So a whole month has went by without any progress unfortunately. Soon after my last post within the next day or so, the graders excavated out the basement, and we had the surveyors come out and stake the house for the foundation. And then the stakes have just been sitting there for about 4 weeks. Unfortunately even though I gave them 2 weeks notice like they told me they needed we have now been waiting for a month and still have no idea when they are going to get out there. I am beyond frustrated. We also found out in the mean time that our soil on the back 1/3 portion of our house will be sitting on poor soil and we will need a caisson foundation system back there which adds another $4k or so to our already out of control budget and we haven't even started the house yet :( Our graders whom I love and they have been the absolute best people to work with told us that if this was their house they would not put footers on that soil back there. But they were no expert and to have someone check it out. We had to hire a soil engineer to come out and test the soil and mark up what he recommended that we do and then give McGee Brothers all of his information for them to coordinate since he will need to be present for the foundation work now.
Last week over the fourth of July we went up to Justin's parents' mountain house for the annual cousin camp. The kids had a ton of fun and still haven't recovered from staying up late every night. We did a lot of fun things. Visited a lot of nearby parks, went on a hike and saw wild horses and ate a lot of food! It was a good distraction from the house. I was hoping to have foundation in before we even went but that definitely did not happen.
At this point I am pretty depressed. I have no idea how to rush them along without bothering them too much and making them mad. I contact them about 1-2x a week with some reason to find out what is going on. Ask about when they will make it out to us and then get no firm date and maybe next week. This has been going on 4 weeks now. I know the weather has not been cooperative, but I feel they should have finished ours by now.
Our only progress in 1 month has been to have a porta potty delivered (that noone is using so that was a waste of money) and our electrician installed our temporary power pole. However Duke has not gotten around to hooking it up and who knows when that will be.
I know this is a very depressing post but that is pretty much my current mood. Our loan is only a 9 month construction loan and we are now already over a month into it and haven't even started building the house! I just hope things will pick up from here once the foundation goes in. And hopefully no more major problems. Getting the lot prepared and foundation adjusted to handle our lot has already added on about 30k extra than what we were originally expecting from being told from previous contractors etc. But of course no one can really know until you get in there. One blessing has been everything working out the way that it has that we ended up not using a contractor. Even though it has and will be extremely stressful, If we still had a contractor we were having to pay at this point we would just have to walk away b/c this house would have just been too much. And then I'd really be depressed! lol. We've tried to go through the budget line by line cutting out whatever we can and downgrading the interior to make up for some of the cost. So hopefully the major issues will be behind us once we get the foundation settled and start the framing which is where I can see any other major issues arising. I'm just hoping to get through both of those. Once they are both finished I feel like my problems will not be quote as major! Knock on wood...
So with that we're just existing. I feel like my life is in limbo. Justin and I are currently living in the garage at my mom's house, while the kids took the two spare bedrooms. So far it hasn't been too bad, but it is starting to get a bit hot at night. We have two large fans that blow on us but luckily last night was the first night that it has been too bad. Hopefully we just have to survive another month or 2 and then it will start cooling down again. I'm very grateful to my mom for allowing us to stay with her, especially since at this point there is no way we could afford a rental with all the extra costs that have arose with our house. But it is still so hard to not have my own space or any of my stuff. We basically packed up most everything except our clothes into a storage unit. We just keep telling ourselves that this one horrible year of our lives will all hopefully be worth it in the long run. We just need to maintain our sanity while we do it! lol.
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