March 24, 2016

Horsing Around

The first time we ever saw the property, there was a temporary corral and some large stacks of hay near the back end of the property, right next to the road.  
The second time we went to the property, we found out why....horses!  About thirty of them.  They were fenced in by a single hot wire.  Apparently someone was leasing the land for their herd. 


Every time we've been there since, we've seen the horses there, even through the winter. 
It was pretty lush last summer, but we noticed through the winter someone was coming out to drop and scatter the hay for them.  


Now it's greening up again but when we drive out there in the truck or Donna's suburban, the horses get really happy and want to get so close to the vehicle that they leave their goobers all over the place. They think we're there to feed them, so we become their best friends. 
Hello.  Is there any hay in there?


Well, Donna becomes their best friend.  One time she walked out into the herd and it completely surrounded her!  That was pretty amazing.  The guys just ignore them or say "get outta here"  and me, I just stay out of their way...way out of their way.  I'm always just afraid they'll spook and get running and before anyone notices, they'll run right over me.  


Add caption

So the day we closed on the lots, we happened to go by and found some irrigation equipment, a Catepillar and that some of the vegetation had been cleared out and stacked in a pile.  Someone was obviously getting ready to grow some feed for the horses.  They must not have known the lots were sold!?  After finding who the owner of the herd was, we found out that they are bucking horses for rodeos.  Their owner has been leasing the land and will continue to have the forty acres to the south of us for them, but we worked out a deal that he can run them on the back half of our twelve acres, too.  He will keep it nice and green and we can have some pretty horses for neighbors.  




 This silly guy was trying to scratch his belly on this dried up weed. He was really enjoying it!
I think I'll keep an eye on this one...maybe we'll be best friends by the end of this adventure.

March 18, 2016

Making Plans...

It's time to start putting some plans and ideas on paper.  Our goal when selling the house was to downsize the square footage of the house, have it all on one level and to add a "toy" barn or shop for Mike.
We'd like to go from 4,000 down to around 3,000 square feet.  We need a big open great room, kitchen and dining space.  The extended family holds a family dinner almost every Sunday and we take our turn hosting once or twice a month, so this is where most of the square footage needs to be.   We'd also like a nice guest room with it's own bathroom because we love to have friends and family come stay with us!   If we add in an office for Mike, a small reading library and a fun sun porch/ utility room and I'm sure we are pushing the square footage goal! 

I've played around with a few plans and ideas. I've also spent many, many, many hours on Pinterest and in the home improvement stores trying to get a feel for the design elements we'd like to incorporate.

A few months back, I saw a television program about the actor Jim Belushi.  He was building his dream place on the Rogue River in Oregon.  It was a six part series and it was so amazing!  He called it Rogue's Lair and the show followed them through the whole process of designing and building.
Jim  Belushi's Rogue's Lair  credit: riverdellconstruction.com

I was really impressed with the exterior finishes he used..reclaimed wood installed vertically, big stone chimneys, a lot of wood decking and reclaimed, narrow width, rusted tin roofing.  The place looked like it had been there for a hundred years!  It was so rustic and looked just like an old fishing lodge sitting there on the river.






We decided that Rogue's Lair was probably a little TOO rustic and old looking for us, but we wanted to still have that feeling.  A true riverside cottage with a covered porch overlooking the river.  These photos are just a little inspiration...
 



 
It was time to take our rough house plan ideas to our architect, Jason. We met at Pizza Hut and spread the ideas out on the table in the middle of our salads and pizzas and went to work.  He was so good at seeing the vision and telling us what would work and what wouldn't work as well.  He was very optimistic about our vision and said he'd get to work and have a preliminary plan and front elevation ready in about a week.  Ten days later and he had this much ready for us. 


There is still a little tweaking to be done.  The guest bathroom needs to be a bit bigger, and I'd love just a smidge more closet space in one of the master closets.   We will also make some exterior changes...vertical barn wood siding, more rock and a little rock chimney stack just for looks.

It is a working plan and we're about ready to go get a few bids. 

It's so exciting to see the plans and to try to visualize walking through the rooms of The Little River House!!

March 16, 2016

Let's Make a Deal

So many questions!  So many decisions!  

First of all the four of us kept saying to each other...do you really want to move way out there?  It's so far from our families.  In reality, it's only about 20 minutes from Eagle and 30 minutes from Boise to the property, but it seems like another country in some ways.  It would be a long commute for the guys to get to work every day.   At the same time, the idea of a slower paced, more down to earth, less crowded life was so appealing.   We went back and forth, trying to weigh out all the pros and cons.  

We finally decided that we didn't want to move out there by ourselves, so unless P and D wanted to move out there too, it would be a deal breaker.   We've lived by each other several times and really like being neighbors.  I know that may seem strange to some people, but we are so blessed to be best friends with our relatives. We really didn't think it would be much fun for us to move out there without them to share the adventure with us.  And, luckily, they came to the same conclusion!
Showing my dad the property


The next step was to find out if we could even build houses where we wanted to in relation to the river and the flood plain.  The realtor said you could build at the high water mark, but exactly where was that, officially?  The guys tried to get information but it was very confusing and there are several different maps that the different offices use.  It became pretty clear that we were going to have to have a surveyor come out and map this all out for us.  A big fear was that we would get pretty far into this process and then find that we would have all sorts of regulations and legalities that would restrict us from building our vision.

