The Life for Me

Nothing beats good help. Thanks a bunch to Tim and Don for helping us out on the concrete pour today. Twelve and a half yards of concrete went into the footings with just enough left over to pour around one of the culverts.

For my first "Built From Scratch" house, I really picked a tough one. The next one should be a piece of cake. The Form-a Drain product seems to be a good one. Just remember that it is plastic and it will break if you drop something heavy on it (like a big pry-bar). Note to self: Get your site nice and level before starting the set up. The 90 degree step down adapters are pretty much junk but the rest of it went together really well. I would definitely recommend renting a rebar cutter/bender. It sure beats a hack saw.

No it's not a movie. Just a couple of guys with a really big jack hammer and industrial compressor. The rock put up a good fight. I don't know about John but I'm still feeling the pain.

Winter has definitely arrived and the cold days and nights have put a real damper on the building process. John and Pete worked on the road this week to try to alleviate some of the mud issues. More than 50 tons of stone was dumped on the road in various places. Fortunately for me I've been able to pick up some freelance work. It's really nice to have something to do besides waiting for the snow to melt and the earth to dry out.

Even the old barn looks good in the snow. Who knows... maybe we can turn it into the next Nelson County Ski Resort, or just a nice place to watch the snow and sip hot cocoa and coffee. Maybe a little bakery in the chicken house and a book store in the loft. Hmmm.....

We only got a couple of inches, but it was enough for us to have a great time. Leslie wasn't able to get the picture of me doing an endo but we did get a couple good ones of the youngster.

Water was found just past 200 feet and drilling went down to 300 feet. The supply is just under 2 GPM. The plan is to take it down to 400 feet in order to create a reservor and possibly increase production.

The sledding hill is has cut and the sleds are staged for take-off. So what if the footing trenches fill up with snow. It will eventually melt, but in the mean time... BONSAI!

The set-up of the well drilling rig was done a few days ago, but drilling began today. The bright green machine cranked up with a howl and a huge puff of smoke. You could feel the ground pulse as the hammer drill pounded down through the clay and stone. Even though the equipment is fairly massive, the operator, David McGann, runs it like an extension of his own hand. Look out China! Here we come.

One good thing about the rain is that it gave us an opportunity to get rid of a couple of brush piles. Don't let the picture fool you -- those flames are at least 30 feet tall.

What do you get when you mix an art guy turned builder with a physics guy turned carpenter. Not a clue! Actually it wasn't that bad once we figured out which side of the tape measure to use. That's me (in the red) and my good friend Steve working out the math for squaring up the footings. It took us a little bit to get things straight, but in the end we made significant progress. To bad the hole for the basement wasn't big enough. Oh well. It was good practice anyhow.

Reality is setting in. We now have our first real deadline related to the construction of our house. The foundation crew is scheduled to be out on December 5th. We are still waiting on building permits and the footings aren't constructed yet. Who knew that concrete could be so exciting!

Home building has taken a back seat to road building over the past two weeks. And I can tell you -- IT'S A LONG WALK TO THE MAIL BOX! We decided to bring the road up along a contour line instead of shooting straight up the back. It made for a much more manageable slope but added significant length. I can't wait to try a full speed run down the hill on the bike. Hopefully we will get enough snow to try the sled out as well. If you come through town stop by and try it out. Happy motoring!

Colors are really starting to show. If the weather holds out, this would be a great weekend for a Parkway ride.

It would be a nice place for a pool -- heated of course. But to tell the truth it's the beginning of our basement. We started poking around to see how dense the rock would be and before we knew it we had pretty much gone the "hole" way down. This shot here is of Melvin working through the spot where the master bath goes while John looks on thinking about where the diving board should be. Cannonball!!

If you look close you can start to see a little color coming through. It will be interesting to see if the cold temps and rain this week have any impact. Enjoy the view!

Things are still looking mighty green. I think that it is going to be one of those years where the leaves change and fall off over a period of a couple days. Plan your trip now. It's going to be a short viewing session.

Huge amounts of rain came down over the weekend. For the most part the new road did well handling the large amounts of water. The area at the bottom of the main slope did better than expected, although it definately needs improvements. The new pond spot filled up and the creek rose more than four feet for a good part of the day. It was good to get the rain for the fields. Hopefully the trees and foilage will benefit as well.

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