Or, at least it will be after tomorrow. I jumped the gun a little bit in that previous post when I said that our slab was ready for pouring. What I meant was, the site prep was done and the forms were in. Today, however, we also had the plumber come out and put in the waste lines and everything else that will be buried in the slab. Tomorrow, the concrete contractor will be laying foam and rebar. Then, we’ll be ready for pouring the slab – we’ll just have to wait for good weather.
It’s supposed to rain on Thursday, but I’m hopeful that Friday will be nice enough to get the slab poured. I mentioned before that it’s going to be a three step pour, but actually it’s only two. They’ll be pouring our sonotubes at the same time as the cabin slab. After those have set for a day or two they’ll come back and grade, form, and pour the exterior slab. The reason for the extra steps is because the exterior slab will not be heated, so we wanted to make sure that the two are completely independent of each other so that we don’t have heaving or cracking issues.
Regardless, after spending some time out there today to check on the plumbing, I’ve come away with two definite opinions about the build thus far. First, I’m overwhelmingly excited about this whole thing. After years of dreaming, planning, and saving, here we are making tangible, physical progress. I have to admit – it is a little scary. We’re almost to the point now where I have no other excuses of waiting for this or waiting for that, but it will be our turn to shape our dreams into a reality.
The second thing that came to my mind was, “this is really small!” I mean, we had done our due diligence in planning. We had measured out all of our furniture and even appliances that we’re going to be purchasing for the cabin. On paper, everything fit nicely. Snug, sure. That’s what we had anticipated. We don’t need or even want a luxurious cabin. First of all, it’s an unnecessary waste of money to build anything extra elaborate. Secondly, that’s part of our motivation to make sure that we’re making extra payments on our loan to pay it down so that we’ll WANT to build our future house. If we get too comfortable with the way that things are, things tend to stay that way. But man, after seeing the plumbing stubbed up, it sure looks a lot smaller than what we had planned. I know that everything will be alright, and it should be more than enough room for us – we just might have to get a little creative with storage, and that’s ok.
So the other news that we found out today is that we FINALLY got the appraisal back. It’s almost three weeks late, and that’s been delaying the closing of our loan. Without the loan we can’t order materials or even pay some of our contractors, so we’ve had to hold off on the septic and well. According to our banker, we should be able to close next week sometime. The downside to this whole thing is that our appraisal came in lower than we expected, and the whole thing feels like a sham that’s prejudiced to benefit the banks. Our original appraisal with just the bare land and a driveway was $145,000. We have or are adding: electric, well, septic, and an accessory structure (the cabin). All of that, and our new appraisal came back at $181,000. That just seems way too coincidental, given the fact that for the original loan we asked for $140,000. Now, with our new loan we’re asking for $180,000 total. Both times the appraisal came back just barely over what we were asking, but low enough that we’d have to bring money to close. Not only that, but you’re telling me that a septic, electric service, well, and an accessory structure are valued at only $36,000? Seems odd to me.
Regardless, the slab is just about ready, we’ve finished one of our contractors, and the loan should be closing soon. Bre and I are going to go ahead and order our materials on Friday so that they can be delivered by the end of next week. Things are moving forward!