A 3.0
One log, seven stages
Seven stages from the first walk across the parcel to the day you get the keys, five of them ending at an inspection nobody works past.
A house is built in an order, and the order is not negotiable in the way people sometimes hope it is.
Concrete cannot be poured over plumbing that has not been inspected. Insulation cannot cover air sealing that has not been verified. Drywall cannot go up over a rough-in that has not passed. Cabinetry cannot be ordered from a plan dimension when the framed opening is the dimension that matters. Each of those is a hold point, and a hold point is a place where work stops and waits for someone with authority to look at it.
Builders who treat hold points as obstacles find ways around them, and the ways around them are exactly the shortcuts that produce the defects nobody can see until the house is finished. We treat them as the structure of the schedule rather than as interruptions to it, which is why they are marked on the sequence below.
The spans attached to each stage are planning ranges drawn from how projects of this type actually run in central Arkansas. Yours gets specific dates in your schedule once selections are settled and the permit path for your parcel is known.
Who you deal with
Before contract. You are talking to whoever walked your lot. That person stays involved through design and specification, because they are the one who knows what the ground did.
During construction. A superintendent runs the site and is your point of contact for anything happening that day. Trades arrive on scheduled windows and are coordinated by that person rather than by you.
At closeout. The walkthrough is done with you in the house, in person, with a written list rather than a promise to remember.
One name and one number throughout, not a rotating cast to chase.
A 3.1 · The log
Seven stages, top to bottom
Scroll marks the stage you are reading. Stages carrying a hold point end at an inspection or a verification step that the following work is not permitted to start before.
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S1
Lot evaluation
1–2 visitstypical spanWe walk the parcel with you before anything is drawn. Where the high ground is, which way water leaves the site, how far the sewer main or the nearest septic-suitable area sits from the buildable envelope, what the flood panel shows, whether the driveway grade works from the street you are actually allowed to access. If the lot is not yet yours, this is the visit that tells you what it will cost to build on rather than what it costs to buy.
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S2
Design and specification
6–14 weekstypical spanPlans are developed against the buildable envelope rather than against a blank rectangle, and every selection that carries money — windows, roofing, cabinetry, flooring, plumbing, appliances, trim — goes onto a written schedule. Items you have not chosen yet become named allowances with a stated basis, so an allowance is a placeholder with a number behind it instead of a hole in the contract.
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S3 Hold point
Drawings and permit
3–8 weekstypical spanConstruction drawings, the site plan, the foundation design and the energy documentation go to whichever department has jurisdiction over your parcel — a city building department inside the limits, the county outside them, and the Arkansas Department of Health separately if the house is on septic. Review time belongs to them. We tell you what the current turnaround actually is and copy you on the correspondence.
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S4 Hold point
Site work and foundation
3–6 weekstypical spanErosion control goes in first, then clearing, cut and fill to the finished-floor elevation set in design, the driveway subgrade, and the utility trenches. Under-slab plumbing and any conduit is set, inspected and photographed before concrete covers it. Termite soil treatment happens on schedule rather than whenever someone remembers. The pour is a hold point in both directions: nothing goes under it late, and nothing goes on top of it early.
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S5 Hold point
Framing, dry-in and rough-in
6–12 weekstypical spanFraming, roof, windows and exterior doors get the house dry, which in an Arkansas summer is the moment the schedule stops being weather-dependent. Plumbing, electrical, mechanical and low-voltage rough-in follow, then the framing and rough inspections. This is the last stage at which anything structural or in-wall can be changed without opening finished work, so it is also the stage where we walk the house with you.
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S6 Hold point
Insulation, drywall and finishes
10–16 weekstypical spanAir sealing is verified before insulation covers it, insulation is inspected before drywall covers that, and then the house fills in: drywall, trim, paint, cabinetry, counters templated from installed cabinets, tile, flooring, fixtures and equipment. The order exists so no trade damages the work of the one before it, and the finish schedule written in stage two is the document being executed here.
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S7 Hold point
Final inspection and walkthrough
2–4 weekstypical spanFinal inspections, the certificate of occupancy, and then a walkthrough where you point at things and we write down every one of them, however small. Those items get corrected, walked again and signed off. You receive the inspection records, the equipment and appliance documentation, paint and tile references, the warranty terms stated in your contract, and a list of who to call for what.
A 3.2 · The awkward parts
Three things that are true and rarely said out loud
The decisions are front-loaded and there are a lot of them. Most of the choices that determine what your house is get made in the first third of the project, before anything visible exists. That is demanding at exactly the moment when the project feels least real, and it is the stage where households most often stall. The compensation is that decisions made then are cheap, and the same decisions made during framing are not.
Permit review time is not ours to control. We prepare the submittal, we respond to plan-check comments quickly, and we copy you on the correspondence so you can see where it sits. What we will not do is quote you a review duration we invented to make a schedule look better. You get the current stated turnaround for your jurisdiction and an honest statement that it can move.
Weather governs two stages and nothing else. Earthwork and the pour are genuinely weather-dependent, and a wet spring can move them. Once the house is dried in, the schedule stops caring what is happening outside. This is why dry-in is the milestone worth watching rather than the framing start.
What you are given at the end
The closeout package is a real deliverable rather than a folder of leftovers. It is assembled through the build instead of gathered on the last day, which is the only way it ends up complete.
Closeout package
- Inspection records and the certificate of occupancy
- Every sign-off through the build, and the document that says the house is legally habitable.
- Equipment and appliance documentation
- Manuals, model and serial numbers, and registration information for the heating and cooling equipment, water heater, appliances, roofing and windows.
- Finish references
- Paint colours and sheens by room, tile and grout references, flooring product data and any touch-up material left on site.
- As-built photographs
- The under-slab and in-wall photographs taken before each was covered, which is what you will want the day somebody needs to cut into a floor or a wall.
- Warranty terms and contacts
- The workmanship warranty stated in your contract, the separate manufacturer warranties, and a list of who to call for what.
Start at stage one
The first stage costs you an afternoon and produces a written evaluation of what it takes to build on your parcel. Everything after it depends on what that visit finds.
River Rock Builders, LLC · 2024 Arkansas Valley Dr, Little Rock, AR 72212