I used to go to church a lot more than I do now. Over the years, I have heard one of my favorite sermons preached on 2 separate occasions by 2 different preachers. While it makes me wonder if the sermon is downloadable on the internet somewhere, I have to give credit where credit is due. It's a heck of a message. The title, in both cases (he he!), was "Thank God for Closed Doors." The premise was simple. There is a reason why we don't get what we want in the world. Because you never really know what might happen in life, when a door is shut you should welcome the opportunity for something better.
All of this has a point, I promise! When my husband and I traveled to visit our job site last weekend, we were disappointed in the lack of progress. The house was at the same stage of construction for at least 4 weeks. Initially, the holidays were to blame and then it was the weather...Regardless, there was a wooden structure mimicking the footprint of the house over the large rock in the center of the building site, but that's it. This structure creates the crawl space and provides the level surface for the footings and concrete blocks that make up the foundation. The rock was an engineering nightmare that required 125 steel rods to secure.
The problem was that the builder had not planned to bring the main level of the house to street level. The architectural floor plans and renderings all had the main floor at street level. We approved the plans, but apparently this was BEFORE the engineer had assessed the building site. The builders and the engineer made decisions about the parking and the elevation of the house without discussing it with us!?!?! We are so glad that we visited the site and put the brakes on this plan. Their elevation had the house barely visible from the street - nestled behind a rock (?go figure? with a steep driveway down to the house).
The good news is that our builder took our feedback well. We shared the importance of a level main entrance and street level parking. Our builder has now met with the engineers to devise a new plan. He also has to go back to the homeowner's association to get their approval since the home will now be much taller than it originally was presented. I'm optimistic that the proposal will get approved. If the footings and blocking were finished, we would've had a much bigger problem on our hands. Thank God for closed doors or in this case a construction delay.
Lesson learned. Visit the job site at least once a month!! The first trades in will be HVAC and electrical so our builder said it's time to start the floor plan so that we can ensure proper placement of vents and lighting. We are easily 2 months away, but I don't have a ton of time so I'm starting now. I'm going pretty traditional with the furniture layout so I'm not sure if it will be material enough to share, but we'll see...!