Posted on by Emily

Day 324

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

We spent the bulk of the day at the property yesterday.

Josh wanted to mow the septic field to make it easier for installation of whatever is required for the septic system. I don’t really want to know the details. I just want it to work.

Meanwhile, as the guys were working on the exterior trim, I was available to answer questions.

At first, I think they were annoyed that I was there. But after a little while, they started to come and get me to ask questions and make sure they were lining up all of the trim correctly.

I think it also helped that I had brought them donuts.

I spent a lot of time drawing and detailing all of the trim and I am thrilled to see it come to life!

On the other side of the house, the masons were starting to brick the living room chimney. Hopefully they’ll be done with the two chimneys in about a week.

It had been a little while since we had a family site visit and tour so we decided to have a picnic and invite the quarantine pod:

My sister and brother-in-law both drive mini coopers, which don’t stand a chance on our easement road as it is currently quite rugged due to construction traffic and lots of recent rain. Consequently, these two parked their car up at the top of the road and hiked the quarter of a mile to our house. Here, they have just arrived from their journey, sporting full hiking apparel and their backpack beach chairs.

This just cracks me up.

Kath and Grandmother also made the pilgrimage, in sportier ensembles. They arrived by Jeep, which could manage the road just fine, and dropped them off at the garage.

Julia and Nate hadn’t been in awhile, so we gave them the extended tour. Here they are practicing being overnight guests, with Julia in the shower and Nate…taking care of business.

After the tour, we had our inaugural fine dining experience at the house. We set up folding tables and camping chairs for a picnic lunch in the dining room. This made me so happy. I can’t wait for many more meals in this room, though hopefully with slightly upgraded furniture.

After lunch, Josh continued to mow and my dad did some weedeating around the fence. I had brought some irises from our current house that needed to be divided and replanted.

I planted 20 or so by the fence, to the left of our driveway entrance. In 6 or 7 months, they should be blooming as we drive up to the house!

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!

Posted on by Emily

Day 66

Big development over here! Our future septic fields have been fenced off!

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As Josh said, “This is really exciting to see something happening on the property.”

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We took my parents and grandmother out to see this exciting progress last weekend.

Here’s my mom, Kath, inspecting the fence.  She loved it.

We are now waiting for the county to inspect this septic field fence and give us our septic permit, after which we can then apply for our building permit.  Fingers crossed!