Our New Home- Getting Started (Finally!)

Last week, I told you about our first attempt at building a new house.  The plans were hard fought over, compromises made, paperwork filed (and filed and filed) and the equipment finally showed up one fine summer day to start digging our basement.  Remember what happened?

Disaster!

So…we carried on (after a little breakdown/ meltdown on my part).  Decided on a new plan without basement, had the plans drawn up by our contractor, and had the land reinforced with gravel and strengthening fabric (I know- seems weird, right?).  The next summer, we were ready to try again.

Here they are packing all of the gravel down.  Our 10 year old running the packer.  Yeah.  That’s when they start running heavy machinery in these parts.

Seriously, the thing only went 2 miles an hour, and he was buckled in!

Break time!  Probably waiting for a root beer….

After the site was fully prepped, the work began on the actual house.  Which, apparently, first involved moving out a lot of junky holiday and equipment trailers (not to mention the port a potty).  Our beautiful site went from pristine to junkyard in no time at all.

Then we built forms for the concrete footings.

And then the concrete trucks showed up to fill the forms.

Please take note of the holiday trailer on the right (which affectionately became known as “The Scamper”) and the porta potty on the left.  My dad and I are out there watching them.  So exciting!  Our poor contractors- since we already lived across the yard from the house site- we were there quite a bit.  We couldn’t help it!

 

Our boy helping.  His job was to bang on the edges of the forms to get air out of the concrete before the top was troweled smooth.

We used ICF to build our house (the styrofoam blocks that are filled with rebar and concrete) so the concrete trucks will most definitely be back.

Stay tuned for more house building Thursdays!

Our New Home- Disaster

We lived on part of my parent’s land for about 5 years…

Our old home

before we decided we were ready to take the plunge and build.

We love it here.  It is treed and quiet and we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives in this spot (and living next door to Grandma and Grandpa- only a short walk on a worn path through the trees- was a huge benefit for us as well as our son).

We started wrestling with paperwork about six (!) years ago.  It took 3 years to get the land subdivision done (something we had to do before we were allowed to build on site).  There were issues with the approach and the road (we share those with my parents) as well as other legalities and minutia and administravia that had us running for our wallets, filling out paperwork, and playing phone tag with everyone in the county!

While that fun was happening, we worked on our house plans.  We wanted something unique and special and read many books and spent many hours finding what we loved.  Many battles were staged over those plans, I tell you.  Many drawings on napkins.  Many heated discussions.  Every detail thought out.

Finally we agreed, saw the architect, had the plans drawn up, and waited for our chosen contractor to have time in his schedule.

It was so cool.  An open plan with the fireplace and stairs in the centre of the main area, bedrooms upstairs, and a cozy basement.  Rustic and woodsy and comfortable- just like us!

Do you like the spot we chose for the new house?

Here’s what it looked like after we chopped down some scrubby poplars and my brother got finished with it with the bulldozer.

When the contractor and equipment showed up- we were sooooo excited.  Years of work and effort were finally paying off.  Our son put on his little toy tool belt and headed out to help.  Angels were singing.

But do you see the grayish area at the bottom of the trench?  That’s an indicator that you are going to hit water.  And we did.  Big time.  Test holes were dug.  Pools of water filled the bottoms of them.  And our dreams for our little house with the cozy basement were dashed.  Just like that.  I had to go back into our house to cry.

Disaster.  So… there was no way we could build our house here.  Back to the drawing board for us.  Our plans were useless and we would later have to get the site tested by an engineering firm to see if it could be stabilized enough to even build a house without a basement on it.

We were pretty crushed.

But we managed to get through it.

The site was stabilized with landscape strengthener and (a lot of) gravel, eventually, new plans we loved (without a basement) were drawn up, and we gathered up our dream to try again… the next summer.