And the work begins!

In June we had our pre-construction meeting with our Project Manager, Dave. He seems very competent, very easy to talk to and very calm...all qualities I appreciate in the man directing the building of your home.

He explained the layout of our lot, which being on the side of the cul-de-sac makes it a little funky to understand b/c they turn the house to face the curve of the street. What it means it our backyard will be bigger on the left side rather than being uniform across the back. We've been brainstorming different ideas with decks that I think will be really cool.

I do have pics of the groundbreaking but they are still on my phone and not terribly exciting. Interesting though that they hit a TON of rock when they started digging. Apparently we are getting quite the deal on that as it was no minor extra expense to have to break up 4 feet of rock. My husband calls it our Biblical house... as in the Biblical command to build your house on rock. ;)

The view from the back of our house - a view that soon will never be again, ha ha.

This the view from our driveway into the cul-de-sac where our children spent almost an hour tonight running around with the half dozen other little ones who were out playing. I think our 4 1/2-year-old was the oldest one! It was awesome. We can't wait to live around people our age with kids. Our current street is filled with perfectly nice people, but no kids and no one in our similar stage of life. We can't wait to sit on our front porch and watch the kids ride bikes in the cul-de-sac. One neighbor told us they could see the township fireworks just over the center of this pic...meaning...we should have a great porch view of them. If you're not from Pittsburgh...let me just tell you, this is a big deal. Fireworks. From your front porch.

Our lumber!! Framing was supposed to start this past week but we had severe thunderstorms every day. Ergh.

View of the left side of our back yard, which will be the larger portion, due to the way we are angled to face the cul-de-sac.

The husband looking at the basement walls below what will be the morning room. It was just a gorgeous day out.

The mandated egress window in the basement.

Walking up to the back of the house.

Looking at the basement layout.

Checking plumbing location in basement - he has some questions for the PM.

The girls' bathroom tub/surround.

Master bath with the non-standard but not luxury bathtub...i.e. it's a larger tub than the standard one but we opted not to do the luxury owner's suite...it's just not us.

View from the street of the poured walls of the basement, utilities that went in and our windows.

View of garage and basement

Windows!