Day 88 – Adair Homes Phase II of Construction

Last week the final touches to the exterior were finished, which rounded out the end of Phase I of Construction.

We spent much of last weekend debating on colors for the exterior. We got a sample of Pewter Tankard from Sherwin-Williams, and painted a leftover piece of siding. We took it around to some other houses that we liked and it seemed a little light. I think we are leaning towards going with something a little darker; if we decide on a different color it might be Dovetail Gray by Sherwin-Williams.

This week was set aside for our excavator to come out and start his stuff. Unfortunately, he did not do some of the planning beforehand, so he didn’t get much work done this week on the outside of the house. He was able to have a meeting with the electric company and got the conduit delivered to the site.

One thing that changed his schedule was that the insulation and dry wall contractors were able to come early. They weren’t supposed to be here until next week, but insulation was installed this week. One of the days the excavator was supposed to be working the insulation trucks were in the way. I don’t think it was huge deal though and he’s just planning on coming back next week to do his work.

Dry wall was delivered today, which was another reason the excavator didn’t want to start ditching the utility trenches. If he started to dig trenches this week it would have made it harder for them to get the dry wall into the house. Once they get the dry wall dropped off then most of the work they will be doing will be foot traffic on the exterior, and the trenches on the outside shouldn’t be a problem.

Also, last weekend the HVAC guy was back to fix the holes that were placed in the floor joists. The fix from the engineers was to patch the holes. The holes were patched and the ducting was moved to the correct location.

We had our Pre-Dry wall meeting with Adair Homes on Tuesday. We walked through the house going over all the finishes – making sure the flooring is correct in all the rooms, checking where there will be doors, etc.

We were able to ask any questions we had at this point and go over the schedule for the rest of the build. It looks like we are supposed to be finished by the end of January. This is about two months from when we were originally told we would be finish when we first signed our contract with the Adair Homes home ownership counselor; however this is still on time from when we first met with the site superintendent, and realistically what we had expected.

Our excavator happened to be there that day as well so it worked out having everyone there at one time. The Adair Homes site superintendent was able to talk with him about scheduling, so he didn’t start the trenches before the drywall was delivered and when to pour the driveway.

If you build with Adair Homes there are certain aspects that are left for the customer to take care of, one of which is the concrete outside of the house.  We were able to talk with the excavator about our plans for the front porch. We are thinking we will do a stamped concrete front porch that runs all the way across the front of the house. We now need to decide on a stamp design that we like and a color of stain (Add it to the to-do list).

With the completion date in sight it now feels like we don’t have enough time to get everything done that we need to. Most urgent is deciding on the exterior paint colors. We then have to decide on the interior paint colors, after that the stamp and stain for the front porch. We will also need to decide on appliances – we’ve previously looked at these but we will have to go in and order them and get delivery set up.

Another thing on the list is lighting fixtures. In some areas we added the electrical boxes for the lighting, but did not purchase lights through Adair Homes; and some places where they have standard lighting fixtures we want to change. Not as urgent as some of the other things, but still something we need to get done.

Adair Homes Phase II of Construction:

1. Insulation
2. Sheetrock
3. Clean Up (Owner to-do)
4. Garage Door Installation
5. All finishing material are Delivered
6. Finish Carpentry
7. Clean Up
8. Countertops Intalled
9. Plumbing and Electrical Fixtures Installed
10. Flooring Installed
11. Final Stages of Finish Caprenty
12. Inspections
13. Clean Up
14. Pre-Occupancy Orientation with Adair Home Superintendent
15. Final Inspections
16. Final Walk-through, Orientation and Closing

This weekend we will work on cleaning up the outside of the house and taking a load to the dump. We’ve been trying to clean along the way, but with all the trades working the past couple of weeks there was a lot of construction waste built up.

Next week the interior of the house should start to look much different with dry wall up!