Dirt Work is done and we have a foundation!

Hi All,
The rumble of heavy machinery is gone, which is bittersweet, but now we're on to the next stage; build the house. Susan and I have decided to act as the general contractors (and in some cases the sub-contractors) to build our house. There are a couple of things we absolutely won't do; concrete and sheetrock. This past Saturday the forms and trenching started for the foundation.

The rough-in plumbing and forms in for the house foundation

The pad for the garage / shop

By Tuesday afternoon all we needed was concrete.

The garage is in the foreground, the house is closer to the pond

A better look at the house pad

Wednesday, today, was concrete day. We were both really nervous. Everything else can be fixed relatively easy but if this is wrong, we'll have a mess. Past the point of no return now...

By the end of the day, here's the foundation for the house.

Sure hope we got this right

Not much more to happen on the house until after the first of the year when we frame it. We are going to help professionals with the framing. At least that's our plan!

That's all for now, take care.
Brian

Five weeks in

Hi All,
Heavy equipment has been working around here for five weeks now. We're getting close to moving on to the next phase. I hope!

Lots has happened. Both dams have been repaired, four culverts have been installed, a right of way for power poles is cleared (we considered solar power but got less than stellar response from the company we contacted), the power line we had to provide has been buried, the bridge is coming along and the driveway is starting to be cleared and covered in gravel. That's just what David Shelton and his crew has done. I'm not sure what Susan and I have been doing but I know we're busy every day and exhausted every night. Well, we have had multiple meetings with the electric company to figure out how to get power to the home site, have also met with an electrician, a water well drilling company, a guy to install the septic tank, worked with a designer on the house plan (picked up a set of construction blue prints today!), met with a guy for a bid on pouring the concrete foundation, placed 30 railroad ties (man those puppies are heavy! Thanks to our neighbor Kirby and his son Michael for their help) for the raised bed vegetable garden and moved one round bale of moldy hay and 13 tractor bucket loads of horse manure from the horse farm three doors down. Whew! No wonder we're tired. And throw in three days tearing the roof off the crack house and then putting a new one on (thanks for all the help from my son Cody!).

Removing old shingles

What we found under the shingles

Maybe we could just call it a skylight and leave it at that

Finished product

Susan and I agree, we don't want to make a living roofing houses. And this little house shouldn't have been a great feat.

But lest you think our life is all work, work, work, we took a week off to volunteer at the US Grand Prix (Formula 1 race at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas). After the race we spent a couple of days in Junction and Mason seeing friends there. We were already practically in the neighborhood. Our long weekend (Thursday through Monday) at the race track was really cool. Our jobs were anything but glamorous but it was cool being that close to the inner workings of putting on an international event. Saturday night we escaped from the track to have dinner and country dance lessons with my son Shaun and his family. I actually think I might try dancing again!

If you're interested, our  jobs at the race were to check in the volunteer track marshals (somewhere between 200 and 300 people from around the world), check out radios and headsets to them, and then check them back in at the end of every day. The marshals went out to the track about 7:30 every morning and didn't leave their post until around 5:00 every evening. Our other job was to deliver water, powerade, ice and lunches to them throughout the day which also meant we were sometimes on the track and most of the time right over the wall from the track- a view most people don't get. For a racing fan like me, it was great! We enjoyed it so much we're going back this weekend to volunteer for a 24 hour race.

When wearing a tabbard like this, security just waves you through

Supporting the marshals, we were able to go on the "Marshals Pit Walk" Friday night. Lewis Hamilton's crew working on his car. The ultimate winner of the race and now world champion (fourth).

Vettel's pit. Second in the race and second in the championship.

Pit Lane

We just happend to take a break to check out the track at the same time the F1 cars were making their first lap.

I'll leave you with a picture of our pond from last week.

That's it for now. Take care.
Brian

Two weeks of heavy equipment

Hi All,
After two full weeks of heavy equipment working around here there has been a lot accomplished. The entire area where the house and garage will go has been cleared and the dirt pad where the house will go is in place.

Access from the house to the dam and a small bit of the driveway has been cleared making it possible to repair the lake's dam and also connect the small lake with the bigger lake.

Susan and I have continued to work on getting the wood floors out of the old house. A much bigger and more difficult task than we thought.

Down to wood floors

Wood floor removed, now down to floor joists

DIY tip #2 - For a pier and beam foundation some cement blocks and car jacks can be used to hold up a wall that otherwise would fall down due to dry rot or termites. This allows for occasional adjustments.

Susan is cutting out the floor joists so we can reuse them someplace. They are real 2 x 8 boards. Really 2 inches thick and 8 inches wide.

Friday morning the electric company disconnected the service from the house and took their meter. About 10 minutes later David was on his track hoe and going to work.

Getting the last things out of the house

David is in the track hoe, just eating up the house. Ricky is driving the dump truck over to a 20 feet deep hole dug for the house's last resting place. Jeff is on the ground salvaging anything salvageable and using the bulldozer to push the debris into the hole.

By the end of the day, there is no more house

Friday night our neighbors joined us for the bonfire. 

By this morning (Saturday) about all that is left is a smoldering pit.

That's it for now. Take care.
Brian

Progress Report After Four Days

Hi All,
Four days in and there has been a lot of work done. Behind the house that will be demolished there is a three room structure we affectionately call the crack house. A lot of work was done around the crack house to clean up all the trash and brush.

