Independence

I received a friendly alert from Joshua at Independence today, telling me that the exterior “finish” stone work has been started at our new home; so of course we headed up to see! It’s not completed yet, but it gives us a nice preview:

 

There’s also finally been some progress on resolving the recent delays! The electrical permit passed today, with an outlet on the rear deck instead of a wire:

And inside, a cluster of new framing timbers has been added to carry the load from a laminated beam that carries an upstairs wall and roof. Ugly but functional (and we won’t see it once the sheetrock is added); I’m told there’s still a few more framing timbers to add, but that should happen early next week …

One last thing; the cabinets have been delivered! So once framing is signed off, progress could be more swift with insulation, sheetrock, and cabinet installation:

 

There’s clearly no possibility of us closing on our new home in 2013, as we’d thought at one time; but it’s clear that there is a completion date not too distant, now …

As we expected, there was not much progress at Independence this week for our home – although next door (to the left) did close (purchase) yesterday; we met one of the new owners today, who told us that they completed purchase even though the home is not finished! There were painters working there when we visited today, while the new owners belongings were being moved in to the garage. Lennar are providing temporary housing for them, and they hope to properly move in next week – remember again that November is the end of Lennar’s financial year, so there’s an incentive to close homes!

Meanwhile in our home, electric still awaits completion and inspection, but the “pest defense” tubes were installed; and today they’ve started putting stucco on the exterior – so the outside of our home is getting closer to completed! It seems to be a very labor intensive process; one worker runs the mixer, and then the mix is transferred spade by spade lifted from one scaffold level to the next, till it’s high enough to be applied to the wall! You can see a spade delivering to the lowest level, in the picture:

It seems that my optimism a week ago was misplaced as far as Lennar’s progress with our new home is concerned! I wrote “electrical wiring finished now, and preparations for exterior stucco progressing rapidly”, but a week later, there’s been little change from that position.
Inside, there’s been a few small steps – including framing the false wall in one upstairs closet that hides the AC ducts:

Inside too, a “second phase” of electrical wiring was completed this week – alarm pre-wiring which brings sensors to the downstairs windows and doors (as well as a bundle of wires in an upstairs closet); but at the same time, the main electrical wiring apparently failed inspection, which then delays any possibility of interior insulation, sheetrock, etc! I don’t know the failure details, but there’s some evidence with a removed exterior power outlet on the rear patio:

In the same area at the rear of the home, the upstairs deck has been partially framed – though it’s missing a few horizontal beams:

 

Unfortunately it looks like the rear deck has cracked some of the block wall, so perhaps that’s a reason why the exterior stucco hasn’t happened yet:

 

In addition, a big reason for slow progress this week is the two homes either side of ours – both of them are supposed to be sold this week, so a big push to get them completed makes it obvious that the construction focus moves away from our new home. Luckily, we can be patient!