Major Steps and Making It Work

This will be more photo spread than blog post as I attempt to get you caught up on the last ten months.

As of yesterday evening, we have officially been living on the property for four weeks. Four weeks in about 200 square feet. We did want to go tiny, right? Don't laugh. In truth, it has been a very easy transition. We have all of our basic needs and then some...and as a note of interest, a new toilet! But more on that later.

I hope to be able to post often from here on out. The building process is finally underway. However, I do realize this is construction and often that means that you take a step and wait, take a step and wait, take a step and wait...you get the picture. Speaking of pictures...

Since last I posted, much as been accomplished.

January: David was able to install two culverts. One is in the wet-weather creek, so we can drive across from the street side to the building site...kind of a necessity. The other is helping with the rain runoff down the driveway and into the wet-weather creek.

It took the rental of another piece of equipment to make this happen as the driveway still has a lot of trees and rocks.

That's one big culvert!

This is a pano-shot looking down the driveway at the gulley.

The gulley with culvert installed

In January we also bought Ruthie, our 29-foot fifth wheel, which is now our home until we build the shop house. She has two slide-outs for extra living space and room to move around in the bedroom. There is more storage that I know what to do with. We did some minor remodeling. We removed the sleeper sofa and the built in dining table and benches, replacing them with a leather futon and a small table and chairs from IKEA. While the old dining benches did have some extra storage, they were very 80s and had been around a while, so out they went. We also removed all of the window valences and the fabric headboard. YUCK! Old fabrics hold old smells. We cleaned the carpets and made her quite homey!



The plan was to get the house on the market by February 1, so that was what we worked toward during the month of January. We had already cleared most of the stuff out if you will remember from the last blog post about letting go.

February came, and the house on Highpoint was listed. In short, it sat with literally no showings (okay, there were 2) for 3 months before we decided to take it off the market and try again later. More on that when I get to June. At the end of February, we took Ruthie out on her maiden voyage and headed to sunny Florida. We had secured a campsite at the Gulf Islands National Seashore across the bay from Pensacola. It was beautiful. We rested, visited Ft. Pickens and the Pensacola Naval Air Station, had lunch with my second cousin who lives close by, and ate lots and lots fresh fish. Living easily in Ruthie for a week, we both decided that we could handle living in her during the building process.

In March David began the process of clearing the building site of all trees and their stumps. It honestly looked like a minefield.

The driveway was pitched for drainage. Occasionally I would hike up the hill and help him out. Most of the time I sat on the front of the tractor and drove it forward a few feet while he sat on the back and dug...and dug and dug and dug...

AH! The elusive PushMe-PullYou!

In May he went to work on the septic tank and drain field. He had saved the biggest stump for last, which provided a great spot for the septic tank. That was one giant tree stump! It took some digging and pushing around. Eventually I went up to the site, and with both tractors we managed to get it out of the hole.

That is some stump!

Also in May, he bought a land plane and after removing all of the remaining stumps, settled the clearing so it was nice and smooth and level...or so we thought.

So now we are up to June. The house has sat unmoving for several months. We decided to take it off the market at the end of April and just let it sit for a few weeks. I ran into a former co-worker at Golly G's one day who had just this year acquired her real estate license and was part of an amazing team which is led by her mother and father. She asked how the sale of our house was going, and I told her is was off the market for now. She called me that afternoon and told me that her mother wanted to sell my house. That Sunday they came by and we made a plan to do some remodeling to freshen it up. The bathrooms got new floors, countertops, and our bathroom got a tile shower. Everything was painted including a few ceilings, and the kitchen got new countertops and a tile backsplash. Long story short, we re-listed it at the end of June and 8 weeks later we had a contract. The sale closed on October 1. I couldn't be more thankful!

July came and brought with it a promotion for David at NFD. He was promoted to fire engineer. That was an exciting day.

In August he was back to work on installing the septic tank. We waiting until we had a solid offer on the house to do a whole lot of infrastructure. Now things really started moving.

The septic tank hole was dug, the septic tank placed in the hole...and then it rained.

Think of that massive plastic septic tank as a giant empty milk jug thrown into the ocean. They both float. We had to borrow a pump, pump out the water, re-insert and level the tank, and fill the tank with water so it would stay in the ground. Any by "we" I mean David.

At the beginning of September, he also dug the trenches from the top of the driveway all the way back through the woods to the building site for the electricity and water. He rented a smaller trackhoe that could move through the woods easier than the tractor. He even had some occasional help from friends and a friendly new neighbor. I was able to help a few times. Water pipe and electrical conduit was laid. Did I mention that we had the hottest August and September on record? Nearly every day was in the 90s. He worked hard, drank lots of water and Gatorade, and got it done. What a guy!

























In September before we headed to Myrtle Beach where David was the featured speaker at a conference for firefighters, we started the process of laying gravel on the driveway.

Look how pretty this driveway is!

Then while we were gone, our not-quite-level building site was graded by the professionals. Let's just say that there was a 3-foot difference from one side of the site to the other. The slope was so gradual, we didn't even realize it was there. We also applied for, paid for, and received our permits for the building, the power, the water, and the septic tank/drain field. Inspections were made, lines were pulled, and everything was hooked up and running.

When we got home from the beach, we had about a week to finish packing the house and getting everything ready to close on the sale. Boxes were packed, box truck was loaded, RVs hooked up, floors and cabinets cleaned, and off went our worldly possessions.

Shelters in place

October 1 brought the closing of the sale of the Highpoint house. David installed our new mailbox to make it official. While he was digging the trench for the electricity, he dug up a rock that looks quite a bit like the state of Tennessee. Eventually we hope to get the house numbers on that rock, possibly backlit for night time. Either way, it looks pretty cool there by the mailbox, doesn't it?

Less than a week into the stay, and it rained. That might be an understatement. It actually poured. We were thankful for the rain because it brought an end to the very hot month of September and needed water to the area that was in a drought situation. The other positive note was that we were able to see where we had drainage problems on the driveway. So back to the PushMe-PullYou stance we went to re-dig drainage along the driveway to solve (fingers crossed) the problem. So far, with a couple of other minor adjustments, things seem to be holding.

So here we are, settled into our cozy RV. Our youngest daughter bought her own bumper-pull trailer and has painstakingly remodeled it as her own tiny house. Quite literally, she has replaced almost every surface, removed or rebuilt things, and folks, it is totally her. Adorable, soft, and a very adult space. She is renting land from us, and we are so proud of her for taking this step of "home ownership" and not paying someone else's mortgage.

We also installed a solar-powered electric gate for security out here in the woods. It works like a charm!

Next, to get us officially on the road to building a house and meeting the codes requirements, we rented a porta-potty. Go ahead, make your jokes. We have heard them all!

Now it was time to start breaking ground. In a matter of two days, they had dug the footers, had them inspected, and we had three cement trucks pour the footers so that they could cure before block is laid.

Laying rebar for the footers.

And then it rained again...

But that's okay because we have to wait for the block and a crew to lay it. So far we are learning quickly that you often take a step forward and then have to wait on someone else. So we wait for block to be delivered next week, and then we wait for a crew to install it.

In the meantime, the toilet decided to start leaking, so that had to be replaced...in basically a closet that is about 9 square feet. But it works like a charm, and I am not forced to use that porta-potty we rented.

We are loving life here in the woods. It is as peaceful and pleasant as we imagined it would be. As soon as the next step is completed, I will let you know.