Building Permits and Site Inspection!

Today, I practically skipped into the city's building department to pay for and pick up our building permits. Afterward, Kevin, the girls and I headed out to the lot to meet with the construction manager Chris to do our final lot inspection before construction begins.  We staked out where the house will sit and realized that the excavator excavated the wrong house plan for us. We were wondering why it was so big! Originally we had decided to go with the two story 2432, then we thought because of our budget we would have to change it to the one story 1952, but in the end went with the 2432. Apparently, both of those plans were given to the excavator by Adair and he didn't do a final check before he started to see which one we had decided to go with. Needless to say our bill from him just for the housepad is now nearly double what he originally quoted us! We are not happy about this. Hopefully, between Adair and the excavator something can be worked out. We are not going to pay thousands more for a mistake that wasn't ours.
According to Chris, he can get his guys out there to pour the foundation in about a week and a half. On a side note we decided to push the house back about 3 feet, because the driveway seemed too short the way it was, and we need an adequate amount of space to be able to have a turnaround.
We are very excited to finally be at this point. Here are a couple pictures I snapped today. One is of the temporary power pole all hooked up and electrified :) and the others are the stakes for the final position of the house and of course the wonderful building permits! The next post will be pics of the foundation, woohoo!!

The building permit!!

The temp power pole all hooked up and ready to go!

The left side of the house stakes. I took these pics with my iphone so I couldn't get it all in with one shot! See how much extra shale was put down on the left?

The right side of the house stakes.

Temporary power pole!

     We called for our second utility locate and they came out and marked where everything was. So, we decided the best spot for the temp power pole was right by the street, since the power company said it couldn't be more than 10 feet from the street.  We have an easement, so the construction crew will have to run extension cords down the driveway to get power from the pole.
     Yesterday we went out to the lot, Kevin and my dad put in the temp power pole. We had to go to Home Depot and buy underground conduit and an 8 ft grounding rod.  It took a couple of hours for them to dig the post hole 24 in deep, set the pole, dig a trench to the electrical box (don't know its proper name) and hammer in the grounding rod all the way.  It also looked like the excavator Frank was done with the house pad. It's bigger than the actual footprint of the house, so I am assuming that is for extra ground support? I will be calling the City today and leaving a message for them to come and inspect the pole, once they approve it, I will get the power company back out there to hook it up. Then we can meet with Adair to get everything inspected and get the construction ready to go!
Here's a few pics!

     Here's Kevin and our eldest daughter working on digging the hole for the temp power pole. You can see the copper grounding rod before it was hammered into the ground.

Kevin digging a trench to the power box for the underground conduit.

Kevin hammering in the 8 ft grounding rod.

 

Now a few more shots of the house pad. :)

All leveled out.

 

Facing the driveway.

We saw about 30 wild turkey up on the hillside!

Excavation part 2

We went out to the lot today and met with the power company to try to find a good spot for the temp power pole. Of course they didn't know where to put it. Hopefully, we will have this figured out and the temp pole will be in by the end of the week or this weekend.
The excavator has not finished with the lot yet, it looked like he had taken the day off, all of the equipment was there but no workers. There were piles of shale still needed to be spread out on the pad.
It was exciting to see the size of the house in person. My daughter and I had a fun time running around the pad while Kevin dealt with the power company.

This pic is with my back to the driveway and street.

This one is showing the end of the driveway, that leads to the street. They cut a little extra on the side for a parking area. Which was a nice surprise since we didn't ask them to.

Across the front of the lot.

The whole pad, and an awesome boulder that they unearthed. We may use that for landscaping later on. :)

Excavation!

     Our loan funded, so I raced down to the Adair office, picked up the plans and took them to the city.  I thought we would have to pay something up front, but apparently you pay after they are done going over them. They said it would be two weeks until our building permits are ready, and that was on October 3.
     In the meantime, we scheduled our excavation guy Frank to come and cut the pad for the house.  He started it today and when we dropped by there was a truck driving away from our lot filled with dirt. Which got us excited. As we approached closer we saw another truck parked on the side of the street waiting to be filled. Then as we came down our driveway we saw yet another truck currently being filled by a backhoe. He was making good time, and obviously had a lot of experience with the equipment. He had started with where the driveway will be and then started working on the actual pad where the house will sit. I doubt he was able to finish today since he needs to add two feet of Shale rock and compact it on the pad, due to our clay type soil. We only stayed for a couple of minutes, because we didn't want to interrupt the work, but I was able to snap a pic.
    

This is taken with our backs to the street, looking straight at the property. The backhoe is hiding behind the big truck.

     On Tuesday we are meeting with the electric company so they can mark where they want the temp power pole. We were able to borrow one for free from a local electrician that my dad, who is also an electrician knows. So we are going to go pick up the pole on Monday. Hopefully, it will be installed sometime next week.  At that point we have to call the city to have it inspected, once they put their magic green sticker on it, the electric company can hook it up.  After the pad and the temp electric are in place, I will be scheduling a site visit with Chris the construction manager at Adair. If everything looks good to him, he will get us on the construction schedule right away!
     I can't tell you how exciting it was to see actual movement on the lot today.  Our dreams of building our home are actually becoming real now!
     When we meet with the electric company next week I will take better pictures of the completed ( I hope) pad.

Finally!

We finally signed the loan papers this afternoon!! So, our loan should fund the beginning of next week. Then we can take our first draw and the building permits can be submitted to the city. The last time I talked to the building dept at the city, they said turn around time for permits was two weeks. We are eager to break ground and get things going before the rainy fall weather hits.

Hopefully, my next post will include some excavation pics! :)

The waiting game...

Our appraisal finally came back, and to our surprise our house appraised for $90,000 more than what we are going to be paying for it! It's so nice to be going into homeownership with that much equity in our home!
As far as the paperwork and progress on the lot, we are still waiting for the loan paperwork to be finalized. I had no idea starting out how long this process takes, it's ridiculous. Our patience is put to the test as we wait for the news that we can sign. Last I checked they said it will be another 8 business days before we can sign on the loan. Then the Medford Adair office will be submitting our building permit application to the city.....who knows how long that will take to get.

So right now, we are coordinating the utility trenching with the water, electric, cable and phone. It is complicated but, we are hoping everything will run smoothly when we are ready to go.

I'll update as soon as something happens! :)

Update!

I have been waiting for my appraisal to come back before I updated, but it is taking a long time. So, as of now everything is in limbo until it comes back, so all the loan paperwork can be finalized.  We're hoping it hurries up, fall is creeping closer and closer, bringing with it the inevitable rain!

We did change a few things. The first is we decided to upgrade from the round doorknobs to the lever type, which cost us $100, good deal I think! Next is we changed the vinyl flooring that will be in the bathrooms and laundry room, picture will follow. Lastly, we changed the laminate counter tops to a new black kind they just got in, unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of it.

The wood flooring we choose for all of downstairs minus the living room. The one with the pink sticker.