From the Ground Up

I am sure everyone has heard a recent horror story about trying to buy a house and if you haven't heard one lately, you probably have one of your own. To say we were nervous to get our consturction loan, which we were warned is harder than an mortgage, is an understatement. We didn't have time for the run around, we had deadlines to meet! We were told the average going rate for our loan to be processed from start to finish would be 40-60 days.

Trees coming down. We had 12 removed.

So off to the bank Matt and I went the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The loan officer we were working with told us to bring a few things to "get the process started". But we have deadlines remember? So every piece of financial documentation we had to our names we took with us to the bank. To say the loan officer was a little surprise how "prepared" we were might be an understatement. We left the bank having all but 1 paper completed to officially apply for our loan.

Now remember these deadlines? December 10 was the last day the basement company would start a new basement before the holidays and we were scheduled to begin that day. However, we couldn't (technically) start working until we were approved for our loan. Being anxious to get our basement in the ground, I asked our loan office if he thought we could close on the loan in time to make the December 10 deadline - he laughed.

Luckily, our neighbors to the east are building a home 4 sq. feet bigger than ours and we requested the same appraiser. So there was a lot of leg work completed since the comps had already been done. We got word on December 7 that our loan was passed through loan committee and we would be closing on December 12. We also got the green light to go ahead and start digging! We were going to get our basement in before the holidays!

Site prep to start digging the basement.

That's me standing in the driveway with the basement hole in the background.

The completed basement.

The completed basement. You can see walls being framed.