Floors are poured, and no more mosquito breeding pond!

The whole family drove out yesterday to see the progress.  Chris and crew had already done the driveway shoring up.  This included filling and grading appropriately the area by the big spruce that was holding water, moving a culvert, adding a ditch to the north side of the driveway, and topping it all with class 5 gravel.  It looks really great, drainage is MUCH better, and was well worth the money.  Minnesota Power had also been there during the week, and the electric cable has been trenched in.  Both the garage and the basement floors haven been poured.  We are getting very close to the start of framing!

One thing I forgot to mention in the last blog entry among our list of exterior choices was the shakes that will go in most of the peaks.  It's Cedar Impressions staggered rough split shakes in their "cedar blend" color.  Unfortunately I just figured out about 30 seconds ago that you cannot get that color in their "staggered" look that we wanted.  Only in the "straight" look.  Seems like we have more shopping to do.  Regardless, here's a picture of the color we are after:  Shakes

Here are a bunch of pictures from yesterday:

Garage floor poured:

Basement poured:

Area around big tree after driveway was shored up, drainage improved, and mosquito farm was filled and graded:

Electric trenched in:

Tommy, as usual, off on his own independent adventure:

And a couple other random shots...first a view of the existing trail off of the backyard.  Prior owners used it for a 4-wheeler trail and probably access to their hunting stand:

Here is a view, standing on the easement section of the driveway, looking south toward where the driveway turns onto our property:

Sick (twice!), in-floor heat, and excavation negotiations...

As usual, its been way too long since I updated this. Well, my excuse is that I've been sick AGAIN. I don't think I mentioned it in past entries, but about a month go I battled strep (complete with 103 fever) for about 10 days. Then on the back side of that I managed to pick up some sort of sinus infection/severe sore throat/congestion/crud/etc/etc which I have finally fought off. Now that I feel a little back to normal, I need to update our story.

So, first off, what has been done with the house? Well, all the in-floor heat plumbing has been put in for the garage and the lower floor. The sauna tubes have been placed for the deck supports. Grading around the house has been complete (the excavator will come back in the fall for a final grade after all the other building has been done). The geothermal field in the side yard was dug, installed, graded.  About 2/3 of the driveway after the turn from the easement has received a layer of class 5 gravel. The first step of the electrical has been done and there is a meter installed at the site.  Additionally, the last time I was at the site the garage floor had been poured, but I don't have any pictures of that.

The grading really turned out nice.  It's almost like the house is sitting on a little hill, with both the front yard and back yard relatively flat.  The large side yard is gently sloped.  The excavator really did a nice job!

So, here is a bunch of pictures that I DO have:

Garage with in-floor heat:

House with in-floor heat:

Looking down from front porch:

View from rear of garage:

Grading of front yard:

Grading of side yard (geothermal field is located here):

Backyard grading, and sauna tubes:

View from SE corner of backyard, side yard, and deck footings:

View of driveway looking toward site:

View of driveway standing in front of garage:

Electric meter installed!

I met the excavator (Chris) at the land the other day to talk about a few things.  First of all, he was concerned about the turn from the easement into the driveway on our property.  He didn't think the long truss trucks would be able to make that turn.  Additionally, we had concerns about the driveway adjacent to the turn.  There was a lot of water gathering in that area near the big spruce tree.  When we asked him about that, Chris said that he didn't like how that portion of the driveway was shaping up (he didn't do that work initially).   He suggested to solve the problem we should move a culvert, shift the driveway, ditch the north side of the driveway, and grade the area around the large spruce that was gathering water.  It wasn't a no-brainer since it would cost more money to do.   But it was something that would need to be done as that area of the driveway would be taking on a lot of water, especially in the springtime.  So at this point I think that work has been done, but I haven't seen it yet (hopefully tomorrow morning).

One other thing we talked about was extending the backyard.  What I think will happen is that we will cut some trees ourselves to save some money.  Then, when he comes back for the final grade, we will pay him to stump and grade the area that we have cleared.  We really want to end up with a large backyard for the kids to play in...and we will be able to watch them from the deck, screen porch, or even from the great room.  The chainsaw my father-in-law will be handing down to me shortly will come in very handy!!!

We managed to pick out the stone for the exterior accents.  It will be a combination of St. Croix Stone Hackett and Ledgestone -- both "Bucks County."  Here's a link:
St. Criox Stone website

Along with this decision, we landed on a shingle choice:  Timberline Weathered Wood.  Below is a link, but there's more blue and light brown accents in person than this picture shows:
Timberline website

And for completeness, I don't think I ever linked our choices for siding and windows.  We choose Marvin Integrity windows in cashmere exterior.  For the most part they will be double hung, but several windows will be casement where it makes sense (above sinks for the most part).
Marvin Integrity site

The siding we are going with is steel siding by Emco.  The primary color will be sage.  The secondary color
(window wraps, soffits, fascia, gutter) will be sandstone.  Below is a link, but the colors really are not very representative.  The Sandstone color on the site looks gray, but its really a lot closer to the light brown  "cashmere" color of the Marvin windows (which is why we went with it). 
 Ecmo steel siding website

Ok that is way to much typing for one night.  We will be going out to the land tomorrow to see the progress so expect some updated pictures soon!

