Underground Plumbing

March 28-29, 2013.  We had been trying so hard to get this worked out for David to fly down to AZ and plumb our house for us.  He had been here a few weeks before we were ready for plumbing for a visit, and came back a few days after they started.  He did give the plumbing his own inspection and said it looked great.  So nice to have another set of expert eyes on this project of ours though!

 

Stem Walls

March 20, 2013. Next they built up the stem walls and filled them with concrete.  The first picture is the exercise room.

This second picture is the dining room window:

Footings

March 13-14, 2013. The first step to building a home is digging footings, adding rebar support beams, them filling them with concrete.  Sounds like I totally know what I'm talking about, right?  Right.  The first few weeks of being the general contractor, I was calling for an inspection every few days.  It was exciting to see how quickly things can progress. 

 

March 12, 2013

The day we've been waiting for FOREVER!! Notice the date is March...not November or December or even January as we'd been told.  We spent the entire month of February just trying to get the title company to return calls or emails or do what they said they were going to do.  It was definitely a trial of our (mostly MY) patience. 

But at the end of the day, it was fine and what does it really matter if we move into our home a few months later than we expected?  We feel extraordinarily blessed to even be in this situation and are so excited for the journey ahead!

Bella and Jaren on groundbreaking day.  (Stephen was at work and Alyssa was at a friend's house):

Getting Closer

Around mid-January 2013, we felt like we were getting REALLY close to groundbreaking. The bank had given us a tentative approval so we had the pad built up, did all the grading, and the concrete guy came out and started drawing out the house onto the dirt.  This was really fun for the kids to see.  We would go over and visit the lot often and they would run around to the various parts of the house.

Here they are standing in the front entryway, just inside of the front door:

Here they are standing in the pool, off the back patio:

Tree Removal

Around the Fall of 2012, we were feeling like we were almost ready to build.  Our plans were done, the permits had been approved and the bank process had been started.  We assumed this meant we would be breaking ground before Christmas (although we were wrong!)  When we bought the lot, we were so excited to have so many fruit trees on the property.  Unfortunately, once we got the plans back we realized that the majority of them would have to be removed.  There was no space for the house, plus they had not been well cared for and the ones on the edges that were actually in an ok location were pretty much dead.  We were able to relocate two trees, one Ruby Red grapefruit and one tangelo.  Time will tell if that relocation was successful.

The lot with all our trees, September 2012:

Trees removed and grading on the pad, October 2012:

The Design

The next big hurdle was designing our dream house.  Sounds simple enough, right?  The whole design process was actually really interesting and FUN!  Stephen and I agreed on pretty much everything.  We'd seen so many houses that we knew exactly what we wanted.  We added in a few cool features that we each hoped for and our dream house was created.  We basically found a floor plan we liked a lot and tweaked it about 25%.  When it came time to select exterior doors, windows, pavers, landscaping, house color, roof tile style, color and material choice of columns, window surrounds, courtyard gate design....it got a little bit more overwhelming.  All of these things had to be decided first and then submitted to our HOA before we could get a permit from the city to build.  Somehow we figured it all out and our HOA approved it after 9 LONG weeks.  They did suggest a few cosmetic exterior changes which we ended up really liking so we were happy.  The major decision we made at this point was to do an owner-built home.  In Arizona you do not have to have a contractors license to build your own home.  We decided I would take control of the home building process and save us some money along the way.  We found an amazing man in our stake named Gordon Ray who agreed to be a project manager and help us get all the subs we need, as well as lend his expertise and experience as much or as little as we needed.  It's become a huge full-time job for me, which may be just what I needed since Jaren has started school full-time.  So far, it's the best job in the world though...overseeing our family's dream home!

After the approval process with the HOA finally was finished, we submitted to the Town of Gilbert for a building permit and continued to work with our bank for a construction loan.  I'll just gloss over this part because it was a huge headache and suffice to say I think we made several pacts with the devil as well as selling our first born grandchild in order to secure this loan.  It's gotta be worth it in the end though, right?