Tate Of The Union: Construction Update

Sorry babe...it's my turn to write a little something! Unfortunately, for most of you my posts will not be has "fun" as my wife's. As per her opinion, no one wants to read a construction blog. Well, I beg to differ, I do.

Any who...it's been a long road to get us where we are today (actually on Thursday), breaking ground on this our first custom built home. I won't waste your time retelling you the story of our journey that Jennifer has so eloquently detailed in her previously posts, but I will say that we would not be here today if it's wasn't for our wonderful family and friends that have supported every step of the way and helped guide us through some of the biggest life changing decisions that a couple can ever possibly imagine having to make (i.e. moving across the country, leaving family, friends, church, job, selling a house, house hunting, starting a new job, being laid off (Jen), job searching, interviewing, starting a new job, searching for land, buying land, leaving another job and starting another new job (Andy), developing plans, and now building a house) all in one year! Sorry if that was long winded but it's a true story.

As Jennifer mentioned before we have been extremely blessed to have been able to develop a project team of very talented people. For starters, Corbett Hall of CD Hall Builders is a rockstar. He is an experienced Mainline custom home builder with an eye for detail (similar to mine if I might add) with a 20 plus year track record of building quality homes and satisfied clients. He's used to building million plus custom homes so ours is a piece of cake. To think our relationship started with just a google search "residential builders mainline pa". Definitely a God thing. Corbett will be providing site supervision services for a fee while I am actually the General Contractor. Corbett gave us his list of his preferred subcontractors that he has worked with for years. We developed a detailed cost estimate and know (for the most part) what every piece of the house is going to cost. Corbett also introduced us to Tom Weston at McIntyre Capron & Associates an award winning and very well known Mainline PA Architect. Once we settled on our land in December 2013, we worked with Tom to finalize our selection of the floor plan we wanted with our personal modifications (redlines). Tom took our marked up floor plan and developed the actual Architectural and Structural plans for permitting. We also hired a Site Civil Engineer to do a survey of the property, advise on placement of house, develop grading plans, provide overall site plans showing septic sewer system, water well, house placement, driveway, and design the storm water management system (which is a biggie here - they required that you reduce post construction storm water runoff by 50%, which amounts to about $10,000 of extra work for us). We went in to the Township (not city, not parish) for permits towards the end of February and had the permits to start work late March.

The weather has been rainy off and on here but were able to get the silt and construction fencing up, a portion of the stone road/tire scrubber installed. We also started digging for the basement concrete foundations, garage and porch concrete footings. The basement excavation was left a few feet high to prevent it from become a sloppy mud hole. Hopefully Monday it is drier and we can finish digging and start install the stone base and forming footings for the basement, garage and porches.

I will keep y'all posted.

Andy