Stuart Construction - Week 5

Week 5 - December 17-23, 2012

Another week of huge visual progress; at least for us!  The foundation has taken so much longer to complete than a traditional foundation normally would.  B and I totally trust our builder and the structural engineer, but ugh, I am about done looking at stuff being done under the ground!

This week was cool though.  This week, the guys put in the structural floor and poured the concrete over it.   This house is not going to shift or move - ever!  And, at the end of this week, we were able to call our foundation done and complete!  After this week let the vertical progress begin!

Here are pictures of the structural floor and all the work that took!

This is our typical picture from up on the dirt pile of how the house looks!

Once they got all the rebar in place and passed the inspection, they were able to pour the concrete before the snow and frigid cold set in!  Our concrete isn't black, right before the snow fell, the workers put down protective blankets over the concrete so the cold air didn't negatively effect the concrete.

Put the foundation work to bed, we are finally done down there!  Here's to the new year and seeing vertical progress on our house!

Stuart Construction - Week 4

Week 4 - December 10-16, 2012

Things have slowed a bit this week, but progress is still happening.  This week was all about getting the plumbing into the basement of the house and set up where it needs to be.  Last week was really productive in getting the plumbing connected to the city hook ups, but this week is where it came into the house.

This shot is looking from where the plumbing connects to the main line out of the house.

Plumbing for the future bathroom in the basement!

Drain, Sump Pump pit in the utility room

Overall shot of the plumbing in the basement...doesn't look like much but it was a lot of work!

Stuart Construction - Week 3

Week 3 - December 3-9, 2012

I am continually impressed with our builder.  He has done amazing to make sure that contractors are lined up and work is getting done everyday on our house.  Once again, a lot happened this week!

After getting the forms up and done, let the concrete pouring being!  Underneath the forms are cardboard boxes that will decompose over time.  The only area under the forms that isn't cardboard is where the caissons are.  The concrete from the walls will sit directly on the caissons that are in the ground.

The day after they poured the concrete they took the forms off, sprayed the exterior of the walls with waterproofing, and attached the window wells to the foundation!

Here are some shots from INSIDE our new basement!  You can see the cardboard boxes under the concrete really well in the picture on the right.

Once again our builder was awesome and we were able to get connected to the city water and sewer line this week too!  

Here is a better shot of the cardboard that is under the foundation walls.

B and I realize that all of this work will be hidden under the ground, but we are thrilled that on week 3 we are hooked up to the sewer and water and things are really moving along!

Weekly Progress Shots

Shot from south side of lot

Shot from center of lot

Shot from north side of lot

Stuart Construction - Week 2

Week 2 - November 26-Dec 2, 2012

HUGE progress this week!  As many of you know, our basement foundation work will be similar to that of a high rise building downtown.  Although I don't hang out around many residential building sites, I swear, I have never seen a basement foundation on a house like this, nor have I ever heard of it!

Let me explain the basement.  We have really bad soils where we will be living, very expansive, which means  lots of movement for the house - not a good thing.  To make sure our house doesn't shift and crack, we have   to have a beefy basement.  We will have to drill 31 caissons (big holes drilled down to bedrock - in our case, 30 feet down before we hit bedrock) and fill those holes with concrete and then rebar.

Here's a look at the caissons being "installed"

Once the caissons are set enough, they started setting up the forms for the basement walls.

Our workers made so much progress this week.  It was so exciting seeing our floor plan and house take shape.

Stuart Construction - Week 1

This is a bit behind on posting, but still worth posting to keep everyone up on the progress of the house, so here goes!

Week 1 - November 19-25, 2012

After a week set back caused by yours truly (I had to have the builder move the house back 10 feet from where we originally had it....it seemed too close to the driveway, and when we have the space we have, why not right?!) we finally were able to break ground on Monday, November 19th.  The excavator was there pretty early in the morning on Monday, and when B and I went there that night to check it out, we had a hole dug in the ground - with some HUGE dirt piles around it!

There was a lot of work that needed to happen to get the hole dug and everything set right.  We are on our way!

 So, every week we are going to take pictures from the same spot so we can see the visual progress.  Here are the pictures for that week.

Weekly Progress Shots

Shot from south side of lot

Shot from center of driveway

Shot from north side of lot

Growing Up Too Quickly

Haylee, my loving, sweet, intelligent daughter is growing into more of a big girl everyday and I am not ready to accept that she just turned 6.  6!  6 years old!  How is it that she is this old already?!

This is the first birthday that we celebrated that was not in the Clarkson house.  Not gonna lie, it made me sad, but my parents have been fantastic in us treating and using their house as if it's ours.  We had Haylee's party at "our" house and of course, H got to pick her theme.  I'm not going to lie, I get a little scared every time I ask the kids their theme, because everyone knows that I have to have a cake that matches the theme!   This year - Hello Kitty.   Thank you H, TOTALLY up for that challenge!  The cake was FANTASTIC!!!  My friend Tara let me borrow a 16" round cake pan (it took 3 boxes of cake to make that one cake!) and then I found a Hello Kitty cake pan to put on top of the round cake.  It was so much fun to make this cake!  We used little marshmallows for the Kitty's fur, and I think that the cake turned out great!

We are so blessed to have so many family and friends in the area that were able to join us.  We decided to rent a bouncy house because we had a lot of friends that were coming.  What a FANTASTIC idea!  It was a bit chilly but I think a huge success!!!

Here are some pictures from the party.  Thank you to everyone for coming, we loved having you and are so blessed that you came to help celebrate our daughter's birthday!

Hello Postman

A few weeks ago we were given approval and told that we can put up our mailbox at the property.  There was some going back and forth with Broomfield and convincing them that even though there isn't a house on the lot yet, yes, we DO want our mail delivered there.  Finally, all is well and we are getting our mail at the new place.  I know that this seems silly and why would I post about it, but for us, it is a step towards having our own place and getting back to our normal lives!

Byron putting in the stake for the mailbox

Yea!  Mailbox is up!

Shows how high the mailbox is off the ground.  It's sooo tall!