Week 2 of Construction of Our Oregon New Home

Not much has changed on the new home. I was hoping our excavator could come during this time we had between the foundation and start of framing, but…s$%# happens.
His bobcat broke down last week and he spent the end of last week and the beginning of this week trying to fix it. Needless to say, he was not able to get back to our project to get the foundation drains installed and back fill around the foundation.

Last week was not a complete waste as the garage guy was able to come. We talked with our site superintendent about who was going to do the rock for the garage. He recommended we have the same person do the rock and the concrete, so that if something does go wrong there is only one person to blame.

The subcontractor was able to come at the end of last week and get the rock installed, and then came the next day to pour the concrete. We now have our foundation and garage concrete completed.

Next week framing is supposed to start. The lumber is supposed to get delivered today, they’ll start the floors early next week, the plumbers will come to do the under house stuff and then the framers will come back to finish up.

Working with the City on Side Walk Requirement

I’ve also contacted a few more people at the city to see if there is any way to get a different ruling on our sidewalk issue. Per the city code they are saying that we need to install sidewalks in front of our house. We are hoping to avoid this due to the cost, but also because none of the other houses in our neighborhood have sidewalks.

The neighborhood was originally established in the ’50s, so most of the homes are older. Since then, the code has changed and now due to ADA accessibility their needs to be a sidewalk. The only issue with this is that both houses next door do not have sidewalks, so the sidewalk in front of our house would lead to our neighbor’s fence – doesn’t make sense to me.

The other frustrating part to this is that I was previously told that we would not need to put in a side walk and there is a house being built a few blocks away that is not needing a side walk, so it seems like we should be able to get passed this.

We’re 17 days into construction and have a foundation and garage slab. I think once framing starts things are going to feel like they are moving along much quicker!