A Roof Over Our Heads

On our way home from Pittsburgh, we decided to stop off at the house to see how much progress had been made since last Thursday. It looks like our garage door has been installed and our roof is almost complete. Here's a closer look at our garage door. It's a 2-car carriage door in white with Sonoma arch windows.

Inside our house, there's also been progress. Our fireplace has been installed...

The tub in our master bathroom has been put in place (Brian can't wait to bathe in it!)...

The floor to our shower in the master bath has been installed...

...and the bathtub has also been put in place in our upstairs bathroom.

It looks like things will be moving along this week. The blueprints were taped up to the window of our family room.

The houses two and three lots down from ours on the left also seem to be near complete. Just look at those lush lawns...looks like we'll need a lawn mower soon!

We have Windows!

Just before the Memorial Day holiday break, we decided to drive out to check on the house. This is our third visit in a week! As you can see, all of the windows are now installed. Below is one of our two bay windows.


This is a photo of the window in what will be our study:


And this is a photo of the window that will be in our foyer:



Some more materials have been delivered to our lot, including our 65 gallon hot water heater.


The french doors from our kitchen to where our deck will be have also been installed.


You can see the scale of the doors from the backyard of our house.

Aldie at Night

Surprise! We decided to take a drive out to check progress on our house only 2 days since our last post. It was dusk and we could hear the crickets chirping...a far cry from city living in Old Town, Alexandria!

In the last few days it looks like some more of our windows have been installed and some more housing wrap added. We walked through our house to check on progress too. Here's a photo of our family room. You can see where our fireplace will be, along with 3 new windows that were installed.

Here's another view of the windows in the family room:

Brian decided to climb the stairs to check out the upstairs of our new home.

We'll leave you with a sneak peek of our dining room. You can see the sunset where our bay window will soon be.

From the Ground Up!

Unbelievably, in only 6 days since our last post, we can already see the framing of our house! When we turned onto our street and Brian said "there it is," I replied, "that's not our house," but it was!

Here's a closer look at the framing around our garage:

As you can see, the framing has been put in place, along with the trusses. Some windows have been delivered too.

Our doors have also been delivered onsite. We can see our double basement door at the top of the pile.

As you can see, there are a lot of building materials on our lot.

There's also some NV Homes wrap on our house. See the view from the back of our house below.

We also snapped a few photos (below) of the inside of our basement. You can see the progress since last week.

Another view of the inside of our basement:

We're excited about being soon-to-be homeowners!

More Than Just a Dirt Hole!

Quite a bit has happened on Lot 15 in the last week! Our driveway has been scoped out with gravel...

...and now we have a dirt slab where our garage will soon be.

Our foundation footings and walls are also complete.

Since we have a walk out basement, we decided to upgrade to full size windows and a double basement door. You can see the windows and door framed out in the photos of the foundation walls.

Here's another view:

Our plumbing groundworks were also installed this week and passed inspection. Although we're not finishing our basement right now, we had the builder rough in the plumbing for a bathroom in the basement and a wetbar.

Here's a view of the foundation walls from the side:

Another view of the basement foundation from the back of the lot:

Me peeking through what will soon be a full size window in our basement!


If you walk in our basement from the backyard, this is what you will see. The bathroom will be in the back left corner and the wet bar to the right ahead of you.

If you come in from the backyard and look to the right, you'll see this:

Here's Brian surveying the progress:

And in case you didn't know it, I like to drive bulldozers in my spare time....

Next week, we're told that our slab will be poured and framing might even begin! Until then, we'll leave you with a sneak peak at our backyard...just imagine green grass...and BBQs!

Our Great Big Hole in the Ground

We drove out to check out progress on our lot and discovered that there's quite a bit underway.

Aside from a big hole where our house will be, there's a concrete outline of our foundation...

There are also some spoke-like things that have been put in place.

We also noticed 5,000 pounds of concrete that has been delivered to our lot. The foundation should start being poured next week.

Looks like our neighbor's house to the right of ours (a Ryan home) is coming along too.

Staking out the Lot

It's official...the building process has begun! Our building manager, Matt, e-mailed to let us know that our lot has been staked out and the builders are ready to excavate early next week (weather permitting). Over the next few weeks our foundation, plumbing groundworks, sewer and water connections to the main will be installed, and the builders will pour our slab in preparation for framing.