neighbors – Primm & Property

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 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 July 19, 2020 by Emily

Day 274

Well, as predicted, things have ground to a halt on the house. Nothing happened at the house this week that I could tell, unfortunately.

I met with the cabinet guy yesterday to go over the kitchen and master bath cabinetry. Though it will be months before any cabinetry is installed, just the thought of it makes me so happy. As an interior designer who designs a lot of kitchens, and as someone who thoroughly enjoys cooking and baking, I have put more time into perfecting this kitchen than perhaps any other space I’ve ever designed. I can’t wait to be in this space, whipping up a new recipe (likely from a Barefoot Contessa cookbook) for dinner with my family.

Probably about 6 more months until that’s a reality.

I’ll just be over here at the corner of the property, dreaming about gatherings of family and friends until then.

In the meantime, Josh and my dad have been working on securing the perimeter. Josh discovered that our neighbor along our tree line was perhaps unclear on the actual boundary of his property. We’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, but as he was clearing his entirely wooded property, he cleared almost 20 feet onto our side of the tree line. So, over the course of the past two weekends, Josh and my dad have put up metal stakes and wire along the property boundary to help make it clear.

Not the most beautiful thing, but effective. It’s hidden by the trees from our side.

Along that same side of our property, past the tree line, there is another neighboring property that has recently sold. We spotted some markers we think indicate a building envelope so we are being proactive and planning a four rail fence along that shared boundary. It will tie into our neighbor’s fence on the West side of our property, shown here:

As they say, good fences make good neighbors.

Posted on July 12, 2020July 12, 2020 by Emily

Day 267

It’s been a slow week at the house so I decided to check the trail camera footage for anything good.

Screen Shot 2020-07-11 at 1.27.28 PM There are dozens of videos of this man carrying in stacks of 2x4s like this one. He must have shoulders of steel. Each time, he gracefully managed to carry over 100 pounds of lumber as he walked the plank into the house.

Though there were 100s of videos, other than Mr. Hulk here, there wasn’t much of interest.

We did catch a few moments of our site meeting with our builder last week.

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Here we are practicing social distancing.

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Discussing the front porch…

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Going over all of the exterior trim details with some very helpful hand gestures.

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Josh and I are peeking out the dining room window here because in the middle of our meeting with our builder and the HVAC subcontractor (who were standing across the room inside) one of our neighbors starting screaming/yelling her dog’s name.

Now, normally this sort of thing wouldn’t send me into a panic, but this dog is trained as an attack dog. When we first met him, our neighbor had to hand us a treat to feed the dog so he would know that we were on the “approved” human list.

Another important piece of information here is that, when I was 3, we were visiting our neighbors who had a dog named “Fudge”, who was completely harmless but about 10 times my body weight at the time. He came bounding over to say hello to me and I promptly climbed my dad like a tree.

So, I immediately started to think about how I was going to scale the roof in the event the dog was charging toward our house. Since we don’t have doors or windows yet and the car was 50 yards away, the roof seemed like the best plan.

This went on for several minutes and we still had not seen the dog. Our neighbor then switched from yelling the dog’s name to yelling what I thought was “I have a treat”.

I chuckled and then realized she was actually yelling “retreat”, which seems like an intense dog command, so I quickly resumed plotting my ascent to the roof.

Several minutes later, she stopped yelling and we still hadn’t seen the dog so we assumed he had indeed “retreated” and we went back to our fascinating conversation about heat pumps vs. dual fuel systems.

Posted on June 25, 2020 by Emily

Day 250

Hey there!

I stopped by for a quick visit between meetings the other day and saw many interesting things as I turned onto our easement drive:

The property adjacent to ours that has been for sale for quite a while now has a gigantic septic fence in place.
The “For Sale” sign had been taken down, so this sale is likely really happening and we are getting some new neighbors. We were secretly hoping the seller would give up and offer to sell it to us and our existing neighbor for a fraction of the cost.
Due to the odd shape of this lot and the gigantic septic field in the middle of the lot, I have no idea where they will place a house. I really hope it’s not a big factor in any of our views.

On a more positive note, I spot a chimney!

A little imagination required, but can’t you see it coming to life?!

