My one reader taunts me!

Post #2 is because my wife is already heckling me about not updating this.  How do people have time to keep updates going every day?  I can't even find time to update every 2 weeks!

So for context here are some pictures to see the house process:
The top picture is from the week we purchased our lot (end of June).

This second picture is when we had it surveyed.  We sold our house & moved in between these two pictures.

This last picture was taken Nov 6th when we finally got a hole dug (me & the kids in the pic).  I had been 'stood up' 4 times by another company and they didn't return any calls over the previous 10 days to this picture - so a friend hooked me up with a great company who actually rented a machine to come do it early because a lot of rain/snow was expected soon.  Working with some trades companies is like a really bad dating game.    
And who knew it could be so nice in November?

One thing this picture does not show is that shortly after this I proceeded to drop my work keys down the storm sewer.  My brother-in-law ( I call him Putz - he is always calling me names from Grumpy Old Men) found some rubber boots, put them on and lowered himself down to try & find them (with plastic bags over his hands).  To no avail.  Respect points for even thinking of trying to find them - huge ones for going into the sewer.  Thanks Putz.  That was my first official day working on location.  Not a great start.

The work on the house definitely slowed down over the holidays.  My wife (Wonder Woman - but without the spandex or dark hair or super powers.... maybe I should call her LuLu Woman instead since that's the closest she gets to spandex...) & I committed to keep the same family routines during this process (aka family holidays & celebrations & Sundays off) since we have a young family.  No one will really care 10 years from now if I finished the home in October or November.  No one but me that is.  But my kids will remember if their Dad was never around and got into some bad routines for the rest of their lives.  I had planned to get out last Saturday (January 1), but it was -35 with the wind chill & I only got 4.5 hrs of sleep (up late & kids woke up early).  That was an easy decision.  L.W. was amazed that I was even still considering going out.

And I hate cutting insulated rim board - a friend (aka Pansy - the one who has labeled me 'the hillbilly builder') helped me a bit before Christmas and is now threatening to bring a video camera every time he comes so that people can laugh at me....  It only took me 4 tries to get the right cut on the 2.5 inch rim board...  Then we lifted it into place only to find that HE had measured wrong and it took him 2 tries to cut it right.  Nice.

I'll post some more recent pictures next time.

Until then,
I am.... the idiot builder.