We also started adding up the cost of developing the land.  It's completely undeveloped!  We would have to bring in utilities, put in a well and septic system and put in a road..a long road from the main street.  In the picture at the right, the guys are standing near the east end of the property by the main road and behind them, way in the distance you can see a line of trees near the river.  That's a long road to put in and a long way to string in power.

 We were beginning to see why this parcel of land had never sold.  It was bare ground and had so much work to do just to make it ready to build houses on.  The news we got back from the power company wasn't good.  They would have to bring a lot of line in and the cost was hard to swallow. 

 Mike had really hoped to go almost completely solar and we still hope to do some solar power, but the more he looked into it and the fact that his brother wasn't too interested in it, meant extra expense since we had made a joint decision to split the cost of bringing power from the main road to the potential building sites. 

After much discussion, the decision was made to go forward with making an offer on the two 12 acre parcels.  We wanted the two side by side, 12.5 acre parcels that are shaped like long, narrow rectangles, stretching down through pasture land to the river.  

The offer went in and we waited on pins and needles.  Would this actually happen?  I absolutely hate that waiting time!   Well the time listed in the offer for them to respond by came...and went.   No counter offer...nothing.  Silence.  

After a couple of days, Mike called the realtor back to see what the story was and was told that the offer was not close enough to what the owner wanted and so he didn't even want to counter back.  Ouch!  SO disappointing.  It looked like the river house dream was not to be. I'll admit I shed a few tears at this point.

A week later the boys got to talking and thanks to Pat's connections and friendly, good ole boy charm, they were able to have a better idea of how to make another offer that would be better received.  There was still hope!  

Two days later, a new offer was submitted with a few conditions on our part.  One condition was that a surveyor would need come out to the property and determine if we could build exactly where we wanted to.  


Carl, the surveyor came and marked the corners and told us we were out of the 500 year flood plain, so we could build basically anywhere on the property.  The other parcel was a little lower and it would take a little more paperwork to get that approved to build anywhere, but it was doable or they could build a little further back.
Discussing the corner pins and flood plain map with the surveyor.

 The offer was accepted and we should close on it in March. 

And that's how we ended up with two side by side parcels of river front land on a beautiful little river in Idaho.  

Follow along as we build the little river house of our dreams...it should be quite an adventure!

Next up: Making plans...house plans!

March 14, 2016

Down by the River




Many of you know that I blogged for three years about our experiences while living in Europe and our many travels there. (thepalmersadventure.blogspot.com)  I love taking photos and writing about our many adventures, but I guess I need more motivation to do so than just my normal, everyday life.
Now, after more than a three year break, I'm ready to jump back in and blog about a new and exciting "excellent adventure".   

I started writing a few weeks ago but didn't want to publish anything until it was officially official...it is, so here we go:

Well, it's official.  We are going to build a house right here on this beautiful Idaho river!
And so is Mike's brother and sis in law...they bought the acreage next to ours.
Two houses, one river, what fun this is going to be...
After much consideration, we decided a little over a year ago, to sell our lovely suburban home that had become way too big.  The youngest of our 5 children was grown and on his own, so that just meant a lot of square footage for me to clean and yard work for hubby to do.  It wasn't an easy decision because we really did love that house, the yard and the neighborhood.  Also, the fact that one of our married sons and two of grandkids lived right across the street and our daughter and her three kiddos lived minutes away made it so hard to actually sell it. 

The next year was spent trying to get the house sold and finally in September of last year, papers were signed to sell the house.  We packed most of our things into a storage unit and rented a great little house nearby.  We knew we had a year to find a lot or acreage to build on or to find the perfect place to move right into.  So we started looking...and looking.

The one hold up and major problem was that we couldn't stop thinking of a piece of land that we saw last spring. 

 Let me back up a little and start at the beginning.

In May 2015, we happened to be driving through the beautiful Idaho countryside with my brother in law and his wife to take my mother in law out to eat dinner at a little place in Montour.  As we were driving along, we passed by a sign that said, "Riverfront property for sale".  River view property is one thing, available property actually ON a river is rare and what dreams are made of.  This property looked like it went right down to the river.



After dinner, we drove back by to take a closer look and got the contact information off of the sign.    A few weeks later, after talking to the agent, and finding out that the price was actually somewhat in our ballpark, we drove out there and walked around the property.   That's when I took this photo.  It was so beautiful!  Big skies, green fields and the sound of the river rushing by....just heavenly.  The problem was both of us still had our houses to sell.  There was no way this property would still be on the market by the time we had our houses sold and were ready to buy...was there?  And really, there must be something wrong with this place or it would've sold by now!?  

Months went by and I thought of that heavenly piece of property almost daily.  When our house closed and we moved into the rental, we started looking very seriously at other properties.  Every time we looked at one, it just couldn't compare to the land on the river.   We decided to investigate the idea of the river property a little more only to find out that it had been taken off of the market. It was terribly disappointing, but Mike assured me that it might take a little work, but he thought he could find out who the owner was and contact him directly.   Mike was so busy with work that he didn't get around to that very quickly and life went on, and we kept looking for other options.

Then last fall, my brother in law put his 10 acre property on the market and he began to get a little more interested in the river property.  We found out that it was back on the market and when Pat's house sold at the first of this year, things began to get serious... 
"The sound of silence.."  The river in winter.


Next post:  Making our pitch for a little piece of heaven...