Week 2

Welcome to week two of 'The House of Cameron' build. Well...it's more like week 13. But we will go with week two because it took that long for us to see any action.

The first 12 weeks consisted of getting an engineer sign off, applying for permits, a lot of waiting, getting an arborist out to come up with a 'landscaping plan' (one of the city's requirements), and then some more waiting. During this whole time we were gathering as many quotes as possible, arranging financing and insurance, creating a budget and signing our builders agreement with Mahoe Properties. Mark Marley, one if the owners of Mahoe is a friend and will be our general contractor.

Luckily we have quite a few friends and family in the trades which really helps. My father in-law was able to arrange the excavation. It was pretty special having him be a part of it all. And my friend Ryan from Mijo Construction is doing our framing.

Last week Ian and I loaded a power pole, yes a power pole, and a generator in his truck and drove it out to our lot. It was as you would expect, heavy! Let's just say I spent the whole truck ride staring at the pole, holding my breath, praying for a strap not to break and the pole to go flying.




This week they have completed the 'footings'.






Now that there is a bit of a structure up, I am beginning to be able to visualize what room goes where. These photos are taken from what would be our back yard.

We spent a few hours at Rona and End of the Roll yesterday looking for tile and flooring options. I love the price of laminate but really want to stick to natural products. The first of many dilemmas I am sure.

I mentioned last week that we designed our house and the layout ourselves. I will be honest and say that this was not an easy process for us. My sister over at Painting The Roses White had no troubles at all. She had created her home before Ian and I had even drawn our garage. Before the opportunity to build came along, we thought we were going to buy a house (and possibly renovate). During our house hunting I came across one house that I fell in love with. It was over priced and by the time they lowered their price we had missed it. But it was one of those houses that I couldn't stop thinking about. So...I basically copied the floor plan right from that house. So unoriginal, I know! We made the alterations to it and voila, house plans done!...Well, not so fast- we worked with David from Mesa Designs and he created the plans for us from our chicken scratch drawings.

Here is the drawing of our house from the front.




I will try and post once a week. If I don't-it's only because I'm busy building a house ;)

-Posted by Jess