Back Filling Underway

Went and took a peek at the site last night. Excavators have been there back filling both inside and outside the walls...mostly around the garage so far.

I did notice that I think the foundation for the workshop (the last garage stall) was poured as if it was a 9' wide garage door. It should be 10' wide. So that's going to have to be fixed.

View from side yard:

Garage pretty much back filled and leveled out:

And, as usual, dirt = fun:

Foundation walls poured and well drilled

On Friday we got final word on the well. 225 feet deep, with about 6-7 gallons per minute recovery rate. The 225 feet is probably about average for the area, and right about at our budget number for the well cost. I was happy with the depth. Our builders say 6-7 gallons per minute is "pretty good" so that sounded great to me too.

Backyard well location relative to SE corner of the house:

Also on Friday the foundation walls were poured.  Here's some new pictures but they aren't too exciting compared to the prior pictures showing the unpoured foundation forms:

View from SE corner:

Garage view:

And of course every visit involves our little explorers climbing dirt hills:

Next up is the excavator coming back in Tuesday and back filling the house, and hopefully clearing more backyard for us as we requested.

Foundation forms in

I'm a couple days behind on updates and news, but for now I'll just share pictures from 2 days ago (Thursday). I went to check out the progress and most of the forms were up. Nearly time to pour the foundation walls...

Looking toward the east side of the house:

View from SW corner:

West end of garage, with main house on right:

West side of house, with garage on left:

Tomorrow I plan on going out to the site again, so should have updated pictures with foundation poured, plus some info on the well. 

Footings, and more easement drama

The major excitement this week causing gray hairs was finding out that the electric could not be run in given the current easement language (why this wasn't an issue last year when we were less than 24 hours away from doing the same thing is a mystery).  After several calls and a meeting at the St. Louis County Land department, I was armed with a letter stating that utilities could be run.  The county didn't really have an issue with it, but wanted to get it in writing (something we all can agree with!)

Besides the easement drama, footings were poured this week, and Minnesota Power did end up coming in on Thursday, staking out where they will trench the line and verifying with us where put the transformer.  We went back out there on Friday with the kids and of course they spent the time playing with sticks and climbing dirt hills.

Here's a sampling of pictures from this week:

Garage on right, house on left:

Looking toward front of house from southwest corner:

Looking across house from northeast corner:

Exploring by southwest corner of house:

I think we should put the well right here, Dad:

I wonder when Mom will make us get down?

Foundation work fully underway

It's been a long extended weekend since I last made an entry.  I suddenly exploded in case of strep infection during the night Friday night, complete with 103 temps and alternating periods of shivering cold and dripping in sweat. As an added bonus, this was Christina's weekend to cover at the hospital so she was gone 7:30 am to 9:00 pm both Saturday and Sunday.  I was beat to say the least!  Seth was my hero though because he watched the kids Sunday afternoon so I could go to urgent care, and got them McDonald's for dinner!  Still was miserable all day Monday, but now on Tuesday I'm starting to get back to normal...just in time to drive out to the site this morning to pick a spot for the well.

As I was typing up the most recent entry last Friday, the excavator was already out at the site digging out the garage.  He was back on Monday and finished digging out the foundation completely.  I drove out there this morning to meet the well driller and Jamie but the first people to show up were the foundation guys who were there to start setting up stuff in preparation for pouring the footings later this week.

Jamie, Dan (well dude) and I checked out the location suggested by Mark for the well.  It's in the corner of the backyard.  But there are still some more trees that I want cleared, so it's not really in what will be the final backyard corner.  Jamie still needs to talk to Chris (excavator) about the additional trees I want cut, then we should be able to shove the well more to what ultimately will be the edge of the yard.  Dan says that well depths are all over the board in this area...some really shallow, and some really deep.  Let's just keep hoping for shallow!

This morning I took some new pictures with the foundation dug and the entire land/slope reshaped:

Looking south toward the front of the house.  Front of garage is on right side of picture, front porch is on left side of picture further back:

Still looking south, just up closer to the hole:

Standing at NE corner of the house, right outside the master bath:

and still standing at NE corner, but looking west toward garage:

View from SE corner, approximate location of well.  This is the master bedroom corner:

And a view from the side yard, looking west toward the house, as my assistant tries to keep up with me: