small amount of progress, but it's significant. It's starting to feel like we're building a house. It definitely looks like we're building a house now.
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Okay, so I'm interested in (among other things) energy efficiency. And of course, that's a no-brainer, because you save money. To quote the Jerky Boys: "I need dough like anyone."
So I have been looking at appliances, and it came to my attention that the washer and dryer are significant energy consumers in a typical house. And of course, focusing on the biggest energy consumers will have the most noticeable overall impact on your bills (hey, efficient nightlights are great, but the big stuff is where the money is). And I came across this remarkable washing machine. Revolutionary in most every way. And I'm likely to get myself one.
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We met our builder and his excavator today at lunch to place the driveway exactly. In the process, we discussed a few other little details that more or less amount to catching our builder up to some of the thinking behind some of the lot layout decisions we made with our architect.
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This is not the usual rant you get when I start in talking about windows, we're talking fenestration now.
I just got a call, our builder wants to order the windows for our house. He wanted to know if we wanted to upgrade to low-e (low-emissivity) glazing on any or all the windows in the plan. The kicker being that upgrading all the windows to low-e would cost $750-$800. That seemed like a pretty good deal to me, so I said go for it, low-e all around.
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We got our water meter installed a couple weeks back. I didn't document the occasion at the time, so here's a nice photo to commemorate the installation.
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A couple houses in our subdivision are complete, or very close. One other lot has a foundation on it. So we'll likely be the fourth house finished in the subdivision.
Our lots are numbered, with our property being lot 11. The finished houses are on lot 15, in the northeast corner, and lot 8, in the southwest. And lot 6 directly south of us is the one with a foundation. And the folks from 15 built a nice big barn, looks to be maybe 30x50 feet with an eight foot overhang.
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