Lower Footings

This past week, they formed the lower basement footings on Monday and Tuesday.  They were suppose to pour the concrete on Wednesday, but we spent the day waiting for the city inspector to arrive.  We passed our first inspection...on the first try!  Now, the pour will be Monday after Thanksgiving.  We spent the long weekend with many helpers assembling 12" thick ICF block.  Altogether, we built 128 straight blocks and 16 corner blocks which consisted of connecting the two foam pieces with 16 plastic connectors.  Thank you everyone for your help!  It made the task go quickly!

You can see the ICF is everywhere...including our garage (as pictured above).

The kids enjoyed playing in the empty boxes...even Aspen stayed happy through most of it!

Digging the Hole!

On November 15th, Jeff and I met on the construction site early and watched as the excavator slowly began its process of digging up the dirt for our basement.  For me, it was so exhillarating as the process of building our new home actually became a reality.  It has been 6 years since we talked about buying Tract G in hopes that one day we would build a new home.  Today, that dream is becoming true - how incredibly exciting!

After school, we took the boys to the property so they could see the process first hand.  They were thrilled with the mounds of dirt they saw.  They ran up and down the piles as well as drove their toy cars on the imaginary roadways they created.  We finally allowed them to climb into the excavator bucket for a photo opportunity. This has definitely been an exciting day for us all!

Notice the step-down dig which is done for safety purposes.  Each step is 5 feet deep and 3 feet wide.  It took 3 long days to completely dig Phase 1 of the basement. Quote from the excavator: "This is the biggest hole I've dug in 15 years!" 

Construction Has Begun!

It's official, the new Guymon House is under construction! We've created this blog so that friends and family can follow along with us on our journey in building our new home.

On November 13th, we had a small "Ground Breaking" party, where a few friends and family members helped us raise a toast to the start of our big project.