forever home – Page 3 – Primm & Property

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 12, 2020 by Emily · 1 Comment

So, they were supposed to pour the garage and basement slabs Monday or Tuesday. The weather was uncooperative (thank you, Cristobal) so that didn’t happen. I decided to drive out to the property on Tuesday between meetings on the off-chance that it wasn’t raining there and there was concrete being poured.

It was raining heavily. And there was no concrete being poured.

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This photo was taken shortly before I stepped out of the car and my foot was nearly swallowed whole by the mud.

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This was after 10 minutes of cleaning.

There was only so much I could do with a roll of paper towels and a travel size bottle of hand sanitizer.

Also, did I mention I was between meetings? As in, after this I had another client meeting?

Thankfully, I had a pair of flip flops in the car. Hopefully that is the first and last time I will wear flip flops to meet a client.

Moving on.

We had an early morning meeting with our builder today and we were pleasantly surprised how much had happened since the shoe incident on Tuesday.

They were pouring the garage slab as we arrived.

Maybe I should ask them where they got their boots…

The also poured the basement steps today. The basement slab will be poured tomorrow.

At least I didn’t step in wet concrete…

The lumber was delivered yesterday (on schedule!) and they got quite a bit done in one day.

This makes me so happy.

This forecast makes me and my shoes even happier!

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 May 29, 2020 by Emily

Day 221

We rolled up on Memorial Day to find that the block work was complete!

One day soon(ish), there will be a lovely front porch here, inviting you in as you come up the driveway.

(sigh)

We had the full crew on for inspection: Josh (left), Nate (middle), and Eugene (right).

It was HOT, so while I walked the perimeter, Eugene sat in the shade of the front tree, supervising me. The guys had moved on to cutting down a tree.

The dirt piles keep moving and flattening as John continues the grading, so this was as high as I could get. Looking good!

Next, it was time to “walk through” the house, which Eugene was kind enough to document for me.

That crawl space access is already coming in handy; however, this is the only time I ever plan to use it personally.

Walking through the kitchen…

…envisioning the island.

…sitting at the island.

Old habits die hard.

Next up, garage and basement floors will be poured!

Posted on May 21, 2020May 21, 2020 by Emily · 4 Comments

Day 216

We had a meeting with our contractor this morning. We needed to discuss all kinds of thrilling things like where we wanted the access to the crawl space to be, how we were going to lay out the HVAC units, electric meter, and gas tank behind the garage, and where we would like gas stub outs.

Have I lost you already?

Here’s Josh, waiting patiently for our contractor to arrive…and most likely looking up equipment he’s decided we need for the property.

I decided to take a lap.

They finished filling in around the house. It is now much safer to walk the perimeter. And, they are supposed to start laying block tomorrow – woot!

So much dirt. Our contractor told us they also ran into some “chert”, which is a new term for me.

I asked my landscape architect of a husband what that meant and he dumbed it down to layman’s terms for me:

J: “it’s rocky soil in the substrata.”

Oh, of course. I knew that.

The trees have really filled in. Just a few weeks ago we could see our neighbor’s house through the tree line.

The front yard also looks nice and neat (if you can see past all of the dirt…). Our other neighbor mowed for us this weekend. It took him 4 hours on his tractor.

This is not good news for me as it means Josh will be adding more and/or larger equipment to his list.

We may have no budget left for furniture, but he assures me the yard sure will look great.

To distract myself from the equipment budget concerns, I focused on finalizing selections.

One of the last selections to be made was the chimney brick. I knew I wanted it to look like the brick fireplace in my Grandmother’s house that came from an old jail. This one is pretty darn close!

I’m leaning toward the bottom mortar color. Or I could do a 50/50 mix of the bottom one and the right one to warm it up a little.

The sales rep described the top two as “similar in color to peanut butter”, which immediately ruled them out for me. First of all, it’s to yellow for me. But, more importantly, I just can’t get past the thought of there actually being peanut butter between the bricks as they are stacked. Not only does this gross me out, but it seems like the antithesis of mortar.

So, in summary, we will not be going with the top two options for multiple reasons.

Which do you vote for? 1) light gray or 2) light gray and light buff 50/50 mix?

Posted on May 19, 2020 by Emily

Day 212

We had a three-generation inspection at the property this weekend. My grandmother, mom, and sister hadn’t seen the property in months so it was fun to see their reactions to the big changes since it was just a raw piece of land.

Look at these cuties! I can’t wait until they are coming over for dinner and a visit on the reg.

It’s a little treacherous to walk around the house with all of the rock and dirt, but Grandmother was not about to stay in the car and miss out on seeing everything for herself.