You have seen pictures of the lake but there is actually a small pond much closer to the existing house- currently a mosquito hatchery. The water from the spring runs into the pond and then overflows to a creek that runs to the lake at the back of the property. Both dams,( the one for the pond and the one for the lake) need to be repaired. Yesterday (Wednesday) and a little bit of today David and his crew fixed the pond dam.

Here's pretty much how the pond and dam looked when they started

 Here's David in his track hoe repairing the dam....

Here's the new dam, just waiting for a good rain or the spring to slowly fill the pond

Here's Jeff on the bulldozer clearing what was once a trail back to the home site

I left out that besides getting all the trash and brush cleared up the first couple of days they made a pad for the pole barn that will be going in a few weeks from now. By the end of the day today they had started clearing the area where the house and garage will go. It is amazing how much three guys on heavy equipment can get done in a day. Susan and I are still working on getting the wood floors out of the old house or otherwise we'd just sit and watch them all day.

That's it for now. Take care.
Brian

Getting to work

Hi All,
Once we were back from Georgia and South Carolina we got to work on figuring out what we are going to do about housing. We had the water in the old house tested and feel certain now that there are lead pipes in the house. That along with all the other work that needed to be done was the death knell for the house. I know many of you wanted us to renovate the house based on the pictures but everyone that has seen it or walked through it said we should tear it down. Today.

A bit of a leaky roof

There used to be a wall there

A tip for you DIY'ers, when the wall doesn't meet the floor take a bed sheet, roll it up and stuff it in the crack

Under the carpet, the pad and this plywood, we found tar paper. Under the tar paper we found wood floors! 

 We're working on getting all the wood flooring out now. Getting to the wood floors is the hard part; getting it out is easy with the right tools. The flooring will need some sanding and staining but our plan is for it to go in the new house.

So this...

Now has a date with these

Speaking of the new house, we've decided on where to put it. We thought we had it a couple of weeks ago but we moved it based on exposure to the afternoon sun.

This is where the new house is going to go

Perhaps this will give you a better idea. The house will be over there looking through those trees at the lake.

Our almost-family friends are busy at work moving dirt, clearing pads, fixing dams, and burying mountains of trash. It's amazing what they've been able to do in two days and they've only just started!

That's it for now. I'll post more pictures soon to show David's progress.

Brian

Trip to Atlanta and South Carolina

Hi All,
Last weekend Susan and her girlfriends had a "girls weekend" planned. Hurricane Irma adjusted their plans a bit. They were going to spend the weekend at a house in Folly Beach, unfortunately that house was under water. Just as we were leaving Texas the plan changed.  They decided to help one of the friends clean up a bunch of downed limbs from Irma on their property in SC. I was going to be loading stuff from Susan's barn in Atlanta to bring back to Texas while the girls had their weekend. With the change of plans I got invited instead!

The property is in what is known as ACE Basin in South Carolina. ACE Basin is the basin of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers, one of the largest undeveloped estuaries along the Atlantic Coast of the United States according to Wikipedia. This particular property is special because parts of the movie Forrest Gump were filmed there. In fact the pecan grove in front of Forrest's house is where we spent the weekend picking up and burning downed limbs.

Run Forrest, Run!

The "Jenny Tree"

We still had a bunch of stuff we wanted to bring back from Atlanta so we spent Sunday evening and Monday morning loading up the trailer with "stuff". Thanks to Mark for helping us get the wood stove loaded.

Let me tell you a story about a man named Jed...

That's it for now. Take care.
Brian

Chapter 3 - 40 acres and no mule

Hi All,
I had several people ask that we continue with the blog and report on what we're doing with the land. So here's Chapter 3, 40 acres (actually 39.93) and no mule (but we did get a Polaris Ranger).

The 40 acres. Here's an aerial photo of our property, outlined in red.

It kinda looks like a gun pointing down. In the barrel (lower left corner) is where the current house is located. The open pasture to the left is Texas A&M AgriLife Research land. The dark triangle looking thing towards the top of our property is a lake / pond.

No mule, but a Polaris Ranger. We bought this while we were in Cody, Wyoming and used uship to get it back to Texas.

In my last post I mentioned we were trying to figure out whether to renovate the house built in 1930 or bulldoze it down. We still haven't decided what to do. One day we want to keep it, the next we want to burn it to the ground. I have a few pictures but they are all of the outside. The inside is so disgusting we wouldn't want anyone to see it. So far we've pulled most of the carpet out so at least you can walk in without losing your lunch.

Looks pretty rough

Well, it could be cute

Maybe too much work

If we just got the tree limb off the roof...

Who knows what we'll decide to do with it. Our purchase decision was all about the land, the house wasn't even a consideration.

Just how thick are the woods?

The word "impenetrable" comes to mind

There are a few places you can get a peek at the lake

Have you ever heard of a forestry mulcher? What a cool machine! We hired a company to mulch around the property line so we could at least know where the property lines are. These machines literally eat trees. A thirty foot tree becomes mulch in a minute or two. They are amazing to watch. Because the woods are so thick I couldn't get in front of them to show them eating an entire tree but here's a few seconds of one doing some "clean up".

And here's what they leave in their wake.

Once again, Duncan has to get in the picture.

That's it for now. Take care.

Brian