Day 445--We've got our C.O.!

Hello everyone! Whew! We've finally passed our Building Final Inspection!!!! We are so happy to officially be able to move into the house. We plan on spending the next 6 months finishing the interior and landscaping. For right now, we are taking a deep breath, and a little break! We thought we should put up a picture of the real building inspector! Her main interest was whether we had an adequate number and variety of interesting things to smell on the property! Paws up! To be continued.....

This is where it all started.

Day 435 Almost there...Really....We mean it this time!!!

Just when you think you couldn't have more difficulties, be any busier without pulling your hair out.... You call for your final inspection. Yes, we are very fortunate that we have passed our final electrical, plumbing and mechanical inspections. Yea! However, we worked like dogs last week preparing for our final inspection on friday, 11/3, to not have it happen! It seems the town has misplaced our foundation plot survey, which we had provided for them over a year ago, and we need to provide this for them again with a seal from the surveying company. I'll be picking that up tomorrow and we'll be calling for the final again within the next few days, wish us luck! We are very excited to have a driveway and grass!!!!! No more clay!!!!! Some other accomplishments that we are excited about include getting the irrigation system installed and passing that inspection, having most of the lot cleanup finished, finishing welding the railing upstairs and the stairway, and getting the gas hooked up so we have heat--thank goodness!Darko wouldn't let me put any indoor pictures on the site until more projects are finished, even though I think it's cool to show the work in progress, my little perfectionist.

Day 355 Almost There...

Whoa, Nelly! Where to begin? A lot has happened (or not happened) since our last blog. Over the last two months, we've been working on the tiles, finding another electrician to finish the trim out (because we had to fire the existing one!), contacting the gas company to install the gas-line, having the septic tank, etc. installed, we've had final grading finished with drainage pipes installed for runoff from the roof, our siding and trim painted, garage door and gutters installed, dealing with the labyrinth of having our power eventually run under ground and hooked up to the house--hopefully they will switch our temporary power to permanent soon, meanwhile we've been crashing in a friend's guest room since June! Since we've decided to do a lot of the work ourselves, things have of course taken longer than we'd hoped, but we think we see a tiny light at the end of the tunnel! Or is that a train headed this way? :o) Currently we are working on finishing the interior of the house, getting an irrigation system installed and the property landscaped, and having our concrete driveway poured. We're tired and cranky, or we'd write more. Off to bed. New pictures

Paint and Gutters

Gas and Septic

Final Grading

Tiles

A priest, a gorilla, and a pirate with a parrot on his shoulder walk into a bar. The priest says to the drunk sitting at the bar, "Hey, did you ever finish building that house?" And the drunk pulls out a gun and shoots the priest. The gorilla, the pirate and even the parrot decide to keep their mouths shut.

7 AM Misty Sunrise in the Backyard

Just wanted to put this picture on our blog, we think it is so beautiful! My Darko is pretty handy with the camera! You can see a bit of the composite decking that he has been installing, looks great!

Day 241 Ready For Painting

The sheetrock is almost finished, the crew will be finished sanding on thursday and we will begin priming the walls this weekend. We are now working on grading the property, installing septic tank and pump, and preparing the deck. You can see the new pictures here.

Day 232--Got Sheetrock? :)

Well, it's been a bit since our last update. Our original framer was not as experienced as we were led to believe, and long story short, we had to hire a second crew to get the job done right. There were many code violations, things done wrong, and some things not done at all! Ever heard of hurricane clips? Our first crew didn't put a one in. Wake County is an 80 mph wind district and requires these clips every 2nd or 3rd rafter in order to keep the roof on! If we had more experience with framing, we would've caught that and many other things early on. One of our other big problems was the stairs, both sets had to be torn out and completely redone. If you're ever building your own house and the framing supervisor shows up with a book on "How To Build Stairs", it's time to hire someone else. We should've known!!! These are just a couple of examples of 100 things that were just not right! Thank God we hadn't fully paid that crew, so we used the leftover, and then some, to pay the new crew. Luckily, they were available as soon as we needed them, they did a great job, and helped us out by meeting with the inspectors. The electricians also put us behind about 3 weeks and we are planning to deduct some of our interest paid from the total that we owe them. We've learned a few important lessons, and even though it's cost us a little extra, we now know who to hire and a lot more about each part of the home building process.

Thankfully, we are up and running again. We passed the framing inspection and had our insulation installed and approved. We hired a great company to spray our foam insulation, it's a super efficient product and you can find more information about it at: http://www.sealection500.com
It's really cool to watch it being put in too! This past week I "helped" Darko check that the walls were level, and I got to use the pneumatic nail gun! Woo hoo!!!
The sheetrock crew is starting on tuesday, 4/18, and we are looking to have the property graded while that's being installed. After the sheetrock is finished, we're hoping that things will go more smoothly. The bigger jobs that we needed subcontractors for have been mostly completed and we are now in charge of installing tile, wood floor, building cabinetry, etc.
New pictures.

Day 162 Mechanical

We're getting there! Since our last post the brick and shingles have been finished, the HVAC and plumbing rough-in is completed, the central vacuum system has been partially installed, and we've placed the cinder block steps at the front entrance. In order for our driveway to pass final inspection, the neighboring lots had to be cleared of trees for about 20 feet from the existing road (which will soon be widened to 3 lanes we believe). It was a challenge to contact the owner of these lots for that purpose, but the trees are now cleared! The garage floor has since been poured and our garage door will soon be delivered. The fireplace has been installed and it looks great! We're now looking for the stone for our front entryway, we'll see if Darko and I can agree on that! The stone is the last thing that has to be installed on the outside of the house. The columns and framing for the deck and screened-in porch have also been installed. We're now working on the electrical and finishing touches in order to start with the sheetrock. We have 4 main inspections coming up: plumbing, electrical, mechanical and framing. We've been having a little bit of trouble with the camera, so we don't have as many pictures as we would like. You can see our new pictures here