Philip, Jen and Peyton's Pages

Building has begun

It has been a few weeks since I have posted an update, but during that time, we have had a lot of activity on our land.  Last week, the builder laid out all the sidewall strings and began digging the footings for the house.  Those were dug and then poured in about a day.  To our surprise last Friday, they had finished those and they were left to dry over the weekend.

On Monday, I received an MMS photo from Tammy while she was on her way out for work.  (Our good friends, The Elvises, will be living behind us and they have been great about sending photos for us as they drive by and see progress.)  On Monday, they had begun laying blocks for our foundation on top of the footings.  By the time that I got there on Monday, they had stopped working for the day (it has been really HOT here!) and they had gotten about two courses of block laid.  By Tuesday lunch, they have finished the perimeter of the house and by Wednesday, they had laid the block for all the porches and landings for the doorways coming into the house.

From talking with the builder and block layer, the next step is to back fill the inside of the blocks with dirt, pack that and then we will be ready to pour the cement slab.  Below are some progress photos from the past week’s worth of work!  We are excited!

Building permit in progress

This week, the builder is working on permitting.  We are hoping to have a building permit within the next two weeks and hoping that work will begin shortly after that.  Jen and I have signed off on the plans, specs and construction agreement and returned those to Sterling Homes along with the first payment.

We are thinking about electrical plans — where we want to locate switches and outlets so that we can draw them onto preliminary electrical plans.  We will do a walk through before electrical rough-in but after the walls go up so that we can see the spaces.  We are thinking about where we want can lights and looking at other lighting fixtures for the foyer, dining room, living room and bedrooms.

Over the weekend, we went to Exquisite Glow Lighting in Shallotte, NC.  They happened to be having a really big sale and we were able to find a couple fixtures there.  We will probably go back and get some additional items soon.   Since it was the first place we had looked, we wanted to look around elsewhere and compare.

Loan closed; money released; building getting ready to start

We spent the afternoon today closing on our construction loan.  With the financing all locked down, we now have a line of credit available to us from Conway National Bank to use for the building process.  We will begin our draw process next week once everything has been booked.  The first draw will cover foundation and site prep.

Our builder has been busy sending out the necessary pieces of our project for truss design and engineering.  We are lucky to know our engineer, friend and future neighbor, Brandon, will be doing the structural engineering.   Besides the engineering, I have processed our application for a septic permit with DHEC and that is in progress.  Building permits are next, but we need the septic permit first.

We have our insurance policies updated for the build process — specifically making sure we have liability insurance to cover our family and a builder’s risk policy for the actual house.  With both of those in place, we are in really good shape.

Here are the latest pictures from the land:

How our house was designed…

** The picture above was our very first rough draft of the house plan…  it changed a lot since.

I figured that today was a great time to tell the story of how our house plans came together.  This has been a long term project.  The drawing above was doodled out on my friend Jamie’s whiteboard during a New Years Eve 2009 party.   That was really the first time we were serious about what our house would look like.  Back in December of 2008, we had just closed on our land and were excitedly making plans of what the house would look like on the land.  You’ll see a wrap around porch – 3 bedrooms, an office and dining room in this drawing.

For the next 9 months, we seriously began looking at drawings from architects and we came to love several designs through Southern Living.  This particular architect captured everything we both loved about Carolina low-country architecture.   Ultimately, we got a set of study plans and began the process of building with those plans in hand.  But, two things we didn’t know when we began — the detail in these plans would prove to be too expensive for our budget and we couldn’t afford much of what we wanted in this house.  So, we backed up.
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Trees are coming down, things finally moving along

Yesterday was an exciting day. The first visible activity of our build has begun on the land and the builder is getting the site ready for a house to go in. The trees came down quickly yesterday and the lot looks completely different today. Here are some photos of the progress…  A BIG ole THANK YOU to Tammy for sending us photos as she drives by!!

Front Elevation

This is the front elevation of our future house.  I have photo shopped it so that we get a better idea of the colors and what the final product will look like.  We are excited!