Walls

The two openings at the top of the wall are for mechanicals to go through. And of course a doorway that is part of the hallway. 

The plumber came and created some relief drains to get the rainwater out. Otherwise it would have been wet still on Monday. 

The Platinum Prince will be parking on top of this wall one day soon! 

This is an old cast iron tub that was in the original house. We hope to make it the water trough for Bunky. Fortunately, my plumber let me use his equipment and I was able to work on the old foundation as well, getting rid of it. 

Not much is going on this week. The slab should be poured in a week and then the steel I-beams will be installed for the garage slab. 

Footers and final clearing

 Formed footers

 Lots of rebar! Read below why these footers were bigger and had more steel in them.

 Poured footers!

  Notice the difference in width of these footers compared to the others? That is for the 12" wide by 10' tall garage walls that will have steel I-beams and a metal pan with concrete on top for the garage. We will have a hallway, part of Haley's room and the unfinished mechanical room under here. Based on our floor design, it was the only way we could get two bedrooms on the terrace level where we wanted them to be and have the other family room in the right place too. No, we are not "preppers" and building a bunker to protect us. But if a tornado comes through here, that's where we'll be!

This is all of the stone from the original fireplace that fell into the old house when it burned. These will also be re-purposed on the property. We haven't decided if we will leave the fallen chimney or tear it down and rebuild with the pavilion that will be built on this part of the property.

 Faith in the old root cellar, throwing out bricks that we will re-purpose somewhere on the property.

 THANK YOU to my dad for the use of his equipment, I couldn't have done it without the skid steer and it's attachments!!!! This was the last of the major cleanup and getting rid of dead or trees I wanted removed. I was thinking about how they would have used horses and donkeys on this property so many years ago and what that must have been like. I feel blessed to grow up in the era of heavy equipment and the many modern marvels we have, even the chainsaw! What will they think of in the next 100 years???

I probably should have taken a photo each week here in the beginning so I could have a "time lapse" of the progress. Oh well, it sure does look different than the last drone photo from here!

Initial grading complete and foundation started

Day 1 of grading and burning the large pile of brush I put up. 

Day 1, septic system is going where the light color dirt is. 

Initial grading complete! Maddie is enjoying herself too! 

Initial grading complete. 

My new brothers in Christ, Hank Sutton on the excavator and John just out of sight. Both were saved on a job site. The first time I met Hank I didn't care for him. He has come a long way and I'm happy for he and John.

We are so glad that Uncle Bob and Aunt Lynne were in town from New Hampshire to see the very early stages of construction. Bob confirmed a couple of ideas I already had on the house design, so we implemented them. 

Progress, cleanup and bumpers

 With brand new tracks Jason and I put on yesterday, I'm loaded up and heading to the property.

 My bright idea was to take this top layer of dirt and grass and load it into the back of the dump trailer. What I didn't take into account was that I was loading the very back of the trailer and not distributing the load throughout. What you see here are the skid marks where my truck went "ball hootin'" down the driveway once the load was great enough and unloaded weight from the rear wheels of my truck.

 In the road is where the truck stopped, but the trailer pushed the back end around until it jack knifed. LUCKILY, no one was driving by at this time, or worse, walking. And, both truck and trailer didn't end up in the golf course, cause that would have been expensive!

 The only damage to my truck was the bumper, no body work.

 But the trailer's box that holds the battery didn't fare as well.....

 The pile of brush on the other side of the well is everything I cut down last weekend.

 Getting cleaner! This building will hopefully be moved to another location since it is a good structure. Where it will be placed is another topic and we won't know until the hole for the basement is dug this week.

I left the last few trees for my grading contractor to remove since he has bigger equipment. I removed the two small structures that were on the right of the picture. I was able to salvage some of the good tin that was on it, but it had a layer of really cheap tin with scalloped decorations underneath that will go to the dump.

Grading should start this week!

Am I doing this right?

When you're running a chain saw for a few hours on end you start to think about things..... I couldn't remember if I was doing this right so I sent a text out to my family members and asked them. Amy said "Stupid is as stupid does", but my mom had the best response of "Redneck vasectomy"!

I'm glad to say I can still have kids, but that doesn't change our decision.

We closed! We officially own dirt!

This week we closed on our property. The closing was smooth and we got confirmation from the previous owner that the homestead dated back to Civil War times. Wow, a lot of history has happened here and we look forward to making a lot more!

 The barn needs quite a bit of work, but I'm excited to see it's transformation, and I think Bunky will love it!

 Upstairs of the barn. We will have the signature red sliding barn door attached to this in the future.

 Away in a manger, no crib for a bed. This is in the lower barn that will likely be disassembled and used to patch the barn and wood shop. The manger will be saved, of course. Maybe this is where Bunky will be fed!

 I applied for the septic permit before we closed, and got approval the day after. With briers towering above the roof line seen here, I needed to knock some down before they came out to inspect. The property owner allowed me to do this before closing, which was nice. Denis Griffith is his name and he once owned the Old Union golf course which will be our view from our back porch. He is a very nice guy and he was planning on building his home here! But, during the downturn he lost the golf course and took a loss on selling our property to us. We wish him well.

The day of closing! Haley was with her aunt, since closings are boring! But I went home and picked up Maddie, while Faith got pizza so we could have our 1st official meal on the property. There's no place like HOME!!!!❤❤❤

The beginning of our dreams on Garrett Circle

We sold our home just a month ago but have been looking for property with serious intent for about 4 months. We finally found our dream property at 744 Garrett Circle which is close to my folks and Faith's mom and the rest of our families! I will try and use this blog to document the transformation of the property and the construction of our home. Come along for the journey!

 On the left is the old barn that we will fix up for Bunky. On the right is what I have been calling the wood shop, although I'.m not sure what it was actually used for. This property has a lot of history and we want to keep as much of it as we can. Going back through the number of people who have owned this property, but never built new, has been surprising. A lot of people have seen the potential but just never saw it through. We feel blessed to be able to do so!

 To the left of the big spruce is where the home will reside. The old house site is on the right and will remain as-is until we can get to Phase II of construction.

 We hope that the chimney will stay up since a lot of it is made from mud mortar, not real mortar and I'm afraid may collapse. I am going to see if my stone mason can fill in some of the gaps to create better support.

 Where the future home site will be.

 An old smoke house, or that's what we have called it that will be moved from this location. It is in the way of the new home and we hope that it can be moved successfully.

 Panoramic view from our future back porch!

Entrance to our property.

And here is the drone video I created flying over the property: Garrett Circle Drone Fly Over