driveway – Primm & Property

Posted on November 24, 2020 by Emily · 2 Comments

Day 399

As we approach a very large number of days that this project has been underway, we are *this* close to starting drywall.

I feel like a broken record, saying for the last 8+ weeks that we are close to starting drywall, but we are actually almost there.

The insulation is nearly complete and drywall has been delivered, with drywall guys on standby.

Though the interior has been progressing slower than I would prefer, the exterior has made some big strides.

We’ve also had some visitors who came by to check out the property…

Lorelei was not terribly impressed with the raw interior, but enjoyed walking the grounds. She decided the yard was good for playing and that she will come back for many more visits.

Since Lorelei’s visit, the dirt pile has disappeared and the yard is completely graded.

Try to envision the hedged courtyard with a fire pit and herb garden that will be here in the future. Likely Phase 271.

Look how smooth and lovely the side yard is!

Also of note, the classical columns for the front porch arrived! They weigh a casual couple of tons each.

Funny/not funny story: The column company tried to deliver these to our builder’s office, which is in an office building in a busy part of town. They called and said, “We’re here!” and our builder, who was at our property, said “So am I! and I don’t see you…” And that’s when they realized the billing and shipping addresses had gotten mixed up.

I’m glad I wasn’t there for that.

The driveway is complete! It is now a breeze to pull up and park by the front door, which I intend to use frequently.

Lastly, the exterior painting is almost done. They will have to come back to paint the porches and garage doors, but the yellow is history!

We have a site meeting in a few hours. Wish us luck and hope that drywall is starting…

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Emily · 1 Comment

Day 331

Well, well, well…

We have a well!

I stopped by for a quick site visit this week and this was happening in the backyard.

It amazes me that they can do this all in one day.

Mostly because of what they charge for this.

Nonetheless, I am THRILLED that we have a well, and therefore, a water supply. We are waiting on the official report, but our builder told us that they were somewhere around 140 feet down and getting 15 gallons per minute.

Continuing the exciting infrastructure tour, Walt, our builder, is seen here pointing to where the propane tank will be buried behind the garage.

And, lastly, here is the electrical thinger. It will have a cover and we can plant some shrubs strategically to block it from view as you come up the driveway.

We’ve been watching Yellowstone, Longmire, and now Justified lately so I am really feeling my 10 gallon hat shadow in these photos.

In other news, we have exterior doors! Front door…

French doors from the living room to the screen porch. I have a thing for French doors so these make me especially happy.

Kitchen door to the screen porch.

I’m also obsessed with transoms. There will be many throughout the house.

OK, back to the exterior: John graded the hill by the garage and it looks approximately 1 million times better.

They also put in the gravel driveway up to the garage, which means, were there not a bunch of supplies and bathtubs in the garage, I could park in the garage!!!

I will be doing this the first chance I get.

Having the hill graded meant it was time to seed and straw. This was our project yesterday morning. Here is Barry (my dad) loading up the erosion control matting at the local Farmers Co-op. I predict we will be back here many times over the next few decades.

My Dad and Josh did a fine job getting all of the matting and straw in place.

My job was to spread the seed. The workers did not know what to make of this. One day, I show up in business casual attire and am telling people what to do. The next day, I am wearing yoga pants and a fedora, spreading grass seed.

I like to keep them guessing.

The masons are almost done with the first chimney.

And they have started on the second.

We REALLY need them to finish the chimneys so the roofers can finish the flashing and put on the roof.

My other order of business yesterday was to paint some samples for the exterior.

I LOVE this color. It’s Benjamin Moore “Limestone”.

The exterior is coming along. I can’t wait to see the whole thing painted!

Posted on August 30, 2020 by Emily

Day 318

Today marks one year(ish) that we went under contract on the property. My first folder of photos is dated 08-30-2019, so I thought I’d do a little photo comparison of then vs. now.

Rolling pasture…

Gravel driveway in progress. Mostly a muddy mess. All that is dirt now will return to grass soon.

Though it looks like we have torn up the all of the grass from some of the other angles, this one shows that, relatively speaking, we have left much of the property untouched.

See, not so terrible!

All of these little blobs in the yard are trees that will hopefully grow to be big and beautiful.

Josh is pulling out weeds around them.

This view has changed quite a bit!

Stepping inside for a moment: doesn’t this look like some sort of modern art installation??? Our electricians are very artistic with their wiring.

OK, back to our grounds tour: we were able to park up in front of the house on the gravel driveway!

