The exterior of the house is almost done. The siding and roof and windows are now complete.
They are now working on the HVAC and electrical. Ideally the insulation guys will be here the end of next week, then HOPEFULLY drywall the following week.
It’s coming along, but can’t come soon enough for me. One of the propane tanks in the camper went empty sometime over night last night. We woke up at 5:30 to 47 degrees inside. UGGHHH!
Once the demolition of the actual house was finished, Al and his employees tore down the block garage walls so the contractor could come in and pour the new ones.
Earlier this week the concrete guys came in and set the forms, while the demolition guy came back to take the floor off the house. They didn’t take the floor off at the same time as the house because this would (hopefully) keep the basement walls plumb (and not fall in) until right before the contractor came to put the floor trusses in.
The builder was ready to build as soon as the garage walls were poured and cured. The wood is delivered and they are ready to start the actual building.
Tai is getting better about having all the noise and vehicles around and not barking quite as much. (Ok, he’s still barking like crazy at most noises, but getting a teeny bit better, especially when I threaten to swat him with the fly swatter).
So long story short……we have new garage walls,
And basement walls that moved. They didn’t collapse, but moved a couple of inches.
One person said it would be FINE to go ahead and put the house on the foundation, that the house would hold the walls in place. Another said absolutely NO WAY. While another said it MIGHT work.
So if you are building a house to last for many many years, why would you put it on a foundation that may or may not work for the long run? Isn’t that one of the things we were fighting in the first place with the garage walls buckling in and ready to collapse?
Al’s pretty good at bartering and figuring out how to come up with what he needs without spending much money, so he started figuring out ways to do it without breaking the budget. And now the walls are coming down as we speak and we will have new walls poured next week.
I guess there are plenty of things that come up when building a house, but I hope there aren’t too many more. One month in the camper down and I’m ready to be in a house.
The demolition crew showed up Wednesday morning to take the house down. It’s nice to finally see some progress after all the weeks of planning and finally get going on it. I took a few pictures as they went along during the day.
After they got the house down, they had to bring a bigger machine in to take out the concrete planks over the garage. It was a little tricky at first, but they got it done.
The ground around the house is tore up, but with the drought this year, the grass wasn’t in great shape anyway. Time to start over with all of it.
We brought a piece of an old rose that was in my great grandma’s yard from Wyoming many years ago after she passed away. It’s been in the same spot for 17 years and I knew it would probably die if we tried to move it, so we left it and hoped it would be OK. It didn’t get a scratch. :)
Most of you know we live in a county park/campground, where Al is the Park Ranger. In exchange for Al being available 24/7 (and I DO mean 24/7!) we live in a county provided house inside the park. The house is a pre-fab modular home that was built in the 70’s. Over time the windows have rotted, the roof needs replaced (and we found out the attic is full of bats), the siding is falling off, the block walls in the garage are buckling, and the basement is wet and moldy. None of these things can easily be fixed. The Supervisors decided it wasn’t worth putting money into it to get by for a few more years, so they are going to replace it. It will be built on the same footprint as the old one, with the same basement walls but new garage walls and waterproofing on the rest of it.
I know some of you are saying “but my taxes are going to go up”. That’s not probable from this project alone. It’s a capital improvement of the county’s infrastructure. We pay taxes in this county as well on our 3-plex, and I don’t want them to go up either. But the house is falling down and it’s time to get it fixed right. Even though we don’t own this house it is “our home” and has been for 20 years. Our kids grew up here. We have spent tons of our own money over the years to make it livable like we want it, including carpeting & tile on the porch and downstairs, new interior doors, paint, and much more like it was our own home. And since it will be built with county money, we plan to make sure that the new house is done extremely budget conscious. We will be doing many things to save money like lay the flooring (that is reclaimed), paint, countertops and anything else we can do to save the crazy labor costs just like we would if it was our own money.
Okay…..with all of THAT out of the way, let’s get started!
Since we have the camper, we can easily move into it during construction. Al ran sewer, water & electricity to a pad in front of the house and this will be our home for the next few months.
We bought an outdoor carpet last week and Al made a table and set up his grilling station. With the TV & stereo in the garage, we have a great outdoor “living room”. For the last few years we have been going to Texas for a month every spring in the camper, so we have some practice with living in it long term, and it’s not too bad. We will see if I still have that same sentiment at the end of 4 months! They say we should be in the new house by November 1.
We will have a front row seat for the construction.
This week they are stripping the house of the trim, doors, a couple newer windows, fans, lights, kitchen flooring and anything else that can be reused, either on this house or somewhere else in the county.
We are reusing the kitchen cabinets and the kitchen flooring, so they are coming out as well to be put into storage.
With the new house I’m looking forward to many things: central air (we have two window AC units that we purchased that don’t do the job), winter tight windows & doors (no more shoveling snow inside), forced air heat (no more loading the wood furnace and having to open/close the windows to regulate the heat) and so much more.
The schedule is to demolish the house on Monday. It should be interesting!
Remember the baby chicks?
They have a new home!
Our coop is really only made to house 10-15 full grown chickens, so we couldn’t keep all of them. They were getting bigger, and no longer needed mama. Matt had a co-worker in Des Moines that had been thinking about getting chickens, so they agreed to take our babies.
Matt and Erin agreed to take them back the last time they were home. But they had to be caught first.
And have their wings clipped.
You clip chickens wings so that they won’t fly. When they try they are off balance, and will stop. You just cut the feathers partially off one wing. It doesn’t hurt them because you just cut feathers, although from all the squawking, you would think their whole wing has been cut off.
Matt’s co-worker has 5 young boys, so I hoped that it would all work out good. I think it’s good to teach another generation how to respect and treat animals, and to show them where some of their food comes from.
We also gave them one of our older hens that wasn’t looking too good. The rooster REALLY liked her and kept pulling her feathers out. She was looking pretty bad, and I didn’t think she would probably make it if we kept her. She must have been laying the super tiny eggs, because we haven’t had any since she left. She wasn’t much bigger than the chicks, so it worked out good to send her too.
They all went into a box (with lots of holes) and headed to Des Moines.
This week we received a cute little thank you note in the mail that all was good and they were enjoying them. It was sweet.
On a bad note, however, with the crazy amount of raccoons in the park this year, we have lost 6 more, including the rooster, so we are down to only 8 hens. :(
