It's Starting to Look Like a Real House!

Matt and I thank our lucky stars that it hasn't snowed this week! We have been waiting to have the lot backfilled, and the guy wouldn't bring his truck out if it was icy. On Wednesday, they put all the dirt from the big pile back into the holes and started smoothing everything out. I have been very nervous about this because our house sits up on our lot quite a bit more than our neighbors to the west. I didn't want to have to have crazy landscaping to make it look normal sitting up so high. However, now that it has been backfilled, my concerns have been eased! Everything is looking better than I expected!

This will be our driveway and garage. They had to bring in "manufactured dirt" (which we have to pay extra for- of course) because it is apparently better than regular dirt.

View of the porch. We are going to have to do a little rock wall to build up the ground to the porch so it doesn't look weird with our basement window sitting so high out of the ground.

The front bedroom will sit on top of the foundation wall here, but I really wanted to show how the ground is going to slope down to our neighbors to the west. We thought we were going to have to build a rock wall along our neighbor's fence because we thought we'd be way higher than them and didn't want a giant slope, but it turned out great! We probably won't need any special landscaping back here.

View of the back of the house from the west:

My camera wouldn't focus for some reason on this one. I wanted to show that not only is our big dirt hill GONE, but the backyard is way more level than I expected. Again, we were worried that the slope from our east neighbors to our west neighbors would make it so we'd have a slope from one side of the yard to the other, but it turned out fine. The little dirt pile left is our top soil.

View of the east side of the house, where we connect to our neighbors. Their side is a little easier because they don't have a fence.

Another view of the backyard:

On the left is where we'll build our kitchen (obviously on the main floor) and the right is our garage.

I am such a nerd. I get way panicked about little things and then when everything happens it all turns out fine. I need to keep reminding myself of this when I start getting crazy! Next up: Basement and garage floor! Hopefully tomorrow or Monday if it isn't too cold! They won't pour concrete in this ridiculous cold weather!

Rough Plumbing

On Monday after Thanksgiving, our plumber was able to come by and run the rough plumbing. We still haven't been able to find the sewer line, so he'll have to come back to connect that when we dig for it again, but now that the rough plumbing is in, we can put in gravel and pour the floor!

This is where the plumbing comes out of the house and connects to the sewer line:

View of storage room and water heater room:

Basement bathroom plumbing:

View of all plumbing from the back of the house:

Sorry that all my pictures are way dark! It is after five by the time I get over to the house after getting off work and it gets dark so early! Next up: getting ready to pour concrete for the garage and basement floor!

MOUNTAIN DIVISON CHAMPS!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was our last home football game this season, and the Aggies hosted the Wyoming Cowboys. Matt's boss Todd is a Wyoming fan and they've been harassing each other about this game for months! Well, sorry Todd! Aggies won and are now the Mountain Division Champions of the Mountain West Conference! Not bad for our first year in the conference! We get to play in the conference championship game next week against Fresno State. Matt and I almost decided to drive out there for the game, but decided we'll go bowling instead!

Our new game buddies: J.L. Coon and his son, Andrew, and wife, Shar

Todd was making bets with Matt before the game started. After the first quarter he was done betting because he knew that his team was going to lose!

Morgan and Tiko took some nice pics of themselves while taking a quick picture for me!

Todd and Melissa

We love our season tickets. It is so fun to be part of the crowd and have games to go to almost every Saturday in the fall. Can't wait for the championship game and the bowl game!

Go Aggies! Again, the best football team in Utah!

Thanksgiving

We are lucky to have a lot of family, so holidays are always extra fun to get to spend a little time with everyone. On Wednesday night, Matt and I met my dad, Laurie, Cassie, Alex and Cory at Chilis for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner and movie. We definitely will be starting a new "Thanksgiving Eve" tradition!

On Thanksgiving, we went out shooting with my mom, Jeff, Cassie and Diet. This is a fun tradition, and even though it was way hard to find ammo for a decent price, it was worth it! Cassie and my mom like to shoot the .22 but I am partial to shooting clays with the shotgun. Matt likes shooting the biggest guns he can find!