Grandmother, patiently waiting at the front door. I love so many things about this picture.

My seester, Eugene, asking when dinner will be served as she stands in the future dining room.

OK, back to inspecting…

Over the last couple of days, the forms for the basement walls have been removed and the walls have been waterproofed.

They put in a drain so we have a basement instead of an indoor swimming pool.

Thank you.

As we were there, John (earthwork guy) was busy filling in around the basement walls with gravel and dirt to get things leveled out.

I forgot my ladder to be able to get down into the basement and really get a feel for the size, but don’t worry, that will be happening soon.

Grandmother and Eugene were busy watching John in the bobcat…

…Kath was busy watching her firstborn climb a precarious pile of dirt to take this photo.

There’s a lot of rain in the forecast this week, which means it probably won’t rain. I’m hoping by our next visit that some of these block piles will have been rearranged into the foundation.

We shall see!

Posted on May 15, 2020May 18, 2020 by Emily

Day 210

It is looking more and more like we may actually get this house built!

Today, they poured the basement walls. We arrived just as the pump truck was departing.

Check. It. Out.

Word is these forms will likely come off tomorrow.

This whole “forms and pouring concrete” process blows my mind.

This lovely little section is where the exterior steps to the basement will be. There will be a lot of dirt filled in around it once the forms are removed. Thank goodness.

We will probably use this access 12 times in the next 50 years, but hey, we will be glad we have it when we need it.

The view from the top of Pride Dirt Pile.

Also, many piles of split face concrete block have arrived for the non-basement parts of the house where we will have a crawl space.

While I may use the exterior basement stairs on occasion, I hope I never experience the crawl space firsthand.

John (earthwork guy) was busy moving and distributing Pride Dirt Pile because he has to dig a lengthy trench for the electrical that will run from the start of the driveway all the way to the far corner of the garage.

It sure is great to have so much space until you have to put in the infrastructure for utilities.

On the bright side, “Meadowcrest”, as we’ve named our property, is looking super meadow-y out front.

Can’t wait to see what’s next!

Posted on May 9, 2020May 9, 2020 by Emily

Day 203

Just over 200 days in and there is cause for celebration!

We have footers, y’all!

The weather has been uncooperative, per usual, so after a lot of back and forth, they decided to dig the footers and pour them all in one day to beat the rain. Josh and I headed out to the property after work/meetings just in time to catch the last few minutes of pouring around 6PM.

I could not believe my eyes when I turned onto the easement road and saw this machinery as tall as a skyscraper!

OK…slightly taller than the trees.

This is some major equipment.

John, our earthwork guy, inspecting everything.

This looks like ancient ruins to me so I’m glad someone knows what’s going on.

I’ll be honest. When they said they were pouring the footers, I had no mental picture of what that was going to look like. I’m not even sure I would have gotten it right on multiple choice.

I might have guessed they would look more like big blobs or squares of concrete rather than a strange concrete maze.

Good thing I’m not in charge of this operation.

Josh is much more familiar with concrete pouring so he was eager to check it out and walk dangerously close to the edge of the wet concrete.

Here he is walking through the hall into the dining room. I’m imagining many lovely, leisurely meals in that room, soaking up the golden hour.

After those lovely meals, we can head out to the front porch to watch the sunset. This is where the front steps and porch will be.

This terrifyingly narrow and deep trench is for drainage. Josh is a major drainage nerd so he was delighted to see this.

I was less delighted, but still appreciative of the water mitigation planning.

I still can’t believe this is real.

2020 has been the most bizarre year of our lives. Though we have had sadness and challenges, we have so much to be thankful for. Building our forever home brings us a lot of joy in the process and in the hope of many happy times to come.

Posted on April 25, 2020 by Emily

Day 186

We have a basement!

Well…a hole for the basement, that is.

We’re doing a partial basement, approximately 500 square feet, to house the water heater, HVAC system, electrical panel, etc., and to serve as a storm shelter. We decided against a full basement because we will have plenty of room in the house itself and we do not want to be tempted to “collect” a lot of items we do not use. We’ll see how that pans out, but we have high hopes for our anti-hoarding selves.

Or perhaps we could turn it into an indoor swimming pool…

Check out the different layers of soil. It looks like a medium/medium rare steak to me.

Miraculously, we didn’t hit any rock. You never know in Tennessee so we got lucky.

The basement is supposed to be poured next week! I’m as excited about this as I was about Santa Claus coming when I was five years old.

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The only critter of note on the trail camera was a coyote. It’s been very windy the last week or so and thus we have 79 videos of the branch shaking in front of the camera. I think it’s time to reposition the camera….

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.

Primm & Property

Tag: forever home