jeffpollard.net

Business cards and new JP.net to follow

With the amount of freelance work I've been doing the past year or so, I figured it would be professional of me to get some business cards so that people can look briefly at them and then toss them in a drawer. Luckily, iPrint.com is there to help me accomplish this goal. By the way, I actually do recommend them. You create your business card online using your graphics and your layout and then they print them and mail them to you. Very easy and very cool.

And so when designing the business cards, I decided it was time to finally do a little self-branding. I'm all about branding, but I've never really done any for myself. And with me, where branding goes web design follows closely behind. So, look for a really new and really fresh take on jeffpollard.net coming very soon. I've finalized the design idea for it, I just need to get off my butt and write out some of that good ole' ACHE-TEE-EM-EL code.

A word of warning to those who read this blog semi-often: on the new site, the blog will probably not live right on the front page. Rather, it'll be confined to a section of the site. I figure business clients who visit the site might get the wrong impression is all they see on my site is talk about trucks, motorcycles, and other general geek-ery.

So, watch out for the new design as soon as I can get my ass in gear.

Open House Results Are In

And the results of our open house from this past weekend are in. And, well, I'll let the following sound clip sum it up:

Sure, we had about a half dozen people come through the house, but none that our realtor said were likely candidates.

But, the good news is that it's still March and there's still lots of time left for the right buyer to find us. I mean, June is a long ways off, right? Comon, somebody tell me that June is a long ways off. Please?

Holy Cow! Brick!

We arrived at the house tonight to find that the brick layers had been hard at work today. In one day, they built scaffolding, and layed down some good ole' brick and morter on the left "tower" of our house and the lower garage area. I think Olivia and I were thinking that they would be doing brick on the other "tower" part of our house, but we're actually wrong.

We didn't go inside, but I suspect that the HVAC installers have probably been making progress in there, too.

I stopped today and thought about how quickly they've been working on our house. It's been going a whole lot faster than I expected...and I expected it would all come together pretty quickly.

In other news, we're holding an open house here at our townhouse this weekend on Sunday. We're hoping that tons of people come by and that we have some interest.

HVAC ready for..HVACing

It appears as though the plumbers are finished and the HVAC peeps are getting ready to get started. They've marked where the floor and ceiling vents will be cut and there's lots of aluminum-looking HVAC ducts laying around the house. Our jetted tub is also now installed, too.

Also, the gas fireplace is installed and it looks like the gas line is either hooked up or ready to be hooked up. My only fear now is that running my conduit back there around the fireplace is not going to be easy.

I got a chance to walk around up in the attic space last night, too. It's plenty large enough - much larger than our storage space we have now. And, the pull-down stairs will be nice so I don't have to carry the ladder in and out of the house every time we need to get up there. See, it's the little things that make me happy.

Plumbers are..plumbing.

With the external structural work on the house nearing completion, the daily changes aren't as breathtaking as they were, but still rather exciting. Here's the round-up:

- Most of the windows are now installed. I think the only ones not installed have been left that way intentionally so that the workers can throw junk out into the dumpster at the corner of the house.

- The stairs are now in and the window on the landing is installed. The stairs look slightly different than I expected. But, I actually like the way they turned out better than what I thought they may look like.

- They've done some additional framing around where the fireplace will go..perfect for hanging my new TV above it when we're ready.

- The plumbers have been..plumbing. I would guess that the plumbing is about 50% done as of last night. All of the showers/tubs are installed with the exception of our jetted tub in our bathroom. It's upside-down right now. But the platform is built for it. It looks like most of the "out" pipes have been run and now the "fresh" water pipes need to be run. Excuse my lack of correct plumbing terminology.

- The flexible HVAC ducting is laying in a pile in our sun room. Looks like a big pile of snakes or something.

Finally, Inside Photos

So here's today's obligatory house photo:

That photo is me standing on the second floor balcony looking down into our great room. Yes, there are no less than 10 windows on the back side of our house. I'm not sure if we think we're crazy or not. Mostly not, I guess.

We arrived at the house and there were no workers present, which meant we finally got to take a bunch of photos from inside the house. The stairs weren't installed yet, but I managed to hoist myself up to the second floor and take some photos. Speaking of the stairs, they're currently sitting in our garage. I'm hoping they'll be installed by this weekend when my parents come to town.

Everything is looking great so far. The minor problem with the tray ceiling being there when it shouldn't has now been corrected.

For more photos from inside the house, make sure you check out Olivia's gallery

First Offer

We had the first offer come in on our house yesterday afternoon. Not too bad, considering it's only been on the market for about a week and a half or so.

I won't get into too many of the details here, but we've now made a counter offer and we'll see what happens from there.

Wow! A Roof!

So we arrived at the house tonight to find a roof on our house! WOW! It's amazing to me how much more it looks like a house now. The bad part is this is how our house will probably now look (on the outside) for the next few weeks. Now exciting things start happening inside. But first, they gotta finish putting the roof on.

We're not really sure what that hole in the middle is. I saw a couple workers climbing in and out of it, so i can only assume that they're using it while they're building it. And no, we don't have a skylight right in the middle front of our roof. :)

Fun Weekend

Feels weird not to blog for a few days now that I've been getting back into it.

This weekend was (hopefully) the beginning of the warmth of spring settling in. It was nearly 80 degrees both Saturday and Sunday.

We made it over to the house Sunday morning and were able to make it into the house to see the progress up close and personal. The only problem? I realized once I got there that I had forgotten my camera card. Doh. Guess you all will have to wait until tomorrow probably for more new photos.

Everything in the house looked great. The only minor problem was that it appears as thought they're framing in a tray ceiling in the dining room area. And while it's a $650 option that we didn't pay for, it's not our style and we'll be getting them to remove that. Interesting that they added it without charging us for it, though. I almost wonder if we should keep it in because of re-sale value, but we're building this home for US, first and foremost and we should have it the way we want it.