One of the things we had to check today was the proposed location of the well, as indicated by those 3 tiny, white flags to the right of the tree grouping. Evidently the man from the well company “witched” the well location in just 20 minutes. He told our builder that this process sometimes takes an hour. I am very sorry that I was not present to document it.

Also, Josh cracks me up in this photo.

Back towards the house, our chia pet dirt mound continues to thrive. I’m about to fire up some of the heavy equipment on site myself if this thing doesn’t disappear soon.

The weeds in the septic field are as tall as I am. I turned to Josh to ask him what this lovely white and purple flower was and he quickly informed me that it is “trumpet vine”, which is highly invasive, and, therefore, undesirable.

Darn.

Peeking through our tree line, we can see where our neighbors have cleared a spot for their home. We’ll probably be able to see their house from our house in the winter, but the tree line is dense enough to keep our lots private.

Coming along!

Posted on August 29, 2020 by Emily · 1 Comment

DAY 317

It has been another week dedicated to electrical wiring, plumbing piping, and HVAC ducting.

Are you still there?

Just thrilling.

They used the template provided by the tub manufacturer to cut out the tub deck.

Unfortunately, they did not consult me on placement before they did this and the cutout is too close to the windows. But that is easily fixed.

Though I’m glad we will have adequate ventilation in the house, I cannot wait until it’s time for drywall and all of the ducts and returns are out of sight.

I’m sure it’s all very efficiently run, but this ceiling looks like a hot mess to me.

Meanwhile, outside, part 1 of 27 of the electrical to the house has been inspected and approved so John has filled in a section of the ditch wide enough for a vehicle to pass over. He also started spreading gravel up the rest of the driveway while I was there. It was exciting to see the beginnings of the circle drive!

We’ve also been working hard on finalizing orders this week as raw materials seem to be skyrocketing in price.

We’ve been trying to pick our spots and make some trade-offs to stay in budget. The herringbone brick floor in the mudroom and the heated floors in the master bath are on the chopping block. My dear husband offered to start driving for Uber Eats so we don’t have to give up these features. I’m sure he’ll have no problem squeezing that in between working a full-time job, getting his MBA, and building a house.

We decided on #1 red oak instead of select, which has no knots and less tone variation from board to board. Josh and I agreed that we’d like a little more character in our hardwood floors and this was a good area to save some money. This showroom sample has no stain on it so it’s much lighter than our floors, which will be stained dark walnut.

Though the hardwoods will likely be installed in the next month, they will not be stained until the very end of the build, so it will be a while before we get to see the full effect.

Our builder and I had a long meeting yesterday to finalize exterior trim, siding, columns, and garage doors, as well as interior trim, doors, transoms, stair parts, and miscellaneous millwork.

As I was double-checking the door quote today, Bu decided to make himself a little napping Bu-rrito in the house plans. He stayed like this for over an hour. I’ll take it as a sign that he’s excited about the new house.

Posted on August 10, 2020August 10, 2020 by Emily · 3 Comments

Day 297

Nearly 300 days in and it’s been a big week!

At my site meeting with the builder Friday, there seemed to be dozens of people working. Some were framing, others were putting in windows, and then John was out on the bulldozer moving dirt. I’m not entirely sure that some of them weren’t paid actors to make me feel like there was major progress happening. It worked.

The first major item I discovered was the driveway. It has been graded up to the level Josh specified with a fresh layer of gravel. Compared to what it had been, it was like driving on glass.

The second major item: windows!!! They are all in and I couldn’t be happier not only to see my pretty windows, but to see the views again from inside the house.

We have also gained a dumpster. Less exciting, but it means things will be happening.

I’m obsessed with these windows in the library. I had originally planned for 5 here, but when I was reining in the budget, I cut it to 3. Though you’d be hard-pressed to convince me there is such a thing as too many windows, I think 3 feels right here.

Several items of note in this photo:

windows
the raised hearth
there is a chimney and it is the correct size

All of the framing issues upstairs have been corrected. This is the spot where it all fell apart a few weeks ago.

Many walls have been moved to achieve the specified measurements and alignments in each room. Please note here in the master bath that the vanity wall no longer obstructs the windows and that the hall and doorway into the bathroom are now centered on the windows as intended.

Now I can sleep at night.

Chimney take II. Now that the chimney has slimmed down, my shutters will be able to lay flat against the exterior wall.

The lovely library windows again. I am also in love with the small window to the left of the dormer. I put it in to tie in with the windows in the mudroom clerestory on the front of the house.

The driveway up by the garage is looking better and better as John continues to dig it out.

