forever home – Page 4 – Primm & Property

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.

Posted on April 9, 2020April 9, 2020 by Emily

Day 171

Things haven’t changed much in the last few days. Apparently, the ground was still fairly wet under the surface, so earthwork dude was letting it dry out.

We had a safely distanced meeting on-site with our builder to discuss the next few steps. There is some more grading to do and then the digging of the footers and the basement. I must find my pink sunglasses Josh got me before it’s time for me to inspect these items.

I did a little practice inspecting today.

Looking good and level.

I had to check out the view from Pride Rock…er…Pride Dirt Pile.

Josh decided to have a little too much fun with photoshop after I started calling our pile of dirt “Pride Rock”. Here I am presenting our house cat, Bu, to the kingdom.

cat

I blame it on the quarantine.

Moving on.

We moved the trail camera back to its original location because I have recently learned about myself that, to me, watching dirt being moved is like watching paint dry.

The usual suspects showed up: Bambi, house cat, opossum, and a few curious neighbors.

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Then came one of the funniest videos yet.

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It started with a young lady turkey casually strolling by. I’ve just learned this is called a “jenny”.

Hey, Jen.

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Then a few seconds later she inexplicably picks up her pace and exits stage right…

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…because here comes Tom!

I think the quarantine is getting to them, too.

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Emily

Day 167

It’s really happening!

I got butterflies as we turned onto our easement drive and saw the big pile of dirt in the distance.

Have you ever seen such a beautiful sight?!

(*Fighting back tears*)

This is where the garage will be.

And guess what? We will actually PARK in the garage, unlike the other 99.3% of Tennesseans who have garages and never park in them. I don’t understand it.

That looks like fun!

But, I will say, after reviewing the SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN 10 second videos our trail camera captured from the first day of moving dirt, this is a very VERY monotonous process.

Though having seen many a hot mess of a construction site, I think our guy is very methodical and trying not to disturb things any more than necessary.

Please cross your fingers for clear days so we can make good progress!

Posted on April 4, 2020 by Emily

Day 166

Well, nearly 6 months into owning the property, the momentous day finally came – we broke ground! I never thought I would be so excited to see a pile of dirt.

Unfortunately we couldn’t be there in person for the big moment, but BOTH of our neighbors sent us photos and videos. Nothing is getting past them, which is a good thing so far.

One neighbor sent us this on Wednesday that the equipment had arrived.

Then, yesterday morning we got these photos from our other neighbor…who was practically standing in the pile of dirt.

Last weekend, we moved the trail camera to the tree on the right, so hopefully we’ll have more thrilling footage to share!

Try to contain yourselves.

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Emily

Day 161

I’m starting to think we actually live in Portland, Oregon, not Nashville, Tennessee, with the number of rainy days we’ve had the last few months.

This weekend, however, we’ve had two lovely, dry, and mostly sunny days. Let’s hope this trend continues into next week and for the next few months so they can grade the spot for the house, pour the basement, and frame the house without further delay (ha!). Word is that the earthwork guy is showing up rain or shine this week. We shall see…

I have many pictures that look like this. I’m looking forward to having pictures from this angle that have a house in them.

Back to the nice weather this weekend. Friends of ours that live very near our current house were taking out some landscaping that had become too much to manage. They generously offered us some boxwoods and azaleas so we went over to help dig them up and then headed out to the property.

We planted them in the two front property corners so they would be out of the way during construction. Once the house is complete, it is likely we will transplant them to the landscaping beds, but for now they are anchoring the front of the property.

The landscape architect, carefully placing the shrubs while I document from a safe distance.

Though it appears they are practicing proper social distancing, the reason for their spacing has more to do with ease of mowing than a health risk.

Aren’t they cute?!

Here’s how they look from the future front porch. Josh had to limb up the tree a little bit more so construction vehicles can maneuver.

My phone camera is not doing this justice at all, and the orange septic field fencing really isn’t helping, but this is one of many beautiful “volunteer” dogwoods along the edge of the property.

This past Christmas, we asked for contributions to our landscaping fund along with the gift giver’s favorite tree, shrub, or plant. Now that the weather has turned a corner, we are excited to start planning for more planting around the property!

Posted on February 2, 2020February 2, 2020 by Emily

Day 106

Let’s start with some excellent news: Punxsutawney Phil did NOT see his shadow!

This is a big deal when you’re hoping to break ground in the next few weeks.

Speaking of that, I got really excited earlier this week when I received an email that said “construction permit approved”. I forwarded it to Joshua with roughly 1,000 exclamation points. He texted me to gently inform me that that approval was not what I thought it was. Had I taken the time to read the next two words in the email subject line, I would have seen the words “conventional system”, which refers to the type of septic system we will have. This was an email confirming our septic permit approval, which we knew had been approved several weeks back.

Oh well.

Another email came through this week that said “Permit decline reasons”. As excited as I was about the previous email, I was equally deflated upon receiving this one. It turns out the “decline reasons” weren’t really for anything we could have anticipated. We had carefully reviewed all checklists and submittal requirements before we sent in our plans, but the county likes to come up with additional items because they can. We ran into this earlier in the process with our plat so weren’t entirely surprised.

Thankfully, we should be able to satisfy these additional requirements, and hopefully get our building permit any day now.

Patiently waiting….

In the meantime, we drove out to the property Friday evening to review where the house had been staked by the surveyor as we had indicated it on our site plan. We are really trying to save the tree that is in front of the house. The driveway will run between the tree and the front porch so we wanted to make sure there will be enough clearance. We decided that we’ll need to limb up the tree a bit but that we should be able to keep it. Whew!

These flags do not photograph well and it’s hard to tell much about the shape of the house, but we verified that edges and corners were in a good spot. You can see the tips of the tree branches we were discussing on the left.

