Starting Foundation for Our Oregon Home

This week foundation is being started! I can’t believe it’s finally here! We’re actually starting construction. We were supposed to be “lot ready” by 7/5/18. We were scrambling a bit at the end, but we were able get everything done in time to meet our “notice to proceed date”.

Since then, we’ve been waiting around. We were originally told that the foundation was set to start on 7/12/18. Then, it was scheduled to start next week, but there were “delays”. First, the foundation guy was finishing two other projects. Then, last week, he was prepping for his daughter’s wedding, so he wasn’t able to come until the beginning of this week. It seems like there is always something…

The delay with the foundation wasn’t a huge deal as the framers are not able to come until the middle of August. Needless to say, we have time to get the foundation done and have it back filled before the framers come out.

Who Does the Garage Rock

We met with our site superintendent from Adair Homes last week to go over how he does things, and answer any questions before things started. As mentioned above he let us know that there was a delay with the framers; another issue we discussed was the garage slab.

The concrete from the garage is covered under our contract with Adair Homes. The rock and grading for the garage is not. This was supposed to be done by our excavator and was included in his bid. However, our site superintendent recommended we have his guys do the rock. If there are any issues later on there is only one person to blame, instead of the two different contractors pointing fingers at the each other.

This made sense to me, but once I talked to our excavator he made it seem like it couldn’t be taken out of his contact. After talking to his accountant he said that it was ok to have the other guys do it (he also agreed that it is better to have one person do both the rock and the concrete), so now we have the Adair Homes subcontractor planning on doing the rock and concrete in the garage and our guy will do all the concrete outside of the house.

Estimate of Completion Date from Starting Foundation by Adair Homes

Yesterday, I posted a picture on Instagram and asked how long it took others to get to completion once foundation was started, and basically everyone said it took longer than they were originally told. We hadn’t even started construction and there were already delays. We were originally told our completion date would be in November. At our meeting last week, he said it would not be until the end of December or more likely into January.

Here’s a review of our time line so far:

3/2/18 – Signed home order

3/13/18 – Home order was accepted by Adair Homes

4/15/18 – Reserve date meeting

4/16/18 – Construction permits submitted

4/27/18 – Closed on construction loan

4/26/18 – Pre-construction meeting

6/22/18 (Original estimate was 6 weeks from submit) – Permits issued

7/3/18 – Site work completed, notice to proceed submitted

7/10/18 – Site verification meeting with Adair Homes

7/23/18 (original start date was 7/12/18) – Foundation started

Original move-in-date estimate was the beginning of November; but after talking to other people who have built new homes, and getting an estimate from the site superintendent we’re looking at January to have the home completed. The way things are going probably longer than that. The big takeaway here is that there are always going to be delays and expect it to take longer than planned.