We Have Walls

Well, basement walls. The hubby drove by the site of the new house this week and reported that cement was being poured and walls were going up. So we made plans to go by this weekend and photograph whatever progress was made. (The full set of pictures is here.) I gotta say, I was amazed with what had been done since last weekend, when we drove by to find that no progress had been made, most likely to the rain we had the previous week. Now, not only have the basement walls been poured, but the basement has been capped off with what is basically the beginning of the first floor.

I have to admit that I was surprised at the progress. I hadn’t expected quite so much to have been done. The basement walls, maybe, but I hadn’t expected them to be capped off with a sub-floor already. The hubby took Parker for a walk around the neighborhood, over to the the hiking/biking trail  that runs around the neighborhood, so I could take pictures and we wouldnt’ have to worry about Parker falling into the trench that still runs around the house. I was able to get shots all the way around the house.

The workers had constructed a makeshift bridge to get them to the top of the basement, to work on the first floor. I felt brave enough to walk most of the way across it, to get some pictures. However, I was reluctant to go too far because the hubby had warned me about wondering around the site by relating the story of a D.C. area resident who was walking around the construction site of his new home and ended up falling 20 feet or so to his death. and there was a concrete pit where I’m guessing the foundation of the front port will go. There didn’t seem to be any way out of it, so I didn’t go to far, just to be safe. Needless to say, it would suck to die and not get to live in the house.

But I was able to get a few decent shots of the beginnings of the first floor.  

After that I walked around the site, taking pictures from angles. It was when I snapped a photo through a basement window that I realized I might actually be able to get into the basement. I remembered there was a outside door to the basement in the back of the house. I would just have to find a way to get down there. The workers have to get down there so, there had to be a way.

Turns out, there was. I just had to walk back around to the other side of the site, and down a gravel-covered ramp in front, and I could walk around the trench to the basement door. The next thing I knew, I was in the house. Well, in the basement anyway, but it was pretty exciting.

The basement still has a dirt floor. It was explained to me, by the hubby’s brother as he related the building of his own house, that the basement floor won’t get done until the house is framed and the roof is put on, so that the house is watertight when the basement floor is done. I’ve never gone through the process of having a house built before. So, it’s all pretty new and interesting to me.

It’s pretty much that way for most of the rest of the work in the house. The framing of the house will probably happen pretty quickly from what I’ve been told. Plus that’s the way it seems to have gone for the house being built up the street. Once the framing is done, things slow down as the wiring and plumbing is done, then the whole drywalling process.

I still expect it’ll be January or February when we actually move into the house. Still, it’s starting to become more real and less abstract for me. I was actually in the house today. If you ask me, that’s pretty cool.