Check out the photo gallery for the first pictures of the basement.

The excavation of our land is going well. As you can see, they have the lake dug and it even has a little bit of water in it. Get your fishing rods ready, there will be fish in it before you know it. There are some more photos in the gallery. They are a bit blurry because it was dark and we were using night shot and the flash. But, you get the general idea.

We are planning a field trip up to visit the site again this weekend. Anyone interested in checking it out in person let us know.

Here’s a quick update on the status of our digging:

Sunday - Tuesday they will dig the lake

Wednesday they will dig the basement.

Whoohoo!

With the electric company’s recent installation of our permanent electric meter, and the hook up of electricity, we are charged and ready to begin the digging process.

The excavator will begin by digging the lake, or more accurately, the pond. Digging the pond will be a three day process and upon its completion they will dig the basement. That will only take one day.

Permits are currently being pulled for the pond and four days after they have been given the green light to begin, we will have two large holes in our property.  I plan on taking a lot of pictures for the website and I would like to get some short video posted also. We’ll wait and see how that works out.

Meanwhile, we are looking at cabinets and appliances.  Appliances should be fairly easy to choose. We are going with stainless steel everything.  As for the cabinets, we really seem to be gravitating towards the darker stained wood. A couple of colors we like are ‘chocolate’ and ‘peppercorn’. Those just sound dark, don’t they? We still need to meet with an expert to pick out the look and style of our cabinets and plan the overall layout.

Oh, how the fun never stops…

We are one step closer to having our basement dug. What is the missing ingredient?

Electricity.

According to Lorain Medina Rural Electric we should have our electricity hooked up either tomorrow or Monday.  That means the excavator should be able to start digging next week.  Keep your fingers crossed!

We had a bit of a scare that we were going to have some serious water problems with our house being dug at the current location.

But after talking with our builder we are reassured that we are going to be fine right where we are. We are going to have a very good drainage and water-proofing system so it will be all good.

They are going to build the land up so we are up on higher ground. The only question now is: should we just have them scrape the land to get the dirt or dig a pond. Decisions, decisions. They never end.

As soon as we get electricity hooked up ( hopefully the electric company gets out there quick) we can have the basement dug. I’ll get some pictures of the hole in the ground up on the site as soon as that happens. And I promise that the driveway pictures are coming soon.

Well after owning our land for two years, meeting with four different builders (one that we try not to talk about) and spending countless hours researching house plans, we finally have a driveway. WhooHoo!

I’ll have some pictures of the driveway up soon. I plan to get out there today and take some photos of it.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that digging the basement is at a standstill due to a ground water issue. What is the issue you wonder? About seven feet deep in the ground we hit a lot of water. Yikes. Now this is not necessarily a reason to panic because the house can be built up higher and they can pack in dirt around the house to help protect from the water and run it off.  We are also having a very good drainage and water-proofing system installed. Water however, is always a scary thing.

Plan B is to move the house to the back of the property where there is a small area of higher ground.  There will still be ground water to deal with but we will be naturally higher because of how the land has a natural mound there. (Fun Fact: This mound is actually a shale deposit left over from a glacier. Pretty interesting, huh?)

We are going to discuss this further with the builder today and make our decision.  We’d like to stay where we are because it will give us a nice big backyard and help maintain some privacy since we won’t be right next to the neighbor.  But…there’s the water to consider and the longterm protection of our basement from water is definitely the number one concern right now.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this story…

They’re going to be digging a hole on Monday and  starting the driveway next week! Yea! The house is now staked out on the land. We’re going to visit this weekend and see what it looks like. We’ll post some pictures as soon as we take them.