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.

Pre-Construction Meeting

Today, Brian met with Matt, our building manager, for our pre-construction meeting. Brian and Matt discussed the building timeline and apparently, our house is scheduled to be complete by the end of July! It's all happening very fast, but we're also excited to get things going. At the pre-construction meeting, Brian got a copy of the grading plan for our Lot (Lot 15). You can check it out below. The builders will be providing us with periodic updates and they're supposed to start staking things out by the end of this week.

Developments on Kinsale Place

Another beautiful Sunday in Virginia, and we signed the ratified contract for our home! We're excited to finally be finished with all of our building selections. Since our last update, we decided to add a double walk out basement door, another coax cable outlet to one of our bedrooms, and an upgraded garage door with Sonoma arch windows. You can check out what our garage door will look like below. Our garage door will be white.




We were also surprised to learn that the lots on either side of our home have now sold. The lot to the right of ours (Lot 16) will be a Ryan Home and the lot to the left of ours (Lot 14) will be an NV Home - Wynterhall model. Since we last visited our home site, construction has begun on Lots 12 and 13. See photo below.

We also took a drive to check out some nearby sights. We discovered another Harris Teeter grocery store (open 24 hours) and with a Redbox:-)

There's also a quaint little British cafe, tea shop and store called the British Pantry just down the road from us. We spoke with the owner for a bit and marveled at the wide array of British delights (PG Tips tea, Cadbury chocolates, salad cream, Heinz baked beans, Walkers crisps, meat pies, Devonshire cream, etc). We'll definitely have to check out their fish and chips Friday menu or the afternoon tea!

You can check out the British Pantry at the following link: http://www.thebritishpantry.us/index.html

Lucky Charms

They say on St. Patty's Day you find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and I'm pretty sure we found our pot of gold on Lot 15 at Kirkpatrick Farms in Aldie, VA. After walking (er, trudging through) the muddy lots with our realtor, we decided on the lot and set about the grueling 5 hours of reviewing floor plans and options. Who knew there were so many shades of granite or variations of brick? Certainly not us. However, we somehow survived signing all 50+ pages of paperwork to set the wheels in motion on building our new home, which will be built in a mere 4-5 months!