Updated schedule

We're only a month in and already these schedule postings are funny. I look back to estimated schedules only three weeks old and they're nowhere close. Supposedly it gets warmer later in the year, so we'll see if that lets things move along faster.

The tentative schedule is:

Jan 28: Strip forms and waterproof
Jan 31: Backfill
Early Feb: Begin framing / deck
Mid Feb: pour foundation floor

Walls Poured

Today the second phase of the walls was poured. The pictures below show the walls after they pulled the forms on the first phase of the pour (the basement portion). The 2nd phase - the first floor walls in the bball court - are formed and ready for the pour.

Urgency

As you can see from the picture below, we have to finish the house soon because we have so many children that they have to sleep on steps.

More Delays

Here's a handy tip - try not to schedule your foundation work in the crappiest time of the year for weather. We've lost most of another week due to rain and now it's starting to freeze again. Looks like we'll try to pour walls on Monday.

Footers poured

Late this evening we finally had the footers poured. Here are some pics of the site as the concrete pump truck is working. The pump truck was an unexpected expense that we had to use because the ground was so soft. The regular concrete truck would have sunk into the mud. J&L thinks they'll be able to get the walls poured by the end of the week.

Schedule changes

The snow from the last two days has delayed things. We're hoping the foundation sub can get started on forming tomorrow when it starts to warm up.

In the meantime, we're getting revised bids on the framing and the plumbing. The changes to the upstairs mean we'll need to get revised bids for most the subs.

The tentative schedule is:

Jan 7-11: Pour footers and walls
Jan 14-18: Finish pour walls and waterproof
Jan 21-25: Rough plumbing and remove forms, backfill
Jan 28-31: Slab work and begin framing / deck

Revised upstairs design

We've modified the upstairs plans more than any of other part of the house. Danielle believes we've finally got a design everyone can live with. We've decided to finish the portion above the garage. This new are will be bedrooms for two of the kids. In the new design we'll have space for a small library / study area and a spare bedroom for guests.

Foundation options

We got the steel quote back for the reinforcing portions of the bball court wall. The steel alone was going to be $8,000-$11,000. As a result, we've decided to go with the poured wall option. J&L will be handling pouring the 20' tall wall on the eastern edge of the house.

The engineer had given us three options for how to handle that wall. The diagrams are listed below:

Excavation Day 2

Major progress made on the excavation today. The hole is the correct depth across one entire side. The boys pulled a lot of material out and things are proceeding well. The stone turned out to be a non issue - once they got it broken up, the excavator could pull it right out.

We're stopping work for the Christmas holidays and will be back at it on the 26th.

Excavation Day 1

The equipment was delivered and the boys (Kenley, Kody, Kory and Darren) started work. The stone wasn't the problem we thought it was going to be - the hammer broke it into pieces quickly and the excavator took it from there. We'll be working more on it tomorrow - probably can't finish on Saturday, so we'll pick things back up next week.

Temporary Drive Installed

J&L Poured Walls installed the temporary drive today. It looks pretty good. We'll have to put in some additional rock as what's in place gets driven into the ground. They had to work around a cable utility box out near the entrance, but I don't mind the curved look at the edge - we might just leave it that way.

Hopefully we can start excavating by the 20th.

Permits (Finally!)

Well, it only took about 4.5 months, but we finally have permits for zoning and construction. We're hoping to get started in the next couple days by installing the temporary drive.

Latest plans

We're still working to get things fixed up to meet New Albany's latest requirements, but here are the latest plans and site plan.

2nd Floor

First Floor

Basement

Exterior

Site Plan

Tree clearing

Next step is to get rid of some pine trees at the back of the lot that we decided not to keep.



Kory will be cutting these up and chipping what he can into mulch over the next 2-3 days.

House Demolished

Kenley came into town and finished demolishing /clearing the house. He brought up a Bobcat configured as a skid-loader and one of his dump trucks. We rented an excavator from a local company. Some of the debris was hauled away, some was buried on site.


Here is the picture of the house when the FD finished.



Here is the picture taken Saturday, with the house demolished. This is from the road.


This is from the back of the lot. (The standing water is where we've relocated some trees temporarily)

House Burn

The burn is complete. It was an exciting couple of days with lots of activity. Below is a series of pictures that show the house from prep, to practice burn to raging inferno to a pile of ashes.


The fire dept setup a series of "fire boxes" made of pallets



And straw.


They patched all of the holes in the drywall and reinforced the drywall behind each of the fire boxes.


After day 1, there wasn't a lot of external damage. They mainly trained in the upstairs area.



