House Building for Rookies: Part II

We officially broke ground on July 31st, 2014. This is what breaking ground looks like. I was pretty disappointed when I found out there are no gold shovels and photographers involved.

So they dig and make a giant hole in which your new house will fit.

It's everything I dreamed of and more :) Next they pour the footings. You know...footings. No idea what that means except they are made out of cement and look like this...

I thought about going around with a tape measure to make sure the poured them all right because if those footings are wrong...the whole house is wrong. Seth informed me that wasn't necessary. He'll be sorry if our house ends up smaller (or bigger).  Those big...things standing up there would be the forms they will next set to pour the foundation walls into. I didn't see them go up or come down, but seems like quite a system they have. Once that's done you have a basement and can really start to envision what the house will look like. Naturally, it has to be sprayed with some sort of tar concoction...I assume that is related to water? Maybe I should update these things when Seth is awake to explain stuff to me? Nah...I mean this is supposed to be a rookie's prospective... Rock is dumped (via a cool machine thing) around the outside of the house (for drainage) and in/on the basement floor.

I will say that at this point, I freaked out because the house seems so small....I'm looking from wall to wall thinking of everything that has to fit, but Seth assured me it will be ok. We'll see Seth...we'll see. Seth and his dad spent a weekend in the muddy trenches to put foam board around the outside of the foundation. Next the plumbing had to be 'roughed in' which basically involved PVC pipes in the basement. Just this past Monday the basement floor concrete was poured and the garage was prepped for concrete. They should be doing the backfilling tomorrow and then maybe we can stand closer to the house :) Framing is SUPPOSED to start Monday so pray for no rain and timely contractors!

In between we've been keeping these cuties alive

and making tons of decisions. Here's a sneak peak at what may or may not appear in the new house:

Hoping for exciting updates next week with framing and such! Stay tuned for more sneak peeks...