An Update on the House

We had our pre-construction meeting with the superintendent on Monday. Guess when he thinks the house will be done? Not until the end of April or or the beginning of May!!! So much for mid-March, I guess. I'm actually not upset about it though! The initial plan was to move at the end of the school year, so I think this will be great! I really hope that it is done by the end of April though. If we close on or before April 30th, we'll be able to qualify for the $6500 tax credit that the government is offering right now. (Thanks Pres. Obama & all your liberal friends. If you're going to give away money for something I was going to do anyway, I'll take it. I'm sure I'll be repaying it soon enough in the higher taxes that are just around the corner anyway, so really it's a wash.) We told the super about the tax credit & he promised us that he would try his hardest to have it done. We'll see.

So, why is it going to take so much longer to build our house than originally thought? Well, they've decided that, since the land up where we're building is very sandy, they will most likely have to build the house on pylons. Pylons are flexible steel beams that they drill down into the ground until they hit granite. In our case, that's about 65 feet!!! This will insure that our house will never slide or sink...and it makes it fairly earthquake proof too! So, hopefully, when "the big one" does hit, my house will have only minimal damage done to it. YAY! It's a very expensive thing to have done, but the builder is doing it at no cost to us! They say it is worth it to them to do it now, rather than to come back 5 years from now & try to do it after the fact because my house has sunk several inches. (It happened to a few of the first houses they built up there & it ended up costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix.)

So, this week, they are digging a test hole so that they can test the soil. If a certain amount of sand is found in the samples, our house will be built on pylons. The super is about 99% sure we're going to get them because the house right next door needed them & so did several right across the street. I'm happy that we will most likely be getting them!

I decided, while I was up there, to take a picture of our lot. Here's our future little piece of heaven...


I love this lot! It's 1/3rd of an acre. Yeah...Mike's pretty pumped about mowing that twice a week during the summertime! Haha! I'm really excited to have a big yard though. When we were looking at various lots, it was really important to me that we found one that would have a big backyard. I want the boys to be able to run to their hearts' content (without running into a fence.) Our last backyard was WAY too little (we only had .15 acres and our house was so long & skinny that it ate up a huge chunk of what should have been the backyard). I think from our backdoor to the back fence there was only probably 15 feet, if even that. The super had little steaks in the ground showing where our new house would be built & he told us that from the back of our house to our back fence, we will have 91 feet! Yay! I'm really excited! Every time we drive up there, Mike & I just get giddy! I have found myself, over the past few days, staring at the calendar saying, "Baby step to April...baby step to April!" You What About Bob? fans will understand that last line. Speaking of What About Bob?, don't EVER take me out on a boat unless you are prepared to hear, "I'm sailing! I'm sailing! On a boat...far, far away from the dock! Ahoy!" Sorry, that was random. I'm going now. --Lindsay