Dirt, Dirt, and more Dirt

On Friday, we had 7 truck loads of dirt dumped at the house. As you can see from the previous pictures, we need a lot of dirt to back fill the basement and to level out the ground with the main level of the house. Hopefully, we will not need more truck loads, but it is looking like we will be needing it!! I do not have any pictures of any of the dirt for two reasons. 1. I had to work this weekend so I didn't make it home in time before dark and 2. It rained yesterday. Yes, the rain was very much needed, but not when we just had 7 dump truck loads of dirt dumped! Now alllll that dirt is GEORGIA RED MUDDY CLAY.

In other updates. The floor trusses are complete and the basement cement walls are waterproofed! As the rain was needed yesterday, but it does put a hamper on house building when the weekends are when most of the work gets done and we need every spare minute possible so this process won't take even longer!

Floor Trusses

Today the process of putting up the floor trusses began!! I went out to the house this evening to make sure the work was progressing correctly and supervising to make sure that nothing was done wrong!




Nick thinking, thinking, thinking!


Hard at work!






Honey Bear (Tommy Dean) peaking through to make sure they aren't messing anything up!


Bauer and Sadie found a little time to play in between all of the hard work!

Concrete Slab and Framed Walls

Here are a few pictures of the guys pouring the basement slab.








As soon as the concrete was dry enough to work on, Nick and Mr. Chuck began building the walls for the basement.

Basement Bathroom

Okay, so these pictures just look like a bunch of pipes in the ground with dirt everywhere, but there is so so much more to these pictures. First, let me tell you what it is. This is the plumbing for our basement bathroom and for the sink which will be in the wet bar.

When we were coming up with our house plans, we had decided to add a basement. But the plan was (and still is) to let the basement be unfinished until we had saved up for a few years and then finish it. We had a few ideas of how we wanted to set up the basement but we did not really plan on where and what was going to be put in the basement.. until last week.

I have learned a lot with building our house and to add to the list is that plumbing for the basement must be done before the concrete slab is poured. Easy right?? Not quite. Not when I had thought that I would have a few years to decide on the basement. So, last week Nick and I sat at the kitchen table trying to decide where everything needed to go. Nick drew some house plans late into the night and I decided on the one I liked at 5:30 the next morning before work. That was easy! No problem, right? Wrong.. That night I got a phone call as I was coming home from work. Nick had informed me that to have a full bath and a 1/2 bath in the basement meant that we would have to have a bigger septic tank which would cost even more money. Therefore, the solution was to only have a full bathroom accessible for everyone to use in the basement. That meant for more late nights of discussions and drawing plans.


These pictures also represent that I cannot change my mind anymore on where I want the bathroom to go. On Wednesday, Nick called and said he was about to start digging the ditches for the plumbing and wanted to make sure that I liked where everything was going to be placed. I answered "Yes, go ahead", but 10 minutes later I called back to tell him to stop because I wanted to change everything. So I hopped in the car and went over there to tell me my plan. As usual, several things would not work for everything to work correctly. Therefore, another day was marked off of not getting the plumbing done!

So after another night of rambling our brains of where the bathroom would go and some advice from both of our dads and Jeremy, Nick's cousin who is a plumber, we finally decided where the bathroom would go!

The basement that we would not have to worry about for a while has sure caused a lot of controversy so far! Oh, and the basement windows will have to be a whole different post!

Basement Walls Day 1 and 2

On Thursday August 26th the Concrete Guys finally came to start pouring our walls. The company name is Caldwell Concrete Company from Newnan, but I prefer to call them the "Concrete Guys". Meme gave us a trail camera to capture shots of animals wondering on the land, but we like to use it to keep track of the progress of the house and the people who come to the land. That day we change the settings to video so we would be able to see what was all done for the basement since we were both working.

The Following are some of the videos taken while they were working. The camera just needs to have sound so we could listen in to the conversations!



Concrete finally being poured


Once the footings were poured the concrete guys left to allow time to dry and then they would return the next morning to begin preparing everything for the walls to be poured.





On Friday morning the concrete guys were back at work!









The concrete had to dry over the weekend and on Monday the forms were taken off and we had our concrete walls!!