In Summit County, the building department has a moratorium on road permits between October 31-May 1, so it is super important for us to get the utility work done this fall. Like we talked about earlier in the month, we finally have power on site. Yes! And now we can happily say that the water line is done and we completed the sewer tap on September 23 (more on those processes below).

One huge variable at this point is the gas line with Xcel. We’re crossing our fingers (can you please do the same?!) that we’ll get lucky and we’ll be able to run the gas line before October 31. The gas line sits in the right of way on our side of the street, so thankfully we don’t have to tear up the road (again), but with only a few weeks left we’re quite nervous. If Xcel doesn’t give us the go ahead and we can’t get the gas line installed by the end of October, we’ve got a couple of options. One, proceed with a temporary fuel source, like propane. This option would work in the short run, but would involve additional expense down the road to convert everything (boiler, appliances, etc.) back to natural gas. And, we’d also need to be sure we’d still qualify for a certificate of occupancy, knowing that we need to convert the primary fuel source. The other option would be hunker down and wait until the County starts allowing road permits again in the spring. Definitely not ideal.

A little more background on this timing. We had originally been aiming to complete the house in early November, but last winter didn’t do us any favors. I’m sure you remember us shoveling on the first day of summer, right? So, we met with our awesome banker, Brian, from Alpine Bank in Frisco a few weeks ago and he said it wasn’t a problem to have a 6-month extension on our construction loan. Whew. He also said that we were the 5th loan they had to extend, so, no surprise here, we’re not the only ones who ran into delays. That puts us right at the beginning of May to have everything done, which we actually think we can complete the house before then, if things keep falling into place. But, you probably see where this is going, if we can’t pull the road permit for the gas line until May 1, that delays us further - and puts in a bit of a sticky spot with our loan. Our banker Brian, assures us that we’ll be ok, but we’d rather not have to extend further. On the bright side, we can certainly press forward on a ton of interior work if the gas line has to be delayed.

So many variables.

Ok, enough worrying! Back to what we DID get done!

First, a quick sidebar…

Kelsey has been a champ working through all of the details on our project. People always ask me, “Does your husband have previous construction experience?” Umm no. “Are you working with a local builder?” Well, we live here and he’s building it, does that count? “How does he know how to do everything?” Simple answer for that one…he doesn’t and just never gives up until he figures it out. And, his previous work as a geologist managing environmental clean-up projects helps along with lots of previous house renovation projects certainly helps.

If our boys take one thing away from this process, I hope that they will remember how hard their Daddy worked to make our mountain dreams come true. Sure, we could have moved to Summit County, bought a small condo or a fixer upper, but what fun is that? Why not go bigger and start from scratch and make it just the way we want it. Thank you, Kelsey for dedicating your time and energy to this BIG project. We will treasure you, and our home forever.

Ok, back to utilities and other projects.

Kelsey worked with Colorado Barricade to create a traffic control plan for both the water and sewer taps. He could have done this on his own, but it was nice to outsource this project to their capable hands. Money (about $100) well spent.

We had to have a sign up in the neighborhood a week before we had to close the road. I was out of town for a work trip in Chicago, so thankfully mom was able to drive down to Denver to get our “Road Closed Ahead 9-19-19” sign. Thanks Mom!

Don’t worry, we didn’t make my mom haul this big load. She picked up our single custom date sign :-)

Then, Kelsey worked with our excavator, Bill, from Majestic Construction to pull our Right-of-way permits and make the necessary plans for what equipment we would need on site. Kelsey arranged for the tap service, we worked with Tap Masters, to actually tap into the water main. For a cool $675, they drilled a small hole into the pressurized water main, connected our pipe to it and dunzo. Then, we connected our service line that had already been placed from the house when we poured the foundation. They did some backfill and that work was done. The water tap process only took a day’s work.

After the water tap was done, the guys got started with installed our siding on September 13. They also installed our mudroom door that day. The dark gray color of the siding is looking awesome! As of the end of the month, we have boards installed on most of the west, north and east walls. We’re in a bit of a holding pattern on doing more boards until we install windows, but we’re getting done what we can now and we’re loving how it’s looking!

