We Have Cement

The cement was poured this afternoon. It's so exciting to see progress 2 days in a row! Tomorrow all the block will be delivered, but they won't start laying it until Thursday in order to give the cement time to cure.

Progress at Last!

The rain has left us, and it isn't supposed to return for a while! The weekend was beautiful, which gave the ground a chance to dry. Today they dug the footings and set the rebar in place. The inspector is scheduled to check it out tomorrow morning, and then the cement will be poured. Here are a few pictures of the work done today.

Why buy a skill saw or a table saw when you can use a chain saw for everything? Small, powerful, and portable. I'm trying to convince Steven to get rid of his saws and be like the locals...of course, to no avail! Seriously, they actually measure for accurate cuts when using the chain saw!

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

It's raining, it's pouring, our progress is not soaring! The footings could not get started today because it's been raining since yesterday morning. And, it isn't supposed to stop until Friday. Hopefully we'll get started next week since the weekend should give the dirt time to dry out.
I have to admit, we do need the rain. We've been in such a drought this summer. We were 15 inches below normal rainfall before yesterday. I just wish we would've gotten this rain any time before now! An interesting fact: October is typically the dryest month of the year here!

Birthday Girl

Happy birthday to Sadie! She is 10 years old on Monday, Oct. 22. For her birthday, we're going to take her to McDonald's for a vanilla ice cream cone. That should be about 3 seconds of pure heaven for her!

Most days she doesn't show her age, but as I'm typing this entry she is on her bed next to me snoring!!!

Ready to go...for real!

Yeah!!! We finally got our building permit on Wednesday, Oct. 10, and the pad was scraped on Friday, Oct. 12. We thought we were all ready to go for the footings to be dug and poured on Tuesday, Oct. 16, but the county had another idea. The surveyors came out to the property, yes after the building permit was already issued, and decided that they wanted Lee to provide them with the plot map before the footings could be dug. And, so in turn, the footings guy had to be cancelled and rescheduled. Lee said the only thing the state and county could ask him to do now was build our house standing on his head! So, our footings will now be dug and poured this Tuesday (Oct. 23) at 6:15 am...stay tuned.

Our good friend, Jerik, is the one who drew up our house plans. He and his wife, Susan, came down for the weekend to visit us, which was great! It was another beautiful Nashville weekend. We met Lee out at the property to go over some things, and took a picture of Jerik and Lee with us.

More to come this week...

Still Waiting...

Well, it has been quite a while since we posted on our blog, but for a reason...NOTHING has changed!!! Well, at least nothing on our property. We did get the land conservation/preservation permit, but not the building permit. We've been waiting to post on the blog thinking that surely it would be just one more day and then we could report that we got our building permit. No such luck. We had a meeting with Lee last Thursday (Oct. 4) and he said he that he would have the permit by Friday, or Monday (today) at the very latest. Maybe tomorrow? So, we try our best to remain patient. And by we, I mean me. Steven has been much better about it than me!
When we met with Lee, Steven confirmed that he only has 6 months, according to our contract, to get our house built from the time we closed on our construction loan. Lee's response: "yes, that means the clock is ticking for me". Hey, at least he knows it! We've been on top of things at least by picking out our brick and shingle colors. We assured him that we won't be the ones slowing him down!
Hopefully we'll have some good news soon and some new pictures to show!