Can you believe how grown up she is?

Matt helping Cass

Matt's 30.6

Jeff shooting Diet's 9mm

Matt and I chasing clay pigeons

 

Cassie was a wuss after shooting the shotgun like one time! She text me the next day and said she had a bruise!

Matt and Jeff finishing off the last of our 150 shotgun shells and almost two boxes of clay pigeons!

After shooting, we went home and started cooking! I volunteered to make Jenny's roll recipe and they were yummy! Thank you Jenny for teaching me how to make delicious rolls! We had my grandma and papa, Scott and Mandy and their 6 kids over for dinner. Everything was so delicious and we all enjoyed relaxing and watching football for the rest of the night!

Matt and I also stopped by to see his mom and dad on our way out of town. We had a busy couple days but it was awesome to visit family and spend time together!

Don't be jealous of all of our fun...

The day before Thanksgiving, Matt and I both had the day off work. But instead of enjoying a nice break, or getting ready for Thanksgiving, or even seeing any family, we got to tar our foundation walls. Don't be jealous! We got out to the lot at 8:30 AM and had to snap lines, break the metal foundation ties, and sweep the footings before we could even start rolling tar. In case you are interested, rolling tar is exactly like painting, except if you splatter your face, you have to scratch it off because it doesn't wash off (trust me... I know). The tar helps to seal your foundation from water, so when people have leaks in their foundation, it's because their tar job wasn't so good. So you have to roll tar to cover any place where you will have dirt filled in around your foundation. Needless to say, Matt wanted it done perfectly, so I had to go around and fix all the spots that weren't completely coated. I could barely hold anything after four hours of rolling tar! We also dug out where the footings for the bearing walls will be and put in window wells.

View of the garage and where the porch will be:

View of the inside of the garage:

View of the east side of the house (side of the garage):

View of the back of the house:

Back of the house (from the west):

West side of the house:

Front bedroom and where the porch will be:

Matt was mad that I made him take a picture, but it was the first thing I got to help with and I wanted to document!

Foundation Walls!

Last week after the footings were poured, the concrete guys came over to set the forms for the foundation walls and came the next day to pour the concrete for the foundation walls! It actually is starting to look like a house now and not just a big hole! Yay!

View of the kitchen/dining room/living room:

View of the garage and front of the house:

Street view (can you tell I don't get off work until it is dark!):

View of the great room in the basement and part of the back bedroom from the front bedroom (look at the gorgeous view of the mountains we'll have from our back windows!):

View of the cold storage (well the door to the cold storage), storage room (will be the room in front of the cold storage), and front bedroom (where the window is):

So the concrete walls are obviously just the basement walls. The main floor will be built on top of the concrete walls. We are a little worried about it being so high up (there is a seven foot difference between the height of the foundation walls from our east neighbor to our west neighbor), but we'll have to see how it looks once the dirt gets filled in against the foundation walls and the lot is leveled out. There are so many things to think about and plan for!

Tomorrow Matt and I will put in the window wells and tar the outside of the foundation walls so they can fill the dirt in the trenches around the house. Next week the plumber will come run all the pipes and we will have the concrete guys back to pour the foundation floor and garage floor!

Footings

I LOVE seeing our lot slowly turn into a house. It has also been really fun for me to get to know Matt's job a little better and have him teach me all the different things that have to happen in each step of building our house. This week we had the footings finished. They set up the forms on Tuesday, and poured the concrete on Wednesday. I HATE getting off work so late because by the time I run over to the lot, it is almost dark and all my pictures are way bad!

The garage will be on the left (which is not excavated) and you can see the forms for the exterior walls and cold storage on the right:

Garage (and kitchen behind the garage):

View of what will be the kitchen/dining room/family room:

 

 

Next up: FOUNDATION! Planned for Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week! Yay for progress!