We have a floor

Yay! The concrete guys showed up and we now have a floor. They poured on Friday and came back Saturday morning to score the concrete. It looks like our floor has giant 10'×10' tiles.
That means we are done with our gc. He'll be by this week sometime to take off the forms and clean up some other stuff. Now it's up to us (and Jeff) to build the rest. In 2 weeks our quonset should be up. We'll spend the next ten days assembling arches on the ground. Excited to be moving  

Long overdue update

Where to begin...
We did run in to another really big snafu. Steelmaster made a big error (which they never really admitted). They did not engineer our building correctly. So, for those thinking of using Steelmaster let me attempt to give you some words of wisdom.
Don't only talk to the folks in the sales department (they don't really know as much as you would hope).
Let them know if there is a tree anywhere near where you are building (although one of the engineers told my husband they Google map you to check this).
Get a written agreement from them that out the steel you receive isn't engineered quick that they will take care of it.
Many phone calls, emails, frustration and extra expense happened to us because of all this. I'm not terribly impressed. (Oh and they won't take back the incorrect steel, i got told to try and sell it on Craigslist. Yay for customer service)

Now that we have the correct gauge steel we can move on, or so we thought. Excavation and foundation happened pretty quick.

And then we waited and waited and waited. In the meantime we dig trenches for our over-engineered slab. It's been a busy construction season here in Colorado and we've waited about 6 weeks for flat work.

Fast forward to this week. Suddenly, we were informed that everything was a go. On Monday the 14th (happy birthday to me) the gc laid the insulation for the slab and put up the forms. 

Tuesday the 15th the plumber came out to lay the pex for our hydronic radiant infloor heat. 

Wednesday the 16th (today) inspections happens with a couple minor issues that we will have fixed before the pour on Thursday, nope, now it's Friday (i don't care as long as someone shows up!)

In all this waiting time we left the Bailey cabin under pretty stressful conditions, but have settled nicely in to our travel trailer. We have made more trips to dump slash then i can count. The dog has a fenced area. The kid has a play area. And honestly, it just feels good to be on our own land!

I will try to update more frequently now that i am over my anger/frustration with Steelmaster. 

Moving Forward

Since the last post we have finally signed a contract with our GC with New Keystone Homes. They will be doing the excavation, foundation, radiant floor, and the finishing concrete flatwork. 
Austin and Elodie have been spending time at the county building. We have all our stuff submitted for permits. The only snag we've run in to is the material used for thermal barrier. We are working with the engineer at steelmaster to rectify this. 
In the meantime we have requested. the foundation permit which should be ready on Monday. Now we are just waiting to hear when the GC's crew can break ground. 
We've been busy clearing the trees and slash in the immediate build area...pretty much got it done yesterday (after the pictures were taken). Austin even got his "tool shed" moved (who are we kidding, it's an outhouse).

Working the chainsaw near the well house

Our growing wood pile

This is where the house will be

When things don't go as planned

It's been awhile. I haven't posted because i don't think we even knew what was going on. We had virtually no reply to our rfp so we regrouped, found some financing, family help, and new determination. We are currently reviewing a contract with a gc that they would do the excavating, septic, foundation, and plumbing. After that it's up to us. Fortunately, my burger will have some time this summer to help get us dried in and maybe rough framing...not sure how far we'll get. I do know that it will take a lot of time!
Hoping to break ground in 4-6 weeks. I'll be getting pictures when it starts.
So far we have applied for the merger of our land lots and have almost everything needed for our building permit: fire mitigation, 4h well test, civil engineer grading stuff, topo survey, and just waiting on the sign off from the fire marshal.
In the meantime there are a lot of trees to cut down, wood to stack, and slash to get rid of.

Request For Proposal (RFP) sent out today

Well, it only took 4 drafts but we finally got our RFP together and got it sent out along with all the necessary documents to get accurate bids. Bids are due to us by March 23 and we should have someone selected around mid April.
In the meantime, we're going to start working on some projects such as clearing trees, moving an outhouse, building vanities, and kitchen cabinets to name a few. I'm also going to work on getting all my paint colours together. It's stressful waiting to receive all the bids and see how much our dream house is going to cost us.

Owner's Representative - a what?!

