The 8 Week Itch

Remember in my last post how I said I would have a breakdown if the other two lots on our street were dug without any indication ours would be next? Well guess what:

Jerks.

I also mentioned in my last post that, on Tuesday, we would reach the 8-week mark that would supposedly end the pre-construction process. Well, that day has come and gone, and the lot hasn’t changed at all since the photo I posted earlier this week.

We did finally talk to our saleswoman, however, and she said we’ve been scheduled for a mechanical start date of January 9. The “mechanicals” step is the point in homebuilding after foundation and framing where most of the variables have been completed. At this point, the house is really coming together, and we’ll see progress nearly every day.

Now, I’m not sure why they would schedule the mechanical start date before they’ve so much as begun to dig the basement, but scheduled it is. This means two things:

1. If the original timeline we were provided is correct, the house will be completed 3 months after our mechanical start date, putting our completion date sometime in March. Even if they are a month behind, that would still leave us closing in April, a full month before our guaranteed occupancy date.

2. Our basement won’t be dug until November. Since there is no reason to dig a hole just to let it sit there for a few months, and since we aren’t yet in danger of the ground freezing, the likelihood is that we won’t see any real movement on the lot until November. When I first heard this news, my immediate reaction was to freak out and throw things. But even at over a month away, we have so many things going on between now and then, we barely have a free Saturday to spend traipsing around the lot, with or without a hole dug in it.

The unsettling variability (not my favorite word at the moment — or ever, actually) up until our mechanical start date leads to a lot of gross speculation on my part. I spend lots of time staring at the calendar, thinking of the timeline of the house in conjunction with work, travel, social activities, etc. Just today Troy told me the date of an annual work conference (January 10) and my immediate response was, “Oh, you mean the day after our mechanical start date?!” Literally every date that flows through my head immediately gets measured on the house timeline, so even a miniscule idea of when something might happen is held onto like a life preserver. Now let’s just hope January 9 gets here quickly.

So no big news this week. But instead of wallowing, I’m focusing on our next Big Thing, which is our trip to Aruba to celebrate our first anniversary. You probably won’t hear from me much between now and when we get back, but trust that I am relaxing and trying my best not to think about the house (yeah, I’ll let you know how that goes).