And you might be wondering where all of this dirt is going?

To the front yard! John is getting pretty close to the final grade up against the house.

And who is that off in the distance?

That would be Josh and my dad, continuing to work on the fence.

Yesterday morning, I gave my mom and grandmother a guided tour of the house, highlighting all of the structural updates and furniture placement thoughts. I fielded questions at the end, which led to an in depth discussion of stair parts.

I was stalling to avoid fence duty.

But, alas, I was summoned to put in something on the order of 500 screws to be sure the boards were well-secured to the posts.

Though I own many power tools and am not afraid of a little DIY, we will be hiring out the fence on the other side of the property.

Josh finished putting in the last few hundred screws today. Meanwhile, I sat in the dining room and finalized a detailing document for the builder with diagrams and notes about things like plumbing fixture placement, countertops, tile layouts, and cabinetry coordination. It’s currently 36 pages.

This was my fancy setup.

I never thought I’d be so happy to have a $5.98 folding chair from Walmart.

Posted on June 14, 2020June 15, 2020 by Emily · 2 Comments

Day 240

Nearly 8 months into owning this property and building our forever home and we finally have some walls!

I can’t begin to describe to you how excited I was to get in there and walk through the house.

This is the garage…

Of course these criss-crossed supports are temporary, but man did I feel like I was in a James Bond movie trying to sneak through a security laser maze.

Josh was trying to catch some shade as he drank his hot coffee. It was at least 10 degrees cooler in the garage than in the sun.

This is the view out the window from Bu’s (cat) room, off the mudroom. He is not going to know what to do with himself once he sees the neighbor’s horses.

Barry, Kath, and Grandmother came out for a tour. Here I am in my element, explaining the layout of the house and which pieces of furniture will go where.

I got pretty toasty during my lecture, so I went down to check out the basement for some relief from the heat. They got the floor poured Friday and it looks great!

John has done some more work on the grading by the garage, but there is still a bit to go before we can possibly maneuver a vehicle into one of the bays.

He was working on the driveway while we were there yesterday until his equipment broke…

But we have walls(!), so I wasn’t going to let the equipment breakdown get me down.

Someone in my family, who shall remain nameless, asked, “Once framing is done, what is left?”

answer: pretty much everything.

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Emily

Day 232

Framing is supposed to start this week – woot!

I can hardly keep it together. I am SO excited.

They have rough graded up to the house (and covered up most of the ugly black waterproofing).

This will be a lovely patio one day, shaded from the western sun once the house is complete. Currently, without the shade, it feels like 137 degrees. Welcome to June in Tennessee.

The exterior access basement stairs are formed and ready to be poured along with the basement and garage slabs. Fingers crossed this will happen Monday or Tuesday because lumber is being delivered on Wednesday!

There is still a bit of work to do on the hill by the garage, but John was focusing on grading up to the house this week. Josh should be level with the garage where he is standing.

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In addition to grading around the house, John worked more on the driveway.

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We have over 200 videos documenting this process…

Still not 100%, but getting there.

Josh, assessing the situation. He says there is another 3-4 feet in elevation to be built up at the low spot.

I told him that’s what I thought, too.

(I actually have no idea exactly what this all is supposed to look like other than the layout. This is why Josh is in charge of exterior items.)

We took a new route from the property to my parents’ house and stumbled upon some of our future shopping options.

I have never been in a “Dirt Cheap” before but I am most curious as to what they offer.

I guess there’s only one way to find out…

Posted on May 30, 2020 by Emily

Day 226

Well, the weather has been spotty and as a result the concrete guys are behind. So, no slabs were poured this week as hoped.

They did apply some lovely waterproofing. Though black is normally one of my favorite colors, I’m not loving the look here.

Good thing it will be covered up by dirt before too long.

John was there this morning working on the grading by the garage.

There’s still quite a bit to grade on this side so we don’t have to drive off a cliff into the garage.

I found a new pile of dirt to take pictures from. To me, it looks like our house is made out of giant legos.

Oh hey!

I caught Josh drinking his coffee on the front porch.

I think this is the first of many thousands of cups of coffee he will enjoy on the front porch.

On our way out, we noticed one of our neighbors seems to be drilling a well. We will be doing this too at some point soon.

Still so many things left to do for our house to be complete, but we are making progress, slowly but surely.

But mostly slowly…

Posted on April 19, 2020April 19, 2020 by Emily · 2 Comments

Day 181

We have a partial driveway, folks!

Josh could tell from here that it had not been graded per the plan. More on that in a minute.

