Dang Girl, That's One Firm Foundation You Have...

It has been a LONG couple of weeks. We are finally on the finishing end of foundation/excavation and let me tell you, it's been quite a process! I never knew how much had to go into this part of building. I was expecting a few bumps and surprises, and we definitely got them, but we are SO glad this part is almost over and we can start framing soon.

One thing we hadn't planned for were steel beams in the house. We had NO idea there were steel beams so we didn't have that worked into our budget. So theres a good $6,000 to add to the budget. We are very grateful for friends who have helped teach us about this process and catch the things we've missed. It would have been a pretty big delay had we not caught this until we were framing.

We also didn't realize how much fill dirt needed to be brought in to fill in the lot. We knew it would be a lot, but when we heard it cost $4,000 in ONE day to have 4 dump trucks continually bringing in dirt, we had a slight (ok, major) panic attack! We quickly had the excavator stop and decided we will finish it on our own. Luckily, they got enough done that we can walk up to the foundation and everything is accessible, so we wont need to finish it for a few months.

The foundation and footings were poured without any issues and it's been fun to see the basement starting to take shape. We also had the plumbing stubbed in so we're ready to pour the basement and garage floors next week. That is a huge step to check off. We are almost to the end of this first process of building which is usually the hardest/most expensive. A few more weeks and we'll be able to let out a huge sigh of relief and hopefully not run into anymore major hidden costs.

For now, we are grateful that the foundation is in and everything has passed inspection.

The wise man always built his house upon the rock, and our rock is looking pretty dang good right now. :)

Foundation forms

Finished foundation + damp proofing (side)

Finished foundation (front)

Finished foundation (walkout basement)

Basement (utility area)

Basement (main living area)

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The Land

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Today we got our excavation hole dug. Not gonna lie, I've been a nervous wreck, but there's no turning back now! We had to make a few last-minute changes, one of which was changing the basement walls to be 9 feet instead of 8. Our lot is so low that they needed to be able to dig down more rather than bring in a ton of extra dirt/rock. We will still have to bring in a lot of fill dirt to build up the land but thats a lot easier than trying to bring in seismic rock to build up the foundation. We're also hoping to change the way the walkout basement works since it most likely wont need as many steps as the original plan called for. We learned a few more things this week that we had no clue about (ummm...damp-proofing?!) Footings are planned for late next week and the foundation the week after that. Once those two things are done we'll be able to let out a huge sigh of relief. These two big steps had a lot of unknowns for us and were a little out of our realm. Luckily,

House of Hooley

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