Philip, Jen and Peyton's Pages

Foundation, fill and plumbing

It has been a very busy week out on our property.  At the end of last week, our foundation was nearly complete and over the weekend, Harry (the builder) began putting fill into the block foundation.  On Monday, several more loads of sandy fill were loaded into the foundation and everything was brought up to a level and compacted.

After the fill was mostly complete, the plumbers began digging the fill back out and running the wastewater pipes and supply lines for water in the slab.  As of today, it looks like almost all the plumbing in the foundation is complete.  I see a few supply lines missing, but the plumbers may just not be finished, yet.

The next step is getting the electricians to run the conduit that they will use to bring power to the breaker box, a couple of floor outlets in the living room.  After that, one side of the foundation needs to be blocked (this is the side they are using to load in fill dirt) and then I think we are close to being ready for the slab to be poured.  So things are coming along.  Below are a few photos from this week’s progress.

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:

New developments

As we are nearing Christmas, we have a lot of things going on in the Sellers family.  The biggest news will close this afternoon…  Jen and I are buying land.  We don’t have any immediate plans for the land, but we are going to hold on to it and  hopefully build our dream home on it in a few years.  But, we have to wait for the market to come back and find the correct time to sell the house we are in.  

The land buying process has been almost a year and a half in the making.  We had been looking casually for land for about a year even before that, but around September of 2007, we found an 1.75 acres that we were really interested in.  It was near good friends of ours (psuedo-family) and it was enough land that we were happy, but not too much that we’d would be overwhelmed taking care of it…  The area was very nice and it was the last lot in the group to be built on – so the area is as developed as it should ever be.  

After negotiating for a few months with the builder who were selling it as a land/home package, we could never come to an agreement on the home and the price for the custom build.  So, we made an offer for land-only for what we believed the land was worth.  The owners wanted more but we were unwilling and walked away.  Fast-forward to October of this year and the land was for sale as land-only, and for much less than they had previously thought the land was worth.  We made an offer again for the same amount and this time it was accepted.  Thank you sucky economy for something…

Anyways, we close this afternoon on the lot.  Afterwards, Jen and I are going to drive out there and take a couple pictures of the land and of us on our land.  Then we’re treating ourselves to the Right Recipe for dinner as a celebration…  

Once we build, our address will officially change from Conway, SC, to Loris, SC.  And, its much more peaceful out in the country.  Its so quiet…  I absolutely love it and I’m so very excited about this.  Jen is, too.