rural – Page 3 – Primm & Property

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

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 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 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.

Posted on March 1, 2020March 1, 2020 by Emily

DAY 133

Well, a lot has happened in the last 3 weeks:

We got our building permit! After the “plan review fee”, the “privilege tax”, the “educational impact fee”, and a handful of other absurd fees, I’m pretty sure we’ve paid for a county employee’s annual salary in order to obtain our permit.
It has rained approximately 67″ this February, which has put everyone in construction behind and has delayed us breaking ground until the earthwork guys catch up. Patiently waiting…..
I had surgery and Josh has been buried in his Finance class so we hadn’t been able to go for a site visit until yesterday.
Our neighbor’s barn is nearly finished. Our construction envy is growing by the minute.
The critters have come out in full force! We had a record 60 videos on the trail camera this time, which is about 5X as many as we’ve had before.

Neighbor’s barn. Maybe one day there will be a structure on our property, too. Not jealous or anything.

Focusing on our wildlife for now.

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I think this is an owl on the ground to the right of the trees. Josh agreed with my assessment for once.

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Up close and personal with Bambi.

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Practicing for her real ID picture.

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Turkey invasion!

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House cat makes an appearance.

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Turkeys are back for the first recorded snow since we’ve had the camera!

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Our resident black squirrel with white-tipped tail dashing by on a sunny day. I can’t wait for Bu (our indoor house cat) to lay his eyes on this guy. He’s going to lose his mind.

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Evidently our neighbors believe in free-range horses. Exhibit A.

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Exhibit B.

Remind me to look into a property fence…

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Pretty blue bird on the ground below the trees. Looked very busy.

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Cute little bunny! Another creature for Bu to go nuts over from his indoor perch.

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And finally, more snow! It didn’t snow at all at our current house on the other side of town. I can’t wait to be in the new house and watch it snow this time next year.

Patiently waiting…..

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Emily

Day 112

We put up a “gate” this weekend at the property. And by we, I mean my dad and Joshua. I was busy reviewing trail camera footage. More on that in a minute.

This is a temporary setup to try to deter unauthorized visitors. But, between the medium-duty chain, the plastic sign, and the fact that there’s no lock, it’s basically Fort Knox.

Hopefully people will get the message.

Back to the trail camera.

The house cat made another appearance, as did the shaky branch. We had a deer family and a squirrel. I was about to report to the guys that there wasn’t anything exciting, when I came across this fella:

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I wish I could share the video so you could see this creature in action. He has a most unusual gait and what appears to be a large head.

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I was pretty sure it was a wild boar, as our neighbor did mention she’s seen a few.

When the guys got back in the truck for lunch, I handed over my laptop for them to take a look.

About .283 seconds later, Josh said, “Um, that is an opossum.”

Just call me Bindi Irwin.

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!

Primm & Property

Tag: rural