Anyone want some wood??

The clearing is well underway. It should be done early next week. There are huge piles of wood all around the property. Please come and take some!!! Seriously.....
My coworker's husband and friend already made a trip up to get some, so hopefully it will disappear a little at a time. 

Anyways, a plumber came out and gave us more bad news about tapping into the sewer system so it looks like we are going to be getting a septic tank. 

Here are more pictures/videos 

Looks like fun

Please come take our wood!!

Going down our driveway to where the house will sit

Brush pile

The pine smelled good

Looking up towards the road, coming back from our far, far away sewer main

 More wood, who wants to have a huge bonfire? Bring a tent and a chainsaw.

Standing where our house will be, looking into the backyard

The Bobcat hard at work

Actual physical progress!

http://www.raderlandscaping.com/ 
Chris, my next-door neighbor growing up, is clearing our land for us.  He started today clearing the general area. He will be there for the next few days with other guys to finish the clearing and to do the construction driveway. I will post more pictures when all the work is complete. 

Clearing land.....

Our driveway.....kind of

Some pictures from Chris....my nephews will enjoy these ones

Color Meeting and Excavation Date

Today was a big day. We met with Amy from Wayne Homes and got to pick out all the details for our house. Pretty exciting considering everything else we have dealt with the past month has been bad news. Instead of writing a lot, I'm just going to post pictures of some of the choices we made. 

We also set a date with our excavator to begin clearing the land this upcoming Tuesday!

Wayne Homes Montgomery- Craftsman Elevation. Ours will be a mirror image of this with a side load garage

The floor plan. We changed some things around, but the basic set up is the same (again mirror image)

Stone wainscot, "Sand dune" siding, blue shakes, and blue-black shingles

Foyer flooring

Foyer flooring next to Great Room-Kitchen flooring

My photoshopped picture of the Kitchen cabinets next to the flooring (because I forgot to take a picture)

Great Room and Kitchen flooring with paint colors for baseboards and walls (we will be painting some walls different colors, but this will be the main color)

Kitchen Cabinet color with paint colors and counter top (upside down)

Kitchen Cabinet with close-up of counter top

Master Bathroom cabinet, vanity top and flooring

Master Bathroom Sink

My photoshopped Master Bathroom

Close up of Master Bathroom vanity top

Guest Bathroom cabinet, vanity top and flooring

Guest Bathroom Sink (I was shipped the wrong sink and the other one I originally purchased is now sold out. The only thing that was different was the faucet. Anyways, I bought this one and it was actually $40 cheaper so I guess it's all good)

My photoshopped Guest Bathroom

Close up of Guest Bathroom vanity top

Other things like lights, doors, faucets, etc were picked from pictures so I didn't take pictures of the pictures. 

Our lot inspection meeting is scheduled for December 30th. This is when our Field Manager (FM) will meet us at our cleared lot and measure out exactly where the house will go. 

A Big Week

We are in the middle of talking to two different people to get the land cleared out. Hopefully we will have decided on who to go with in a couple of days (or less). Everything is more expensive than we had planned in terms of the land prep, so that's a disappointment. But in general, we know that we are blessed to even have this opportunity so we are trying to look at the positives. 

We have our colors meeting in 3 days!!! There are a couple things that we are buying/doing ourselves including the bathroom sinks. Today I bought our two sinks/faucets for the master bathroom and then another one for the guest bathroom. Gotta love Cyber Monday!! Now hopefully everything looks just as good in person as it does online. 

I'll be updating again on Thursday with our color choices!!

It's Not all Fun and Games

We picked a date for the colors meeting! For anyone wondering, the colors meeting is where you get to pick things like siding, brick, stone, shingles, cabinets, doorknobs, carpet, flooring, and so many other things. The soonest appointment that worked for Adam and I was December 4th. So that's something to look forward to. 

I've been having a great time planning out our house set up and other little design details. It's not stressful for me at all to play around and make changes to the design. Now that we are almost at our completed design we need to start working on some of the other (less fun) stuff. 

I was off work today so I decided to get started with figuring out how to tie in our water and sewer lines. This gave me a huge headache, as I really had no idea where to start. I went to the township's website and then had to figure out which one of three providers supplied our land. 

I finally figured it out and contacted both the water and the sewage suppliers. Unfortunately, since our land is pretty far off the main road we will have to get permission from our neighbors to run the water and sewage lines to our house. They can deny our request or charge us. I hope that is not the case or my headache will become a lot worse. Time to send out some letters to neighbors explaining our situation and hope for the best!

Other things we need to get tied in are gas, electric, and cable. I will tackle those another day. 

Call for the Colors Meeting

We've been waiting 10 days since our contract was submitted to schedule our colors meeting. Well, we got the call. Only problem is my husband and I both work full time and the appointments are only Mon-Fri. We will have to try to find a day that they have an appt opening that we can both take off work. Hopefully it's sooner rather than later since this is supposed to be the most exciting step of the whole process (besides moving in of course!)

Getting Started......

I decided to start a blog to keep family and friends updated regarding our home building process, and also so I can reminisce when I'm an old lady. I don't know how detailed I will be with describing each step, but basically I like to take a lot of pictures and I figure this is a good place to put them in a timeline format.

 I know when we were debating on different home builders, looking at other people's blogs/pictures really helped seal the deal with Wayne Homes and the Montgomery Craftsman.

So here we are, a little over a week after our contract was signed....waiting for our colors meeting.

Our land was owned by my Buscia (grandma in Polish) and her late husband since the 1950s. It was given to them as a payment from my granddad's parents. It has been primarily unused since then, so now it's time to put it to good use! We purchased the 6.75 acres of wooded land off of her in 2012 and decided now is a good time to start building (and get out of our townhouse).

As I said before, the land is wooded. Fortunately it's not dense so clearing it out shouldn't be too difficult (I hope).

Yesterday my parents and I went to the property and tagged all the trees that we want cleared. So now the next step is actually clearing them! We are hoping to get this done before any bad winter weather comes. Our goal is to begin building around March of next year.

We are building in the Pittsburgh area and are going through Wayne Homes' Greensburg location. Our salesperson Melissa has been extremely helpful and patient in dealing with my changes (and my changes to the changes). She is a big reason why we stuck with Wayne Homes. I really don't think anyone else could be any more helpful. 

Here are some pictures of our land!

April 2012- checking out the land before we decided to purchase 

October 2014- Pretty fall leaves

Our little road

November 2014- view from the road down to where our house will sit