It's a Plan - Finally!

The weather finally turned dry for a few days, and this morning I was able to burn a slash pile that had resisted lighting up several times this winter. This was the pile that last fall had sheltered an underground nest of yellowjackets that stung the hell out of me while I was building the pile. With any luck, I finally got them.

After a quick clean-up, it was off to Rathdrum to meet with our builder and sign-off on the final iteration of our house plans. We'd been working with Stratford Home Center since September to get the plans just right, from concept, through site visit, through three formal design phases, to engineering drawings. Now, the plans are done and ready to go to the state of Idaho for compliance approval. Earlier this week, I wasn't sure we were going to get to this point.

On Wednesday, when I called our builder to find out the status of our project, he told me that his office had been burgled the previous day. The thieves stole large-screen TVs and artwork from the adjacent model home and computers, thumb drives, and other electronics and equipment from the design/sales office. The theft was quite a shock to our designer and his assistant, and he lost the early design work for several of his projects. We were lucky; our design was finished and in the main office computers.

We'd seen the final plans in pdf format (tough on the eyes), but today we saw the full-size CAD drawings. Everything was right and tight. We eagerly signed off on the plans and the change orders that finished off the plans. Next week, the job site manager will stop by and survey our building site to align the house axis precisely. Then, if the weather cooperates, we start excavation on the foundation, septic system, and electrical trench. Here we go!