Sagebrush & Solar

It felt like we were in a bit of a holding pattern, but then we got a ton of stuff done this week…and then hit the brakes again. There is a lot of “hurry up and wait” in a homebuild, we’re finding.

On Monday, the concrete truck came out and poured our stem walls. This means our foundation is done and we (by we, I mean our subcontractor) can start assembling our main exterior walls. The footings and stem forms went up pretty quick, but these forms will go up a little slower due to measuring and cutting out spaces for windows and doors.

We were also able to move our massive dog house into their enclosure, which our Lab/Pit mix will appreciate because it’s about to get reeeal cold. More on the dogs in a future blog post.

On Tuesday, Keith had a million little odd jobs to do — clean up his construction area post-dog house, rake and remove large rocks from the crawlspace, request a window quote, place an order for an extra set of large printed plans, go to the gravel pit to check out pit run and schedule a truck, buy some pipe…it’s easy to list out our big tasks, but there are so many little things that go on behind the scenes. My contribution is to wrangle our toddler, who doesn’t seem to have an off or relax button.

Our flooring package was delivered on Tuesday. When I imagined spending big money on flooring, I pictured pretty wood colors and carpet, not dropping a small fortune on some lumber and OSB. I’m learning that the bones of the house – which is important to build strong from the get go – is way more expensive than HGTV lets on.

The flooring subcontractor and crew were scheduled to come out on Wednesday to place floor joists and subflooring. He let us know that he had some issues come up with a job that he needed to finish, so it’s been pushed to Monday. We’re a little concerned because it’s supposed to dump rain over the weekend; we won’t be surprised if it needs to be pushed a little more due to rain and/or standing water issues. It’s all out of our control, so there really is no sense in stressing — we’re going to set up tarps to protect the wood (joists, subfloor) that’s outside and hope for the best.

We also scheduled pit run to be delivered next week to finish up our driveway. The “moon dust” on the driveway turns into straight sludge mud when wet, so hopefully the dump truck can make it out on Tuesday if it hasn’t dried out.