Posted on 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…

 

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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Aren’t they cute?!

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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.

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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 by Emily

Day 83

Well, 2020 is off to a strong start!

Items of note:

  1. We close on our construction loan next week.
  2. Our septic permit has been approved.
  3. 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:

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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:

IMG-3233They pretended to eat hay when I caught them checking us out.

IMG-3234After the second property corner was poured, they lost interest.

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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!