We are learning so much in the house building journey. Austin met with Bill Johnson, an Owner Representative. I had never heard of this before. We read about it in the book What your contractor can't tell you (Thanks little brother for sending this to us!).

How we intend to use the Owner Rep is for him to help us protect ourselves by reviewing a contract/scope of practice. We will be taking our contract from the AIA website. My understanding is that his role is to help guide us through all this and be on our team. I think we'll take anyone willing to be on our side.

Now that is another confusing mess, how the heck do you know which contract to even use?! Austin first called our local Colorado Chapter to discuss this and was referred on to the main place in Washington DC. After explaining our project it was recommended that we use this one. The cool thing is multiple people can make changes or look at it before it is "finalized".

Once we download this contract and start filling in the blanks we will send it to the Owner Rep to look it over and make suggestions. At least he was impressed that we are doing all the leg work up front to protect us and the GC we decide to use (better then trying to resolve issues after the fact). It's so much easier when it's all laid out with as few surprises as possible. In the next couple days we will be writing up which materials we want for what and the expectations that come along with the gig. The other advice we received was to absolutely not sign any contract the GC gives us.

Such a huge learning curve!! The interesting thing is at the meeting the Owner Rep asked about the relationship that Austin and I have. I guess divorce rates are high when you try to build a house. Prayers are definitely appreciated as we go through this crazy journey. We were joking about writing a contract between Austin and I that does not allow us to divorce each other through this :). At this point we are good, we are very aware of the need to communicate and verbalize our expectations and be good at conflict resolution within our family. I'm not sure how much is out there on having your relationship survive a build and I don't think I'm interested in looking at this point.

The plan is to (fingers crossed) have out proposal request sent out by Saturday or Monday at the latest if we can pull it all together!!!

The steel has arrived!!!

After we let SteelMaster Buildings know that we were ready for our Quonset it was quickly manufactured and sent out, maybe within a week or slightly over. Melvin, the Canadian truck driver, delivered our Quonset on 1/25/15 and my husband and his brother unloaded it by hand taking about 1.5h. Thank God it was 60 degrees out at 9000' elevation. We've had a really warm streak flow through the area.
 I believe we had 12,500 lbs of steel! From there we were able to load it into a u haul and take it to our land and it is now being stored in the shipping container. There are 120 pieces of the 2'x10' and 20 of the smaller ones. 2 skylights, trim, base connector, and all the pieces to put the bad boy together.
I have one complaint... on one of the trim pieces for the edge at the top is a SteelMaster Building sign that is bolted and riveted to the piece (not removable without damaging the piece). I was not aware that our house was going to be an advertisement from them. Ridiculously tacky! So, if you're buying a Quonset from them you may want to ask if that could not be part of your house, just a thought. My plan is to spray paint it and change it to either our last name or whatever we decide to name the house.
Next step is figuring out the site plan and letting our architect know we are good to go. Once we give the OK to the architect we should have plans in a couple days to get official bids from the contractors.
Pictures below...

Met with our architect today!

I find it so exciting to look at our house on paper with all the details. The dream is slowly coming together, and now we're going to have to start kicking it in to higher gear. The plan is to have our certificate of occupancy or temporary certificate of occupancy no later than August 1, 2015. Exciting to think the kiddo will have her 3rd birthday at our forever home.
We've got our lighting plan down and are now working on the plan for the ventilation. It's going to be a pretty tight house so we are talking about installing a HRV unit in the utility room like this one: Aldes H150-TRG Heat Recovery Ventilator - 150 CFM
The other thing to figure out is the skylights, and other minor details such as what colour to stain the concrete, materials to use for finishing the walls, and whatnot. Thankfully it's all starting to come together.

Finishing the house second hand style

Now that we've got the floor plan the search for second hand materials has begun. So far we've acquired: 2 sinks including faucets for the upstairs bathroom ($20 for both) - plan to build the vanity ourselves, a pedestal sink for the powder room for $40, an old wagon wheel with the plan to turn it into lighting, and an old pulley for some other lighting. I'm working on putting a list together of other needed items that we can find on Craigslist, Restore, or any of the builder's seconds type stores. I'm collecting my ideas on Pinterest, check it out Quonset House Pinterest Board

Here are some pics of the goodies we've picked up so far. Austin even built a storage rack for the sinks.