Design is moving along, albeit a bit slowly. Between the holidays and some other deadlines, the architect has been kind of busy. But Yuval is aware that we’re behind schedule, so he’s going to make sure that the focus stays on the two houses in the Bellevue project for a while. Our house is currently being put into a CAD program, and that work is almost done. We should be able to review that soon (hopefully within a couple weeks). After that, we will hopefully be kept busy while the design is pushed through and prepared for permitting.
We’re looking at an April-May target to starting construction. This is 1-2 months behind our original schedule, but it will still be a good time to start. All the foundation and framing and most of the exterior can be finished before it gets too cold and wet in the fall and winter. (One of the other houses under construction had its foundation poured during the winter, but they had to pay a lot of attention to temperatures.) So with optimal time of year, and lessons and processes learned from the other houses, we’re hoping our construction will progress at a nice pace.
We also had a chance to see the first house in the project. It is nearing completion. We hadn’t seen it since before the drywall went up, and it now has all the flooring in, walls painted, and is been sealed up and heated. The exterior is almost all complete, too. It is looking more like a real house, and you can start to get a sense for how it will look when complete; and how nice all the material finishes are (during construction, we found it hard to appreciate the quality — particle board, concrete and framing boards looks pretty much the same all over). It will also allow us to start seeing how various materials and finishes look in a real home, and hopefully help us as we start making decisions on all these pieces, too.
Hopefully we will have more exciting updates soon!