North wall siding and mudroom door installed.

We had fast work with the water tap, but the sewer tap wasn’t quite as easy. Many of the lots in our neighborhood already had a tap from the main line, but unfortunately our lot didn’t. Bit of a bummer, since the cost of having to do the tap into the water main was around $5,000. Speaking of extra costs, our lovely clay soil came back to bite us again.

We had to dig a trench to run the sewer pipe that we had placed when we poured the foundation and connect it to the main line in the middle of our street. In a nutshell, all of the dirt we pulled out of the ground was basically unusable and we had to fill the trench with “better” dirt (aka dirt we had to pay for to go back in the trench). We certainly don’t want to be THOSE neighbors where the street collapses, but darn it, we’ve probably spent a few thousand dollars on stuff we’ll never see. But, I’m going to do my best to have a little gratitude practice when I pull into the driveway to thank that expensive dirt for helping our utilities work the way they should and keeping that pipe safe below that expensive dirt.

Sewer tap in place. They had to hand dig around all of the other utilities that are in the road.

Awful clay in the foreground, expensive dirt in the background.

After the sewer tap was done, after three full days of work, we got to move onto some of the last dirt work, the finish backfill around the house! As you remember, we had a bunch of piles of dirt around the perimeter of the house that had just been hanging out. Thankfully, we were able to use quite a bit of this dirt in the front yard, but we did haul away about 25 dump truck loads of dirt that was unusable. Our lots sees a lot of water, so we’re trying to be very smart about our drainage plan. We’ll have berms on the west, north and east sides of the house with a little trench (I’m going to call it a moat) around to divert water. I’ve always wanted to live in a house where you cross a bridge to get to, but I think having a moat is a close second.

And, the last little project to button up the sewer tap was to replace the patch of asphalt we tore up to gain access to the man hole. We may need a go fund me campaign if we ever want to pave our driveway, once tiny little chunk of asphalt was $4,000. Oy. Speaking of all of this, is anyone interested in learning more about our budget? We’re happy to be transparent about it all if it would be interesting/helpful. Let us know!

What’s coming up next?

Mom and Dad are headed home soon after helping us all of September. I think they went on two bike rides and then worked the rest of the time. We’ve made some awesome progress while they were here. And, they kept us well fed (the kids were happy for a break from rice and vegetables) and helped a ton of with school/daycare drop off and pickup. Thanks for everything Mom and Dad!
Our windows were supposed to arrive last week, but there was a bit of a delay on the supplier side, so we’re guessing they’ll be here this next week
Our Panoramic Door is under production and will arrive at the end of October
We’ll continue to frame the front window wall and hopefully get the remaining windows ordered soon. If it starts to get really chilly, we’ll hang up some plastic on that south wall
Once the windows are installed on the west, north and east sides, we’ll be able to keep working on installing our siding
My mom and I finished painting the board and batten siding, so now it’s time to move on to the cedar! We’ll be using the cedar on the entry way, as well as some accents below windows to break up the board and batten.
Our front door should arrive soon, so we’ll get that installed and painted. To match the mudroom door, we’ll be painting it a beautiful blue/teal color called Pacific Pleasure. I think it’s going to be an awesome pop of color to welcome folks to our home. Since we won’t be getting our dream exterior door - I wanted one of these! - painting a less expensive door a cool color will have to do.
Before we start doing interior walls, we need to sand and use an acetone solution on the steel beams. This will help remove the rust, grime and painted on lettering from the steel mill. Oh, and lots of time wheeling the scaffolding around

We can’t believe that it’s the end of September. We’ve not had a solid three months without any snow. We have a feeling we won’t make it out of October without the first dusting. What do you think?

If you have questions about our project, or want to swing by and check it out in-person, drop us a line. We love visitors!

Cheers,

Cory

Here’s a few more progress photos from September :-)