Rough-in plumbing is done at 305 Argo — and the crew finished it in the rain, which is worth noting.

If you've never thought about what's happening beneath a concrete slab, here's the short version: every pipe that will ever serve this home — every drain line, every supply loop — has to be in the ground before a single yard of concrete gets poured. Once that slab goes down, those pipes are permanent. There's no going back to fix a mistake without cutting through foundation. So this phase matters.

Our plumbers got it done today. Monday, we have a plumbing inspection with the City of Alamo Heights. That's a required sign-off before work can continue — the city sends an inspector out to verify that everything under that slab was installed correctly and to code. It's not a formality. It's the checkpoint that protects the homeowner.

Assuming the inspection passes — and we expect it to — our foundation crew comes back. The baggers and steel tiers pick up where they left off, and from there, we're tracking toward a pour in roughly three to four weeks.

More updates as we move through inspection and into the next phase.

The form boards are up at 305 Argo.

Tomorrow the plumbers arrive to begin what we call the rough-in — this is
the phase where every pipe that lives inside the foundation gets installed
before a single yard of concrete is poured. Once the slab goes down, these
pipes are there forever. You don't get a second chance at them.

The primary work is drain lines — the pipes that carry waste away from every
fixture in the home. But there's one detail on this job that's worth
explaining: the kitchen island.

Most people don't think about how water gets to a kitchen island until
they're standing in a finished home wondering why there's a pipe dropping
from the ceiling or running across the floor. The answer is that somebody
didn't plan for it correctly at the foundation stage. On this home, we're
running what's called a loop — a supply line installed now, in the
foundation, that services the island sink from below. Clean. Invisible.
The right way.

This is the kind of decision that gets made at rough-in and never thought
about again. Or it doesn't get made, and someone figures it out later in a
way that's visible, expensive, or both.

More updates as the slab approaches.

The excavator showed up this morning and got straight to work.

What was standing at 305 Argo when we took this project on was an old home
that had run its course — the kind of structure that's more liability than
asset, and that the lot has been waiting a long time to be rid of. That
process is underway now.

Demolition should wrap in the next two to three days, possibly faster
depending on how the work goes. When it's done, there won't be anything
left but a clean, bare site — which is exactly what we need to do this
right.

From there, we call in our surveyors to mark the building corners, and then
our foundation crew moves in to begin setting forms. That's when 305 Argo
stops being a demolition project and starts becoming a home.

More updates as we move through each stage. This is the beginning.