A lot is happening but in some ways, the house feels a little stuck, as there aren’t any big accomplishments to announce.  The HVAC and Plumbing teams continue to chip away at those two installations, which are getting pretty far along.

We are waiting for confirmation of when the window installation will begin.  Coming on the heels of that, will be the siding. Both should happen in the next month.

Interior design is holding. some things up.  The electrical is on hold until we make a ton of related decisions (like where does every single outlet and switch go, what appliances are we going to have), and the plumbing needs specification of fixtures (although they are still roughing in stuff so they aren’t blocked, for now).  Unfortunately, in December, our designer, who we loved, had to bow out of the project for personal reasons; we spent about two months interviewing quite a few well qualified designers until we decided on one of them.  Now her team is working furiously to catch up.

We’ve additionally been moving ahead with planning the homes advanced audio / video, home automation, and security features. We’ve interviewed two audio / video / automation companies, and one security company.  There sure is a lot to consider and my appetite has been whet for all the neat features we will have, like some really nice surround sound  TV systems (we haven’t had something like that since it doesn’t make sense to install it in rentals, or a house you are going to tear down, which we’ve mostly been in for the last 12 years), full house audio, automatic smartphone controlled lights, door locks, and garage door, a full security system, smartphone controller HVAC, and whole house lighting “scenes” which can be set with the push of a button, to name a few.  Speaking of neat technology, check this out:

That’s what we plan on putting in our master bedroom, mostly because the far wall is too far away to provide a good viewing distance, unless we had a ridiculously large TV.

We’ve also been blocked with our landscape grading.  Ideally, we would be working on final grading and starting to dig the pool.  A typical pool, put in after a house is already in place, is done with a small Bobcat type digger.

You wouldn’t want a large excavator crossing your driveway, even if you had the access to get one into the back yard.  But digging this way is much slower and more costly.  Digging happens in smaller scoops and dirt must be removed in smaller batches due to access limitations.  On the other hand, digging with a large excavator that can load a large dump truck directly, is much faster, and way cheaper.

Our pool location is bound to have lots of rocks. Remember those?  That would make excavation with a small Bobcat type painfully slow and expensive.

However, we want to move the pool from where it is specified on the approved plans, and where to break the grade (we have about a 4 foot difference between the walk-out of our back porch and the far corner of our lot) is in question too, as we’ve decided we don’t like the way we did it in the currently approved plans.

Additionally, now that the new house is up in its final shape, and the backyard is clear, a number of elements of the original landscape plan (like lack of privacy hedges in certain areas) don’t make sense anymore, and need to be revised.

All of that awaited the selection of a new landscape architect, which was somewhat dependent on our selection of designer.  We’ve selected a new landscape architect and are now playing catch up.  Unfortunately, because our changes aren’t minor, we will be going through another approval process to get the changes approved.

So onward we plod.  Good thing we still have 12 months left in the overall construction schedule.