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The chimney was really exciting to see. There is another one on the opposite side of the house that is more for looks and balance. This one here is a wood burning fireplace in the living room, but the dining room and library will have ventless gas inserts.

I love fireplaces.

It’s hard to imagine wanting to have a fire right now because it’s almost 90 degrees and 80% humidity as I write this.

No worries, though, because I can just lay down in the puddles on the floor to cool off.

It’s sort of a panicky thing to see water like this on the interior of your house even when you’re still in this rough stage of framing. The good news is there are no windows and doors on the house at this moment in time so there will be plenty of time for this to air out and evaporate.

There’s that gigantic septic field fence from the other side.

As soon as I saw this, I told Josh we may need to go ahead and put up a fence along the shared property line…

Back to the progress! Check out these dormers taking shape. The bedrooms are going to be so cozy.

Though I know we have to have it for waterproofing, I really detest this paper they are putting on in a somewhat random fashion. It is very distracting and they are covering up the window openings.

I can’t wait until we can cover it up with siding and put in the windows. I’m hoping at our meeting tomorrow, the builder will tell us this is happening very soon.

I like this view because you can’t really see the ugly paper.

Also, it cracks me up that it looks like our house is hiding behind the tree, somewhat unsuccessfully. Sort of like when my cat sticks his head under the sofa and thinks you can’t see him.

I turned around from my vantage point and admired all of our little “volunteer” trees that have sprouted up. Hopefully some of these will make it to be big trees someday.

As I was leaving, I spotted a work truck at the edge of the other property adjacent to ours. It is entirely wooded and we have about 40′ of woods between us, but we haven’t see a soul or any evidence of human life on this property the entire time we have owned our property. A little strange that literally the same day that the other property looks to have something happening on it, this one does too. We went from feeling like we were out here by ourselves to all of a sudden having a bunch of activity.

Looking into that fence tomorrow…

Posted on May 24, 2020May 24, 2020 by Emily

Day 219

We were pleasantly surprised to see that, in just a few days, almost all of the block had been laid!

Here they are finishing up the back of the house and then the only section left is the front porch, where my dad and Josh are standing on the right.

John has been spreading out the Pride Dirt Pile so it’s harder for me to get up high enough and far enough away to get everything in one shot. I had to use the panoramic setting to capture this, which is a little bit distorted, but you get the idea.

Though I can barely contain myself in anticipation of framing, seeing this step has been extremely exciting!

That L-shaped thing on the left will be our screened in porch. I’ve never had one of these before. I predict that we will spend a great deal of time on that porch, safe from all of the mosquitos and critters that will eat you up out here.

Also, please note on the left, Barry (my dad) taking a picture of me standing on a pile of dirt taking a picture.

Now, when we are not on the screened in porch on the back of the house, we will most likely be on the front porch, which will be right here.

I have the rocking chairs ready to go for the minute the house is complete.

The horses next door are largely disinterested in the construction.

So, this is the second time in my life that I’ve gotten to be part of the building process on a personal level. The first time was when my parents built a house outside of Philadelphia when I was 4.

You might say, that’s where it all began, or at least where it became clear, that I would wind up in a career related to construction and design.

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Last year for my birthday, Josh put together some still shots from a home video circa 1992 of me supervising on the jobsite at my parents’ house. I was sporting pink sunglasses and an ensemble I can no longer pull off.

Josh did get me a new pair of pink sunglasses so I could recreate the inspection vibe when the time came for us to build our house.

Well, the moment has arrived.

Josh brought the ladder so I could climb down into the basement.

The view from below.

Here I am several decades later, sporting my pink sunglasses and assessing the situation.

On our way home, the same way that we had come just a few hours before, there was suddenly a tree all the way across the road. Josh maneuvered around it and then he and my dad tied it to Josh’s truck so he could pull it out of the road.

It’s always an adventure out in the country!

Speaking of adventures, we have been practically camping in our current house for the past week because our refrigerator decided to stop cooling. Thankfully, it has since been fixed and we had 7(!) days left on the warranty. Always the optimist, Bu was making the most of the temporary setup and had found himself a great spot for lounging and watching the squirrels in the front yard.

He is going to love the screened in porch.

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 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 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.