The Family Saga Continues.

A few years ago my wife and I bought a piece of property in a small town 7 miles west of where we live now. The town was established in 1859 and has grown slightly since. Current population of 1,315 (still a small town), we hope to make it 1,320. We spent a good part of the last four summers doing some serious cleanup of dead fall, tipped over trees, and major cleanup in general.

A small cleanup fire

Before we started it was not possible to see the back property line due to the overgrowth. After we had invested in some nice chainsaws and a log splitter, we now sell firewood. We stack the firewood in the pole barn we built last fall. If you missed it you can check out the Pole Barn post. We also modified a skidster and a man lift to aid in raising the pole barn, check out Redneck Engineering post.

Here is the satellite image of the property just as we started the pole barn.

The Property

Our hopes and dreams for this parcel of 1.25 acre, is to build a modest house for our family of five as we have outgrown our 1400 square foot 3 bed 2 bath home. The only problem, the city council put a halt on building permits due to the lack of fresh drinking water. At the city council meeting they had figured they were already over tapped and had to put watering restrings in effect. If you didn't have a water share or a private well, your grass was brown. However, the time has come. Seven days from now we attend the meeting of the council and find out if there is enough water to go around. We have high hopes due to an amazingly above average snowfall this past winter, and a new well the city drilled last fall. This new well could potentially supply 200 new homes with fresh water. Cross your fingers for us.

The Family

With not a lot of money I purchased a program for my computer and went to work drawing the house plans myself. The program I found was about $40, which seemed like a good price and it would do everything I needed. The down side, the program didn't have any macros to automatically draw walls and place windows, ect, ect. I had to draw every line on the plan which was quite a few hours but its finally ready for submittal to the city for review. I have worked in construction my entire adult life, I am a plumber by trade, Brother-in-law is an electrician, Father-in-law is a roofer. My resume includes: commercial painter, carpentry, tile setter, HVAC install, and a tad of masonry. I think by the time we get the house built and moved in I'll be pretty sick of looking at it putting in all that work. I guess I will have to buckle down and get it done, because hey, its for the family, and family is everything.

The House Plan

With all of that said, and much more to come, stay tuned. I hope you enjoyed this little peek into our lives and our goals that hopefully commence within the next month. If all goes well I will be posting pictures of a Trackhoe digging a big hole in the ground! I also have a friend who is a wizard on an excavator, his nickname is "Pizza", (which is a funny story for another time).

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