Pre-Construction Meeting and Footies (Or something like that)

Today we met our project manager for the first time and completed the pre-construction meeting. As I mentioned, the "pre-construction" part of this meeting was stressing me out because despite what our sales rep told us, it felt like a hold up to construction, so needless to say, having it completed is a great relief.

We met our PM and he seems awesome! Our meeting required both of us to leave work early, but since it's a one time thing, it wasn't a huge deal. We went to one of the model homes in a different community since the model home in our neighborhood has been sold and the current residents probably wouldn't welcome strangers traipsing about no matter how cute and funny we are.

Our PM was early for the meeting. I greatly appreciate punctuality and I have even more appreciation  for people who show up early. It makes my little type A heart happy. So we were off to a good start! He also shared that he has been a project manager for 19 years, so experience is on our side!

So what does a pre-construction meeting entail? I'll tell you!

First, we reviewed our selection sheet line by line and clarified anything our PM had questions about. We also asked our own questions. Shockingly, our PM answered some of the questions we've been asking for months and it only took him seconds! One of the questions he answered was "what appliances come with the bar?" Our PM typed on his computer for 2 seconds and let us know that it comes with a dishwasher and a small refrigerator. He followed this up with an explanation that if he doesn't know an answer he will tell us "I don't know, but I will find out". I almost jumped over the table to hug his silly neck! This is what we've wanted the entire time as we've been struggling to communicate with our sales rep.

Anyway, as we reviewed our selections, custom requests, and change orders our PM drew on the house plans and made several notes. He really made it seem like he cares about us and the outcome of our build, this is something we had not experienced prior to this meeting.

The final thing our PM did was explain the build process, timeline, & expectations. We exchanged emails and he promised to email both of us tomorrow with an update on the footer inspection (which is supposed to occur tomorrow) and with answers to the few questions he didn't answer today. Currently, we are projected to have a finished home in early December.

Overall, we are both optimistic and more excited now that we've met our PM!

In other news....we have had some physical progress on the house! They dug out the place for the footers and according to our PM are planning to complete the inspection on the footers and poor the concrete this week! Here's a picture or four...

View from back of lot looking towards street

View from left side of lot

View from left front side of lot

View from front of lot, you're looking at the future location of the front porch!

As you can see, the usable backyard will be small and the PM said they may have to build a retaining wall on the back right side. The lot is actually about twice the size of what you see, unfortunately half of it is covered by trees. The up side is, we have a pretty private backyard and not a lot of grass to mow!

That's all for now, we will venture that way over the weekend and hopefully have some spectacular pictures of concrete for our next post!