Bringing down the house

If you were to see Chris or I this week,  we have huge grins we can't get rid of.  They took down the old house this week,  it was a huge milestone for this project.  It took two days to get the house down and I think a lot simpler than anyone had anticipated. 

Telehandler getting ready to knock down the fireplace.

I have been keeping myself busy planting grass.  I hate planting and growing grass,  but it is a necessary evil and I only do so much each day.  Then I spend the rest of my day on more fun things like getting the chicken coop ready.  They are ready to move,  but we have no fence up for them.  I dug a trench to bury the fence and buried hardware mesh around the coop structure 4in deep and 12 inches out. Hopefully this will keep the digging predators out.  I dug two of four post holes for the fence,  we should be able to get the fence up lickety split this weekend.

I have also been trying to work in the garden sporadically.  I am doing an experiment with the potatoes this year.  I have some growing in grow pots (black bags)  in straw and some growing in a bed covered with straw.  I am curious to see which method produces the nicest and the most potatoes.  This week I got our "orchard" planted.  We have 6 trees including peach, apple, pear and cherries.  The pies will be wonderful!

Another monumental event happened today when the Steves (scrap metal guys) came to the door and said they were finished.  Hard to believe that that job ended as there was more metal here than Wrigley's has gum (thanks JT for that analogy).

Things are looking good these days.  We are giddy with the progress we have made and Chris is happy that I have stopped looking at finished houses for sale.

Busy, Busy Busy

Now we have tractor envy.

I has been a busy couple of weeks!  Our guy Ron,  has been busy clearing away junk from what we affectionately call Junk Yard Alley.  He also cleaned up the brush and little trees behind the house.  They worked about 3 days and it looks like a whole new place.  I will refrain from commenting on what we did with a lot of the cylinders,  but they will forever be close by. 

Ron also came by one evening and moved the shed.  I painted it red and have some minor modifications to make then we will have a bonafide chicken coop.  Not a moment to soon either,  the chickens are ready for their outdoor home this weekend.  We did loose one chicken so we have 11 now ready for the cozy new home.

Steve and Steve came back to collect scrap metal after almost a year long break.  Today they are going to take the copper wire out of the old house and a few misc scraps.  I am always amazed by the little scraps they will go to great pains to collect.

I have been selling bricks from the piles.  So far we have three different people taking bricks and you still can't tell where they took them from.  We have decided to use one pile ourselves to brick the house to grade in the back.  Something tells me that we will still have extra when the project is complete.

We are still working with the county to get our building permit.  Health, engineering and zoning have all signed off and tomorrow I meet with land development for the grading plan and final sign off...hopefully. 

We have had so many people stopping by this week.  Several people to look at bricks and cylinders,  one neighbor stopped by and took me to her house for advice on fruit trees and moving a Japanese maple,  another neighbor and his daughter hiked thru the woods just to say hi,  but the most interesting was the soils testing guy who stopped by.  He had done a soils test for us back in 2009 before we bought the property.  He happened to be in the area and wanted to see how we were fairing.  We chatted about the progress and he asked about our plans for the old doors and windows in the house.  Apparently he is building a log cabin and is going to take the old doors and windows for his own project.  It just caught us by surprise but we are so happy to reduce the amount of waste from this project.

It was just time.

I changed my ring tone to green acres today. I figured it was just time.

Chickens!

Chick on left is an austrolorp.  the one posing is an americana.

The chickens arrived!!  We are super excited to have them.  Our americana birds come in an array of colors.  we have yellow ones, brown ones and grey ones.  They are 9 days old now and have grown tremendously in the week we've had them.  They are starting to get their wing feathers and their tail feathers. Right now they are in the barn under the heat lamp and should be ready to move to their coop in early March.  I guess that means we should start building the coop?  Yesterday i staked out the chicken yard and I think I have Chris convinced that he does not have enough time to build the coop himself and we can have someone else build it for us.  Otherwise,  one of the boys may have to give up their room.

Chris worked all weekend organizing the barn to get a space ready for the water to come in and a place for the pressure tank.  This kids an I mostly played with the chickens.  Yoda loves the chickens and will sit and watch them for ages.

