Day One:

After many, many false starts this last year and a half, I am finally breaking ground on my new home. The engineer is supposed to have finished staking it off this morning. The heavy equipment should arrive late this afternoon, so they can dig the basement tomorrow. I still get goose bumps when I see those machines tearing up the ground, just like when I was a kid. The roar and the ground vibrating around me as these beasts move about is almost too much for my grownup heart to handle these days. Just to get that kid feeling back I might even steal some of my lumber to build a tree house or two.

Day Two:

Well, I was so excited about getting the house staked off yesterday, that I decided to take the afternoon off today and check it out.

I drive to my new subdivision called the Regency. I get to my lot and - no stakes. I call the engineer and ask him what happened. He says my lot was staked out early this morning. I tell him I'm standing on the lot and there are no stakes! He tells me he will call his field crew and ask what happened.

In the meantime I see his crew on the other side of the subdivision so I go over there and ask them what is going on. They said they did stake it off early this morning. So I take the crew chief over to my lot and he says, "this is not your lot - we staked your lot off over on Regency drive lot 22." I said, "well guess again guy, my lot is lot 22 in the Regency subdivision on Loganwood drive, WHICH IS RIGHT HERE!" He says "oh SH*T, Lee I will stake it off as soon as we get done on the lot we're working on right now!" Then Bill (the crew chief) proceeds to tell me, "you'd better go over to the lot we thought was yours and stop George from digging the basement." Then I say "Oh Sh*t."

So I drive over to the other lot and they are about a third done digging. I say to George, "looks like you are doing a great job here, but you are on the wrong freaking lot!" George says "Oh Sh*t". Then the builder drives up who owns the lot and asks why they are digging a week early, and where is Bob, the guy who usually does the digging? I proceed to explain to the builder (his name is JP), "I tell you JP, you are not going to believe this, but they are digging my basement on your lot." He says "Oh Sh*t". Then George whispers to me, "Lee you wouldn't want this lot anyway - the whole back of the basement here is blue rock." That is the hardest rock in this part of the country. To dig this kind of rock you need a ram hoe which costs $400 an hour, plus several dump trucks and a front end loader - it would take at least several weeks and $40,000 to dig it all out. That's when I tell JP it's a good idea to put the basement on top of the blue rock, so when you are finished the home looks like it is sitting on a little hill - plus you get a walk out basement. JP likes the idea and asks me to design a home that will work for this lot. Then he tells George, "either fill in the hole or I will pay you to finish digging the basement, but not for what you have done." So I get a house to design and Good old George gets paid for digging half a basement. Not bad considering the situation.

Now when I get back to my lot, it's staked off and about an hour later George shows up with his two pieces of heavy equipment.



While he is unloading, my next-door neighbors come over and wonder why my house is partly staked off on their property. As nicely as I can, I tell them that those stakes are set 25 feet from the real house so that we can get the heavy equipment around the building site to dig the basement without disturbing them. They again ask me why my house is on part of their property. I'm thinking to myself "Oh brother, what a day and we haven't moved one inch of dirt yet." I tell my neighbors to hang on for an hour or so and then you will see the outline of the home. George then proceeds to paint the outline of my home in white paint, like we always do. My neighbors then could see my home is quite a ways off the property line. That part of my home juts way in so I'm more like fifty feet off of their property line.

Wells, it starts raining as soon as George finishes painting the outline and we call it a day. It's supposed to rain the next couple of days. I don't think I can take another day like this too soon anyway.

My client and friend, who is also the developer of the subdivision I am going to live in, has decided to build his own home from the plans I drew for him. He has more money than God, so I have no idea why he would subject himself to this. Well, he gives me a call this morning and says the site engineer has some really bad news. The foundation is skewed 6" to the left, which puts him over the side building line, and the bump out in the front of the garage is 18" over the front building line.

The front problem is the developers' fault because he had me change the plan slightly after the lot was staked, but forgot to tell the concrete guy the new plan needs to be 18" further back from the rear stakes to compensate. When we have a tight lot we have the site engineer give us all the exterior corner points on the footer before we set the basement walls. This makes sure we are not encroaching anywhere. My friend did it after the basement walls were poured. What the hell good does that do? All that tells you is that you've just made a very bad and expensive mistake that will probably require the entire basement to be torn out. Just another reason why someone unqualified should never, never, never build his own home (including developers).
God I will be glad when this week is over.

I delayed the digging of my own basement for two weeks to make some changes. Someone needs to keep me away from my plans so I don't change it anymore and just get it built. I hate being my own client I just can never make up my own mind.

© Copyright 2004 by SPLASH

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