Also on Sunday, Mike and Jon, and I took our first motorcycle ride of the season. We rode down Rt. 5 to Surry, rode the ferry over the James River (that was COOL!) over to Rt. 10, which we followed back to Richmond. It was so nice out that I think everyone decided it was the perfect day to ride. I bet we saw as many bikes as we did cars out on our ride. The ferry was like a big bike show on water. Bike, just everywhere you looked. Kinda makes me want to go to Bike Week in Myrtle Beach in May. The ride was only about 100 miles, but I sure felt it afterwards. I'm sure it'll get better again this year as I ride more. Man, it felt great to be back on the bike again! :)

Another Showing

We're scheduled to have another house showing tomorrow afternoon. Not too bad.

I also made a post on craigslist.org tonight to try to drive some traffic to our house's website. With this weekend looking to be very warm (temps in the 80s), maybe it'll even mean some traffic to the house this weekend.

Also, we put up our "Info box" with our info sheets in them. I put 10 info sheets in the box last night and when we got home from work tonght, there were 7 left. Let's hope for a busy weekend, house-wise. I know what I'll be doing this weekend!

More Framing (and a garage floor!!)

We visited this evening (duh) and the framing had continued. We went into our neighbor's house again up to the third floor and got the photo you see above.

They are now definitely working on the second floor. It appears as thought all of the second floor sub-flooring is in and they're now building out the interior walls. It also appears that all of the first floor walls have been constructed.

I also noticed from this angle that the garage floor (concrete) has been poured and looks to be where the framers are keeping some lumber, some tools, and maybe even a cooler. Man, I'm not even the first person to make use of my own garage. What a shame. :)

Hopefully we'll be able to make it inside for a closer look this weekend. It's really killing me not being able to see it closer right now.

Framing Continues

Here's today's house photo:

As you can see, the framing has continued at a very fast pace. The second story walls you see constructed on the rear of the house are actually the upper walls for our 2-story great room. I guess it was easy enough for them to put those up now rather than wait for later.

When we showed up tonight at 6pm, the framers were still working hard. Since we haven't gotten to go IN and see (up close) all of the recent framing work, we waited around for the workers to leave. And we waited. And we waited. At 7:15, we finally gave up and left. I'm really hoping we can get in there in the next couple days to see the work up close.

Just like 3 years ago, going to see the house every evening has become the highlight of my day.

First Floor Subflooring

Here's the view from last night's house visit:

The framing guys were working pretty late (it was just after 6PM), it seems. We actually got to watch as they finished the dining room study/office room wall and stood it up and nailed it in place. I evern took a short video with my camera, but it's just a bunch of nail gun sounds and a blurry, dark picture.

I've got a meeting after work tonight, so there will be no photos from today. I can't wait to see how much they got done today.

And...we're listed.

Our listing for our house showed up today online on the MLS system. It took a few more days than I expected. And, as we all know, you can't have an MLS listing without typos and mistakes. Anyway, here it is:

http://homes.longandfoster.com/Buy_Home/Search/Property_Details.aspx?coId=1&mlsNum=2606797

In other news, we have our first prospects coming to see the house tomorrow morning. I probably won't blog about each and every house showing, this one is exciting because it is the first.

Re-Inventing HuntonPark.com

Some time ago, I purchased the domain name HuntonPark.com. I forget if I ever blogged about it, but I had a grand plan to develop it into a community website for all residents of our Hunton Park area (the apartments, townhouses, and any other single-family homes). It was a good idea (and still is, I think), but I decided today that I had a better use for it.

http://www.HuntonPark.com

Go ahead. Click it. You know you want to.

I decided that an easy way to market our house would be to create a website for it. List all of the features, asking price, and who to contact about it. Now, I have to figure out where I can post that URL to get some exposure. Likewise, if any of you readers out there know anyone looking for a nice almost-new home in Richmond, you know where to send them to.

The Progress: A Bird's Eye View

Olivia and I went back over the neighborhood this afternoon to get a closer look at our lone wall. With the workers around yesterday, we thought it was worth a second trip. Here's one of the photos we took from looking out our neighbor's 3rd floor window:

From this photo, you can see that the floor joists are pretty much in and the only wall standing is the front wall of the garage. There's a whole pile of lumber sitting in front of the house, so I guess they'll be working on that this week. I can't wait to see!

We've Got a Wall!

We arrived at the neighborhood today to find the most exciting development yet: a wall. The wall you see standing is the front wall of the garage.

On top of that, it looks like they've already built the floor joists for the first floor. No sub flooring yet, but that'll be done in no time at the rate they're going. I'd guess that they'll be framing all this week and I bet the whole first floor will be framed by the end of the week.

It also looks like they've done some smoothing-out of the dirt around the house. They've built-up the dirt around the house and it slopes off towards the street and towards the back of our lot.

We didn't get any closer photos because there were guys working and we didn't want to disturb them, or look like obsessed home-owners-to-be. We're not obsessed, are we?

Building the Foundation

This week, the builders have been busy building the foundation for our house. As you see by the little thumbnail, it's pretty much done (as fas as I can tell).

So, I guess the next step is...well, I'm not what the next step is. Maybe they'll do some plumbing and sewer-type work. Or maybe they'll begin doing the flooring.

Check Olivia's Gallery for the full-res images.

We're Officially For Sale

Well, as of today, our townhouse is officially for sale. We listed it on the market through Long & Foster using fellow Martinite and Realtor Rod Shortell. We're listing it for $245,750, so we'll see how it goes.

It looks strange having that big red and blue sign in our front yard. Kinda sad, but also exciting because this is a big indicator that things are starting to happen.