We are enjoying mild weather,  upper 50's to 60's.  We sure hope that will eliminate typical spring backlog for the construction industry.  We have our fingers crossed that we will not have to spend another winter in the RV.  As fun as camping is,  we all will enjoy having a house again!

Cold, Hot, Cold, Hot

The past couple of weeks have been all about temperature. We had some really mild weather and the daffodils are up about 2 inches.
We took advantage of the warm weather and worked in the chilly barn and hung foam board on the ceiling and walls of the workshop area. Now we have a nice insulated spot we can heat and spend some time there.
Now that we finally have a heated space in the barn, our 12 volt system in the RV broke. That means no lights, and the electric starter on the hot water and furnace do not work. We spent four days using lanterns and space heaters, but Thursday the mobile rv repair man(our new best friend) came by and we are all fixed up.
We had a big win this week, in that we closed on our construction loan. It was pretty funny to see our names listed as general contractor for the project. Last week we got our initial building permit applied for and the health department gave us the go ahead. We are now on the list with our ccontractor to get the septic to the barn installed and initial grading started. The cement guy has us on his radar to do the foundation and we are accepting the final bids for frameing.

It is hard to believe that we are actually ready to start construction! 9 months after we moved out here. Yippeee!

The Chickens are Coming!

Paintball fun behind the barn

We have had a great week!  The weather has been fantastic 40's most of days and even 60's a couple of times.  Chris and Jackson got a lot of wiring done in the barn and they hope to schedule to have regular electrical service line installed soon.  We hung pegboard this weekend which is immensely helpful in organizing things.  We also applied for the permit to have septic run to the barn and our installer is ready to roll once the permit comes in.  I never thought I would be so excited about a barn bathroom.

Cooper and Yoda on our hike

Due to the nice weather we did slack off a little and have some fun with the paintball guns.  We found some junk bottles and an old tire in the woods to shoot at.  I actually thought to myself that it is so cool we found the junk to shootwhere normally I would be perturbed that I had to clean up someone else's trash.  We also took a good hike in the woods.  We came across a great camping spot on an island between two creeks.  Chris was able to show me where he wants his shooting range and of course I suggested a different spot.  The we settled on a completely different place. 

We ordered our chickens two weeks ago and they will arrive mid Feb.  Chris is not so excited as the rest of us, as he has the most chores to do to get the coop ready.  We ordered 6 Americanas(blue and green eggs) and 4 Austrolopes(black chickens) and 1 Americana Rooster.  I should close now so I can finish reading "Chickens for Dummies".

Oh Crap!!

Yes I really do mean crap or whatever you want to call it. This week when we went to empty the black holding tank of the RV nothing came out. For those of you who do not know what is in the black holding tank, see the title of this post.

Chris shined a flashlight into the outlet and saw an piece of pipe elbow. Ahhhh, easy fix right, just fish it out. Not so, the elbow was stuck within an elbow so it was tricky and at one point the elbow joint got pushed all the way back in. Oops. After extensive googling for ideas, he decided to stick the power washer into the outlet. Brave? Stupid? Genius? It flushed the little piece right out, but....nothing else came with it. That is good and bad because the expected stuff to come with it is not pleasant but since it didn't that means there is a dam built up. Known in the RV world as a case of the black hills.

I'd like to say we powered thru and unclogged on our own, but Don's Johns came to the rescue and pumped us out. However, while we were waiting for them to show up, we both showered (mistake). The guy arrived and Chris went out to help. They hollered in for me to open the toilet, as I did a geyser from the toilet drenched EVERYTHING, and it stunk! Long story but the suction was not set correctly, but we are de-clogged. They do NOT have our vote for #1 in the #2 business.

Other than dealing with crap, we have been organizing our stuff in the barn so that we can empty our stuff out of the house. When the contractors are ready we want to be prepared to begin construction.

Currently our holdup is the loan. It is such a long process. After being approved at the end of summer, we are still waiting and working out draw schedules and other details I never knew existed. To help keep us on budget Chris is considering giving up his mac-daddy movie room. This is a big step for him and we are giving him lots of support during this difficult decision. (big win for Julie!)

Keep your fingers crossed for a mild winter.