I'm the husband.

I had been eyeing this chunk of land for about 35 years. There are huge white pines, an apple orchard and best of all, a beautiful spring creek. It started out as 7 acres and then we bought the 42 acres next door. Both chunks are mostly sand and not really farm land. Lots of lichen, pines, and on the stream bottom land, giant cedars. There is a lovely cedar sided old barn in great shape with a new metal roof and the 42 acres has several small outbuildings and a very nice small farmhouse.

Farm Tools

For keeping the fields cut, blowing snow next winter, making gardens....of course we need a tractor.

We are out of the ground

The basement is finished and on Monday the carpenters and some lumber will be on site. Last Friday the masons put in the footings for the garage and workshop and the four porches, one south facing screened porch and three entry porches.

The bracing shown in the photograph serves to keep the basement walls stable until the flooring is in for the first floor, then the excavators will return and backfill up to the level of the decorative cinder blocks. The drain field for the septic tank will be in the works this week also. We are told there is currently a three week wait for inspection of drain fields, everyone starts construction at once here when the load restrictions are lifted and that can mean some delay in inspections.

Tuesday the footings will be inspected and once approved the masons will return to finish the porches and the garage.

When I took the picture today, Sunday June 29th, it was 53 degrees and raining; after forty or so Texas summers this is fine with me.

Basement progress

Today the basement floor went in. The two bedrooms, the sitting room and the bath and the laundry and sewing area have radiant heating lines installed. The boiler that provides heat for that will also provide hot water for the whole house.

We have a well

This week a new water well was drilled. The old house had a twenty foot well that had slowed to a trickle and we knew before we started building a new well would be on the list. It took less than three hours to complete this part of the process. Putting in the water line to the house comes later.

The basement floor has been smoothed and leveled and covered with extruded polystyrene foam board, an insulation material, in preparation for the plumbers to put down the radiant heating tubing before the cement for the floor is poured next week.

The basement walls are up

On Friday the crew finished the basement walls except for an opening left for access to pour the basement floor.

Men at Work

The shape and size of the house appears!

Big Dig on Ortman Road

Excavation started on May 20th. After two days the basement shape plus a six foot working space all around was done.