As we drove in on the easement, we could see a bunch of new rock on the easement itself. Evidently the developer we purchased the land from did not build up the easement road properly so one of the dump trucks delivering gravel sank into it earlier this week. Oops! Thankfully, our contractor was able to repair the road and keep things moving through the week.

Hey, guess what?

This is our driveway. Nifty, eh?

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We had several videos on the trail camera of the driveway coming to life.

See where that dip is between the trees? Yeah, that’s not supposed to be a dip anymore. Josh was not pleased. But, good news: it can be fixed! I keep telling him this.

Back to other progress. They have gotten the house pad pretty well set. Next up: digging the footings and the partial basement.

The spot where Josh is standing will be graded down a few feet for the driveway.

Joshua, step away from the heavy machinery.

The first bathroom has been installed. Ready for guests!

We decided to take a walk around the perimeter of the property to asses the trees. Though they’re really close together, Josh wanted to keep both of these. One is a sycamore and the other he believes is a birch.

We stumbled upon an ephemeral stream. I just learned this term from Josh yesterday.

Since we’ve started this process, “ephemeral stream”, “cubic yards of dirt”, and “earthwork guy” have been part of my vocabulary.

Boy, does having a partial driveway make this feel more official.

We brought this sapling from our current house. It was growing in the landscaping right up against our back porch. Josh thinks it came from one of the gigantic oak trees we have in our yard.

We planted it in one of the back corners of the new property. Hopefully it survives and thrives and becomes an eighty foot tall tree in the next fifty years. We named him Craig since that’s part of our current street name.

We didn’t want Craig to be lonely, so we searched in our woods to find a few more saplings to plant in the other back corner.

This one is a beech tree. There were several others that were slightly bigger, but Josh was concerned that they had already developed “a habit” and wouldn’t transplant well. Nobody wants a tree with a bad habit.

My dad loves beech trees so we decided to name this one for him. Meet Barry.

This is Dora, the dogwood. I don’t know anyone named Dora except for the explorer.

And this is her sister dogwood, Darla. Also don’t know any Darlas.

Let’s hope they all make it!

This tree did not make it.

According to our neighbors, much more of our property used to be forest, but a tornado took out a lot of the trees about twelve years back. Many of the remaining trees in the open space have a narrow span or have no branches except at the top. They are also really close together, which works in a forest setting, but not so much in an open setting where they will start to crowd each other out and compete for resources.

My husband is rubbing off on me and I am now a tree expert, in case you were wondering how I know all of this fascinating information.

So, Josh decided this tree needed to go because he wants the tree next to it to thrive.

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My dad, Barry (beech tree named for him), helped move the sectioned tree so we can use it later for firewood.

It was a red oak and it smelled so good!

OK, just one more thing to end this rambling post:

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We’ve hired Tom as security at the front gate.

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Emily

Day 174

Despite a beautiful week of weather, it seems there was no progress on the property. Still waiting for an explanation of this. Hoping everyone is OK.

Josh and I spent several hours on-site yesterday doing very fascinating things.

First, we flagged the driveway.

Josh was measuring and placing the flags as I called out the measurements to him from his plan. If you squint really hard, you can see the orange flags.

I’m so glad he knows how to do these things. I just told him I’d like 1) the driveway to curve around for a pretty approach to the house, 2) a place for people to park out front, and 3) a loop so it’s easy for people to get in and out without a 75 point turn (a challenge we have at our current house). He takes this information and produces a lovely plan to make all of my driveway dreams come true. I think I’ll keep him.

This is his “Why are you taking my picture?” face.

Because I’m so glad you’re my husband and a landscape architect!

It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that we are building a house, which will sit between these two piles of dirt in the near future. Hopefully, this time next year we will be living in it and we’ll be able to have people over and give them hugs without fear.

In the meantime, we’re enjoying improving the property so it is beautiful for us and our future guests to enjoy.

Our second activity was cleaning up this hot mess:

Among this tangle of vines and trees are two dogwoods, a black cherry, and a cedar tree. You wouldn’t know it except for the dogwood blooms.

Josh quickly got to work on this with his chainsaw. And before long, it looked like this:

Much better!

Josh hauling off all of the brush to the woods. His truck looking like a Chia Pet.

While Josh did the heavy lifting, I reviewed the trail camera footage.

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Not much action in the last few days except for Tom desperately searching for Jenny. I think she may have moved to a different block…

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Sorry, Tom.

Well, if my boots are any indication, I would call that a successful trip to the property.