Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Mother May I?
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Studying for the Soil Test
This bad boy has a GPS system mounted on the back so he can mark the spots he tested on our topo. How cool is that?
Professor Joe made this rig himself. He welded the drill to the back. He just toodles around to the next spot and drills down.
Now he asks the dirt sample hard questions like, "What is the capital of Yugoslavia?"
Not really. He just looks at it and makes sure it is suitable for a septic tank drain field.
I'm left wondering, though... is getting The Golden Shovel Award on a soil test a good thing?
Oh, well, as long as we pass, I guess I can let that be one of life's great unsolved mysteries.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Out On a Limb
Although on a beautiful day like today with such a blue sky, it might be kind of fun to scamper into the tree tops and pretend to be a bird. A very large, destructive, tree eating bird. Maybe a wood pecker on steroids.
"Whoo do you think you are?!!"
No More Gas Pain!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
A Room With a View
From the side porch/laundry room:
Friday, February 5, 2010
The Electric Slide
The power company seems to have a plan to do their "electric slide," but when I left, the gas guys hadn't located the gas pipes, yet. I think they dug up every water line on the lot, but couldn't find the gas. They spent all morning and even brought a small back hoe with them, but I don't know that the tractor ever made it off the trailer.
I'm sure they'll find the gas lines, though. Then we'll just have to figure out how to reroute them! Stay tuned for further updates!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Change You Can Believe In
What's in a name?
Starting a blog to track the progress of our new build seemed like a great idea, but I was immediately confronted with a decision. (Everything about building a house seems to involve making decisions including blogging about it.) The decision I was faced with was: what should I name the blog?
I thought about it for a bit and thought about where we are building and what we hope to accomplish by building, and I decided on "Coming Home." First of all, we are building in the woods next to the house in which my better half grew up, so in a sense, it is a home coming. Second of all, we are attempting to build a "new old house" that will recall a simpler time, a time of summer nights, sweet tea, screen porches and rocking chairs. Along those lines, we hope this house will reflect the history of the area. In recent years the streets have been filled with very lavish high end homes. We'd like our house to be more like the simple summer homes that populated the area at the turn of the last century, so in this sense it is also a coming home. Finally, I thought about how I want this house to be a place that our kids will want to come home to after they make their way off to college and the world beyond.
This is going to be such an exciting endeavor! I'm very glad to have a place to record progress and pictures for our own records and for others to enjoy.