Friday, July 17, 2009

Our home location is now staked!

(Brendan)

In probably the first official action of building our home, yesterday (July 16) the surveyor for our project came out to our land and did the official survey for the home. The surveyor uses the foundation plan, prepared by my brother, to locate every corner of the home using GPS coordinates, after which he then places a stake in the ground with some written guidance on what corner of the home it represents. These stakes will then be used by the excavators to dig the foundation and re-grade the nearby land.

I met our general contractor out at the property and we both walked around the future home location with the surveyor, taking a look at the stake locations and ensuring that there did not need to be any changes in home placement. It was ultra-exciting to finally, after three years of driving out to the property and envisioning the home, see the actual layout of where the home will be. In the evening, Molly and I and the kids drove out to the property so Molly could see the stakes, and we took a few pictures (click any of the pictures to enlarge).

It's hard to see the stakes, but you can see a few of them (with pink tops) in this picture.

Here's Molly standing inside of what will be the new kitchen.

A rather large tree had recently fallen right at the East wall of the library. Here's me pretending to read a book (Molly made me do it).

4 comments:

Molly said...

And yes, that's me wearing jeans and a fleece sweatshirt in the middle of July because here in MN it has been windy and barely 60 degrees. It was good to have the covering in the wooded area anyway. Some of the grasses are as tall as me...but not for long!

And I did make Brendan pretend to read a book while sitting on that fallen tree. It's the library!

John Curran said...

Very exciting!

Better the tree should fall now, then after library is built...

Isaac S said...

Exciting! It's got to be nice to finally start to see the fruits of your labor.

Are most of the trees going to stay standing after construction? If so, it looks like your house will be well-shaded. My grandparents' house has a lot of natural shade and they rarely need to turn their A/C on in the summer.

Brendan Koop said...

Many of the trees will be still standing after construction, but most of the trees you see in the pictures in this post will be gone. In general, all trees in the direct footprint of the home and anything within at least a 10-15 yard radius of the home will be gone. For trees to be saved they have to be far enough away from the home that trucks aren't driving on their root system during construction.