Oct 9, 2012

Day 1 | We broke ground on our Florence!


I'm excited to announce that we broke ground yesterday, October 8th!!  I can't believe this day has finally arrived.  We've worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get to this point.  It won't be long until our family is back together... in our brand new HOME.

I haven't had a chance to update the blog since before our pre-construction meeting.  That meeting took place on September 10th.  I was able to travel to Cleveland to attend with my husband.  Nothing too exciting happened in the meeting.  We met our Project Manager, Robb.  We've heard very good things about him from our new neighbors (super nice people that come out to talk to us whenever we stop by our lot)!  He walked us through the plans and explained the whole process from here on out.  It all seems pretty straightforward.

At the meeting, they told us they'd break ground in about 2 weeks.  It took exactly 4 weeks.  Our projected end date is December 20th.  I have my fingers crossed that it will be sooner.  Can you imagine how hectic it will be trying to close on a house and move in just days before Christmas?  I'm having visions of us sitting in an empty house, on the floor, around a Christmas tree.  I guess we could always go out for Chinese dinner like Ralphie.  That wouldn't be so bad, would it?

Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me show you a few pictures from the ground breaking....


The kids (minus our 15 year old) and I drove up to Cleveland on Sunday and stayed the night.  After we checked into the hotel, we drove over to the site to take our final 'before' pictures.  We were excited to see an excavator parked on our lot as we came around the corner!


See what I mean?  ... excitement!  I'm so happy the kids are getting to go through this experience.  They're all learning so much from this whole process, but most of all.... PATIENCE.


We walked around the lot taking pictures.  My daughter and I are standing where our kitchen will be.  Can see the morning room staked out behind us?  So exciting!

After we finished taking pictures, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to the hotel.  Our 12 year old invited his best friend to go swimming with us.  He came over to the hotel with his mom (a good friend of mine).  It was so nice to relax with the kids and visit with friends!


We got up around 6am, got dressed, ate breakfast and headed over to the site.  On the way to the site, our PM called to let us know they were getting ready to break ground.  We arrived just a little after 8am.  The guys had just started working!  The excavator was hard at work, smoothing out the big pile of gravel that had been dumped earlier.  It was VERY exciting to finally see work happening on our home!

We parked across the street and got out of the car.  We stood directly across the street for a few minutes, taking pictures and talking excitedly.  The guy working on the excavator saw us and waved.  He shut the excavator off, climbed down and walked over to say hello.  Then, he asked our 2.5 year old if he wanted to 'drive' the excavator.  What do you think he said?


I thought it was so cool that he let all 3 kids 'drive'.  These are special memories that we'll cherish for a long time!  Thank you Mr. Excavator driver!!

There was another guy working at our site too.  He even took time to come over and say hello.  I'm not sure what his job was, but he was working on the sewer and water lines.


These guys work fast!  Even Madeline was surprised how much progress they made after just 2 hours.  We ended up hanging around until about 1pm (we did leave 2 times to get something to eat and use the restroom).  The kids and I had to head back to WV, so we couldn't stay too much longer.


I'm pretty sure they got us hooked into the sewer and water lines.  I saw the one guy laying copper piping down as the excavator was digging.


I took this picture right before we had to leave at 1pm.  In just 5 hours they had about 3/4 of the basement dug out!  It's amazing how fast and proficiently they work.

I won't be able to get back up to the site for about 2 weeks.  My husband will be driving by after work as much as he can to take pictures of the progress.  It's killing me that I'm not able to drive out there every day to document things!  I don't know... maybe things will seem to go faster this way? 

3 comments:

  1. Bobbie this is awesome!! I love how you made an entire day of it for your family! Moments like these meant to be captured! It's such a special time that you only see once with this house.

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    1. Thanks! It was a lot of fun. The kids and I won't be there to see a lot of the progress. When we are there I want to make the most of it.

      Funny.. I was reading your blog as you left this comment. I saw that you're a week ahead of us, so I called my husband. He wanted to take pics of the footers and I saw they did that on day 2 for you. He's heading out to the site now to take pics of ours (hopefully they poured them today!).

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  2. Congrats on breaking ground!

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