After day two, the house was looking pretty ragged. They'd finished their training.




They set the final fire right at 10am on Wednesday morning.


Within minutes the entire house was engulfed.


There were a total of 29 cadets that trained on the house. They graduate from fire academy in a couple more weeks.








The proud owner (and his minion)





The garage had quite a bit of trash, scrap lumber, etc in it.


This was about 30-35 minutes into the burn.








This was about an hour into it.


The FD let it smolder and burn down as much as possible.


Then they hosed it down.





And here is all that's left.

This weekend, we get to clear the pile of rubble. Kenley is coming to town and we're renting a large excavator. We're planning to sell the scrap metal (I beams, wiring, etc), haul the misc debris to the dump and bury the concrete / brick on site.

Ready for the burn

We've finished prepping the lot. The power is disconnected, the trees we wanted to save are relocated, everything of value is out of the house and the FD is ready to arrive in the morning.

The FD doesn't notify the neighbors, so we've decided to print out a flyer and drop it off at the 100 or so houses most likely to be affected. Basically we'll warn them to close their windows, etc. We've offered to power wash the houses of the two families right next to us. Hopefully the smoke and soot won't make things too nasty for them.

Building Permit Attempt #1

We'd been told that New Albany would accept the permit application in two pieces. The site plan and exterior details as one phase, then the detailed internal plans as another phase. When Danielle went to submit the first phase today she was told that they no longer accept things that way. They want the application to be complete.

This is a bit annoying because we need detailed electrical and plumbing plans to submit the full packet. We're still collecting bids for those phases and probably won't have awarded till late next week.

Since the electrical and plumbing subs do those diagrams, that means we're probably two weeks away from being able to submit for the permit.

Closed on the loan

We closed on the construction loan today. The loan is through Emerald Bank, a small bank in Dublin, OH that tends to specialize in construction loans. The closing felt much different than the last two times we bought houses - there wasn't another set of people we were buying the house from in the room. Just our lender, the title agent and the two of us.

The closing was fairly uneventful. The only part we didn't appreciate was the way the title agency split up the title insurance. In the last two closes the lenders and the owners policies were bundled into one. In this closing, our estimate only had the lender's policy in it, then the title agent did the whole "used car salesman" bit as he explained why we needed to buy the owners policy also.

After doing some research, we believe it should have all been put into the first estimate like our last two closings. That way it was just a closing and didn't have to include a sales pitch.

Revisions to plans

We had the architects make a series of changes to the plans. These were primarily little tweaks like:

• Added 2nd window from the great room to the bball court
• Moved the kitchen wall over 1'
• Updated the upstairs bathroom layout
• Lowered the brick 'skirt' around the house a couple of courses and made the skirt go all around the house
• Added a window in the laundry room

We also had them make the basement 10' deep rather than 9' deep. After visiting the parade of homes, we saw a lot things we'd like to do that needed a deeper basement. Coffering the ceilings, putting the third riser in the home theater, etc become easier with that extra height.

Heating / cooling the court

I had about a half hour conversation with a guy from Buckeye Geothermal. He was going over all the various options for how to heat and cool the court. There isn't a perfect option for the room considering the floor is on a slab and three of the four sides are the foundation of the house.

What we're leaning towards is forced air cooling and radiant floor heating. The thermal profile of the room is the big unknown. It's going to be 9' underground, so that will help it stay a constant temperature. However, the windows and other space above ground will allow it to heat up and cool down.

The plan this guy put together would allow us to try some things and if we found we needed more heating or cooling, we'd be able to adjust.

All of the HVAC contractors have recommended a single unit just for the court and then 1-2 units for the rest of the house. This guy thought he could do the rest of the house with one large geothermal unit.

Date to be out of house

We've confirmed the July 6th burn date with the Columbus FD. I agreed we would be out of the house by June 10th. That will give them almost a month to prep things.

Pickett Place

The subdivision to the east of our lot is called Pickett Place. It's a collection of about 30-40 houses along the edge of E. Dublin Granville Rd.



http://www.stonehenge-company.com/

The VP of operations for the development company lives in the house directly to our east in an area adjacent to the subdivision. Kory talked with him yesterday and passed along my contact info.

This morning, he sent over this site plan which shows the remaining two lots they have for sale. Both of these are adjacent to my property.

Site Plan

I'm going to sit down with him something in the next few weeks and discuss landscaping, etc.

Laundry Room Layout

Danielle has wanted a large, dedicated laundry room since she laid eyes on my mother's similar arrangement. The pictures are from the cabinet design company. This layout is pretty close to finalized.