Mud

[StoneHeartFarm]

Rob

Mixers getting stuck is real common. By the time they get done your drive will be pretty rough and there'll be at least one hole that feels like quick sand when you drive over it.

SHF

 

[RobS]

<font color=blue>What is the story there????? </font color=blue>

I'll let my wife respond...

Nope, she doesn't want to destroy the friendly tone of this forum /w3tcompact/icons/eyes.gif

Yes, our builder is a she. She handles all the scheduling, follow up, financials etc. as her full time job. She also has three kids near the ages of our two boys so that fills some of her time. Her husband is an engineer with our county so he adds a lot of technical expertise in his spare time. They work as a team and build six to eight houses a year. We've really clicked with them and they don't seem to mind our desire to be very involved, in fact encourage it.

On top of that, they have a JD4300 /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

BTW Neil, my wife likes your signature! First she'd seen it and first I'd mentioned a member from down under. We honeymooned in Australia /w3tcompact/icons/love.gif

 

[markinMn]

Rob, I see Mama's got a good grip on that littlest one! There looks like plenty of potential adventures in the construction site behind..............nice pics................................................mark

 

[njrqs]

Rob

Yes there are a few women in construction here, but very few house builders. So I was interested.

MikePA set my signature up. I haven't a clue about making one. He did wonders hey?

Where did you honeymoon in OZ???

There aren't many Assies on TBN. Someone has to keep you guys honest !

Cheers

 

[glennmac]

Rob, building a house must be exciting for everyone in the family. We never did that, and never will. Make sure you take lots of pictures to look at in 20 years. Also, be prepared for some frustrating times. Everyone I know who has built a house has run into some sort of glitch. It will be a never-ending but highly rewarding project.

 

[woodmills1]

most mud i can remember this early. more power to builders, gender not important. mud is mud it doesn't discriminate.

 

[RobS]

<font color=blue>Where did you honeymoon in OZ???</font color=blue>

We landed in Sydney and did a few days of city life there. Very nice town and wonderful people. From there we flew to Cairns and rented an RV for a couple more days of wandering the outback. The last portion was a few days on an island resort on the Great Barrier Reef. It was a fantastic trip that we hope to repeat in the future. Next time we'll stay a lot longer though, it's a big country!

G'day /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[DocHeb]

It looks like we'll be on the same construction schedule. Our basement walls were just poured (<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=photos&Number=108885&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=21&fpart=>Knotwyrk Farm</A>). We had some mud, but our builder put a pretty thick layer of crushed limestone down that helped a lot. Are you on a lake? - your first picture looks like there's one in the background.

 

[RobS]

No lake Chris, just a distant cornfield. We discussed putting stone down but it is so wet right now the stone would just get pushed down into the mud and be a sunk cost (literally) for us /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif On top of that, we'd still have mixers stuck as they need to get around on the site where we will not have driveway eventually. We agreed to bite the bullet and have the excavator on site during the wall pour. Still cheaper than a pump like you had, but not as cool /w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif

Where in Michigan are you? What is your move in day? We're looking at mid-August to get into the schools up there. Meeting with realtors this weekend to get our current house moving. Probably will require two moves, but we're getting a bit anxious about selling /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[DocHeb]

We'll be outside Ann Arbor, southeast Michigan. No distinct move-in date as of yet. We've been delayed so many times (driveway permit problems, septic permit problems, appeals for variances before committees, multiple layers of serial-processing government workers) that our initial dig date was to be September - LAST YEAR. As my wife says: "We haven't even started and we're five months behind!" Luckily this will be a second home for a while so we're not under pressure yet to finish. It's a good thing. Of the 180 homes in our current subdivision, there are 20 for sale and none have sold in the past three months. Slower than any other time since we've been there (1992).

Your property looks similiar to ours, with generally open fields and an old treeline.