Stoked we are staked

DH met our builder and the site work guy out at our property yesterday. The builder staked out the foundations for the excavator guy. Excavator guy will be able to get started tomorrow. He just last week finished digging the foundations for the people that own lot 7 down at the end of our street and he left his equipment there, hoping he'd be able to get started on ours soon, without having to move his equipment. His bid has "transporting" costs to bring the equipment on site. I'm hoping since he's only had to do it once - he would split the cost with us and the other people? Probably not. LOL.

DH said it was pretty funny with the builder yesterday. He looked at the part of the house foundation that already got dug (we needed dirt for rockery backfill) and said it got dug too deep. DH said "maybe, but we can pull over other dirt from where the rest will get dug". It was one inch off, basically perfect. Then when he got to the shop he said the grade was 2 feet high on one end. DH said "maybe..." The builder measured it and it was spot on. LOL.

He's supposed to get done with the foundation excavation by the end of this week and then our builder wants to be able to come next week and start doing the foundation forms. I'm guessing then concrete the next week. Over the weekend we drove down to lot 7 to look at their foundation. I said that must be exciting for them to see that. It will be interesting to see what their house looks like. The foundation just looks like a big square, almost like I imagine our shop foundation will look. Originally they were just going to build on a concrete slab and to do that they were apparently going to pull back the river bank to level out their building site. Since we are using the same excavating guy, he was telling DH about this a couple weeks ago. DH said "I'm not trying to butt in or anything, but when we were looking at that lot and trying to figure out a building site, we were told we couldn't touch the river bank edge. So, just mentioning it, because I wouldn't want them to get in trouble for it..........". Well, they all must have figured out DH is right, as they changed to a foundation type and aren't digging back any of the bank edge.

DH has been planning to lay the water lines and electrical conduit himself all this time. His buddy has constantly said he would help him with this, the 2 years we've been planning it. In fact, I think he's the one who convinced DH he could/should do it himself, with his help. Of course when it comes down to it, he's busy with this or that and can't seem to commit. So, last night DH was totally stressing how he's going to do this by himself. The well guy says he needs to use 2 inch polypipe, which is pretty huge and will be huge rolls. I suggested DH call the guy who helped with the labor on the rockery and see if he might be available still (he said he just got a job a few hours away so would be gone for awhile). He probably won't be available, but he gave DH a great idea on how to go about this, so it was a productive call. It will make life easier on DH and he won't be so time crunched to get it all in, before foundations pour. I'll be able to help easily with the electrical conduit lines. It's the polypipe, for water lines, that would be too heavy and hard to work with, that'd I'd be no help.

Once DH gets through the water and electrical lines installation, he is basically done with all the big/hard projects related to all this. He'll just have the gate piers, which most of the prep work is done for that and landscaping, which he/we can do on our own timeline/budget.  I had kind of forgotten what the gate will kind of look like. I had an idea in my head, but he reminded me of this picture he had saved and what he is basing his design on.

 

He's hoping to be able to use the lumber we get out of the trees cut down to make the gate. We'll see - just depends on how long it takes the wood to dry out.