You can also see Josh photobombing my lovely shot as he was carrying my chair so I could practice sitting on the front porch.

photo credit: Joshua, from the living room

There’s the tree again, this time on the right side. We confirmed that the west-facing front porch is in a great spot. This was an overcast evening, but I can’t wait for many spectacular evenings on the front porch, watching the sunset. I think our realtor thought I was a little nuts, but when we were searching for a piece of land, one of my requirements was that the front of the property had to face west so we could have this setup.

I cannot wait to be sitting on the actual front porch!

On our drive into the property, we spotted a new structure underway at one of the neighboring properties:

I have construction progress envy…

Posted on January 26, 2020 by Emily

Day 101

Greetings!

Well, the house isn’t done yet…or started for that matter.

We did, however, close on our construction loan. Our plans have been submitted for our construction permit and we’re hoping to get the green light this coming week.

Though there’s not much to see just yet, we still make regular visits to the property to check on it and collect the footage from the trail camera.

After reviewing last week’s footage, it seems we aren’t the only ones eagerly awaiting construction to start:

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Hiiiii….

Screen Shot 2020-01-26 at 2.05.13 PM This is the second time we have seen this truck. If there’s a next time, I’ll be running their plates and sending them a note with the blog URL.

This is also the second time we’ve seen this little guy/gal:

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The first time we saw him/her, Josh had reviewed the footage before I did. I asked him if there was anything noteworthy and our conversation went something like this:

J: “A few vehicles, a coyote, and a house cat.”

E: “A house cat?”

J: “Yeah, a house cat.”

E: “As opposed to what? A leopard? A lion? A bobcat? Isn’t it just a cat?”

J: “No, you can tell it’s a house cat.”

This went on for a while and we eventually determined that while I would categorize all domestic felines as “cats”, Josh grew up with farm cats that lived in the barn and did not come in the house so therefore just “cat” as a descriptor is a little too vague.

I am assuming this critter’s full figure is what led Josh to determine that it is clearly a “house cat”.

Hopefully by the time the house cat returns, construction will be underway!

P.S. This is not the first time the term “house cat” has come up in our marriage. When shopping for shampoo to bathe our (house) cat, Bu, all the pet store had was “show cat” shampoo. Josh rolled his eyes and exclaimed, “We don’t need “show cat” shampoo, we just need “house cat” shampoo!”.

Posted on January 9, 2020January 9, 2020 by Emily

Day 83

Well, 2020 is off to a strong start!

Items of note:

We close on our construction loan next week.
Our septic permit has been approved.
We should have everything together to apply for our building permit by the end of the week.

We drove out to the property this past weekend and Josh poured concrete markers for the property corners. I helpfully supervised from the passenger seat of the truck and documented the process:

Our new equine neighbors decided this was pretty interesting and came to the edge of their paddock to see what on earth we were doing:

They pretended to eat hay when I caught them checking us out.

After the second property corner was poured, they lost interest.

I don’t typically go all the way to the property corners to take photos so it was neat to capture this angle from the front corner. You can see a sliver of the easement road on the right where our driveway will start, our gorgeous, orange septic field fence to the left of that, and then finally, a little farther to the left is the location of our future house, as indicated by the giant green arrow.

I decided I really like this angle and I think I will make a point to take photos from this angle throughout the building process.

Let’s keep those permits coming so we can break ground soon!

Posted on November 12, 2019 by Emily

Day 26

Well, it’s a good thing we’re not trying to break ground today because it’s a whopping 17 degrees Nashville.

We do, however, have a stamped site plan. Woohoo! I’m ready to move some dirt!

….rather, I’m ready to see some dirt moved!

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This is the area around the house and driveway that will be graded. To the naked eye, this area looks relatively flat, but from the garage side of the driveway to the front corner of the house, it’s nearly a 10 foot drop.

See that orange star I put on the site plan? That is the location of the tree that Josh’s truck is parked next to in this photo below (taken facing East). Looks pretty flat, right??

Meanwhile, final rounds of redlining continue on the house plans. We are 99.37% there, just catching little things here and there to tweak.

I love finding these notes from Josh. Can’t wait to see him discover other details in the house as it is being built!

Posted on November 4, 2019November 4, 2019 by Emily · 2 Comments

Day 17

Now that it’s November, it is time to get serious. We are SO close to getting things rolling on the house build. This week, we met with the bank to get the construction loan process going, which is NOT for the faint of heart. To my knowledge, they will need at least the following to approve us for a loan:

Paperwork detailing all of the money we have, have had, and will ever have
13 forms of identification
How many pieces of lumber it will take to frame the house, +/- 5
What color we intend to paint the dining room
Our first born child as collateral (I suppose we’ll have to offer Bu, the cat, at this time.)

That is by no means a comprehensive list. It may take us longer to get all of that together than it will to build the house.

In other news, during our car ride design plan review session on the way to visit family this weekend, we solved the butler’s pantry dilemma. The section of the house with the powder bath, pantry, butler’s pantry, and broom closet just wasn’t feeling quite right. My sister and brother-in-law suggested we get rid of the broom closet and enlarge the butler’s pantry so it is more open and inviting. Eugene (sister) said with the revised layout, she would love to come and mix drinks in that space. I agreed, because after all craft cocktails are more important than cleaning supplies.

In closing, I’d like to share a photo that will not be making the cut for our holiday card from our attempted holiday card photoshoot at the property this afternoon. We were hoping to catch the 5 minutes of Fall foliage in Tennessee as well as the golden hour lighting. There weren’t many leaves left on the trees and the sun was especially blinding, but we did manage to get a few good ones for the holiday card.