April 27, 2016

It's a Good Sign

The brothers had to break a little bit of sweat a few days ago when the time came to put up the first of the two private road signs.  Now if you need directions, it will be a little easier to get you to the place.  



The Chuckwagon sign for our other road is ready to be put up, but it will have to wait until the road is in place, so it doesn't get in the way. 
Ollie- the River House Scottie


Speaking of the road....it's started!  They are at work digging a big pond in order to get the gravel for the road bed and they have smoothed out the existing, very rough "road".  It should be another week or two and then we can drive on a road, versus what is essentially a lumpy, bumpy horse trail, to get to the house.  I'll add photos next time

The other good news is that we have officially started the house and barn!  There are actual cement footings in place and the foundation walls are set to be poured today.  




























As we walked around the foundation and pointed out where certain rooms will be located and then wandered out to the back, where the deck that will overlook the river will be, we really just wanted to pull up our chairs and sit there with a tall drink and just enjoy the sunset.  It was a vision of evenings to come. 



April 23, 2016

Solid Footing


That, my friends, is a wonderful sight!  That is P. and D.'s footings for their foundation. 

It seems that we've progressed beyond the moving of dirt and have moved to the next phase....finally!

We all went out to admire the vast expanse of concrete (or concocrete, as my nephew used to call it) and our friends came to "oooh" and "ahhh" with us.  Because that's what good friends do.





























After admiring the neighbor's cement for awhile, we wandered down along the river and over to our neck of the woods.

We received our building permit from the planning and zoning department at end of this week.  That means it's all systems go for us to start framing once the road is in.  Have I mentioned yet how everyone we've dealt with so far, both in the county and the city, have been so great to work with?  We are so impressed by how kind, helpful and friendly everyone has been each step of the way. 



Our footings should be poured the first of next week, as well as the foundations for both houses and barns.   



Mike and I have been chasing around every spare minute getting bids for floor coverings, windows, doors, framing, roofing, granite, cabinets etc...
It's a busy, crazy time, but I really enjoy this part of the building process.  One of the subs we talked to said he likes it too.  He is only one part of the puzzle but he likes to see the puzzle when it's complete and how his "piece" fit into the finished product.  





We sure hope to have a big party and invite all the subs back to see it when it's done!

April 19, 2016

Time to Clear the Building Lots

While we are waiting for our building permit to come back and the road to go in, things have been happening.

Picture a house sitting here.


The trenches for power, cable and phone were all backfilled and even more exciting is the places where the house and barn will sit on each lot was cleared and evened out. 

Picture a barn sitting here.


Pat took some pictures from the plane on Sunday and it gives you a pretty amazing view of just how the places will sit on the property and how nearby the river is.  
You can also see the big area that the horse herd guy has plowed and planted with hay.  Most of that is on another piece of property but a little bit is on ours.  We like that, it will be green all summer!




It makes me squeak with joy when I see progress like that.  For all the times, we've wondered if this could really happen, seeing a spot where the house will actually sit, makes it seem like YES...this IS going to happen!!   Eeeek! (that's a happy squeak).

The clearing near the top of the picture is our place, the clearing near the bottom are P. and D.'s place.
In other news...I bought a piece of furniture for the new house.   My love of antique and vintage furniture has me searching craigslist, eBay and several consignment stores on a "more than I'd like to admit" basis.  I love a piece of furniture with history and the character that the scars of a well lived and sometimes well loved life, give it.

I've been searching for an old welsh cupboard to put some of my favorite dishes and such from our travels.  I have the perfect place in the dining room for it.  

On a whim, as we were driving through Salt Lake City last weekend for a wedding, I jumped on the KSL Classified website and saw one exactly like I've been looking for.  We had time, so we swung by the cute little shop named The Old Flamingo in the Millcreek area and ran in to take a look.  It was the exact measurements that it needed to be for that space.  The hutch section is tad narrower than I'd like but for the price and the condition it was in...I just couldn't resist.  



We did have one problem that needed to be solved.  My eyes were bigger than my car!  There was no way we would be able to get it home.  I quickly ran through my options.  Let's see...my brother in West Jordan has a truck, my other brother lives in Midvale and has space in his garage.  If we had to, we could borrow the truck, take it to my brother's garage, and then pick it up at a later time in our truck.  Hmmmmm...one other option that Mike thought of was that our son comes to SLC quite often to buy cars from the area auctions.  Maybe he had a truck that needed to be brought back to Boise??  

We quickly made a few calls and sure enough, my brother offered to help and our son said his company planned to buy a truck the next morning and we could drive it back for them (with a welsh cupboard in the back haha!)



Well, it all worked out thanks to my sweet brother and my nephew who drove over the next afternoon and helped us load the piece in his truck and then they drove up to Bountiful where we were to pick up the other truck.  


They moved it from one truck to the other and wallah....we were finally on our way.   

This week we will continue to chase around getting bids from all of the subcontractors while we wait for the building permit to be approved.

The neighbors have that step accomplished, so they are just waiting for the road to go in.  They may be putting their foundation in before that happens...stay tuned!


April 14, 2016

"Chuckwagon" it is!

We have exciting news!  The private road names got approved.  The road along the canal is River Ranch Lane and for the road the houses are on, we had hoped to use Charlie Horse, but they wouldn't let us use it because there was something too similar. Our second choice was  Chuckwagon Lane.  They approved that one!  It has the boys' dad's name in it, which was something we really wanted to incorporate as a tribute to him.  He would love this place!!  
And my brother in law said, "You girls are great cooks, you cook a lot and you feed a crowd... so that's perfect!"

Time to go do some more staking out.
And yes..all of these "stakeouts" are do make me hungry for a good steak!





The day after the trench episode, the four of us went out to do some more measuring and staking.   We met there pretty early in the morning and figured it would take an hour or two.  One thing I'm learning as we go along is that EVERYTHING takes longer than we expect it to. 

 

It was a beautiful morning and the setting is so pretty, I didn't mind spending my whole morning...and early afternoon...helping to mark where the house and barns will go so that the excavator can come clear them off in the next few days. 



We took our dog, Ollie out to sniff around the place and he loved it!  

I noticed something in the nest up in this tree and after watching it for several minutes, I saw what looked like a branch move!  There's a goose nesting up there!  It would stick it's head out straight as an arrow and be completely still.  Great camouflage! It will be fun to keep and eye out for the goslings when they hatch!



As for updates on our overall progress, things are moving along.  The power, cable and phone lines have all been put in the trench and the trenches should all be back filled today.  The barn and house sites should be cleared off today as well.  Foundations should be going in soon but we will have to hold off on actually framing just a little bit while we wait for the road to go in and that looks like it's about two weeks out.  Which is okay for us because we are waiting about that long for our building permit to be approved.  

April 9, 2016

Houston, we have our first problem!

Water in the hole!!


The trenches for power lines were dug a couple of days ago.   In order to bring power all the way out to the houses, we needed to dig a long trench across lot 1, 2 and half of 3.  We own lots 2 and 3. That's a distance of about 1,200 feet, then make a ninety degree turn and dig another trench about that long to our turn around circle, then from there it will branch out in two opposite directions, to each of the houses.   A LOT of trench!



That evening when they were done digging, they noticed there was a little bit of water seeping into the trench near a low spot by the ditch that runs along the canal.  That would be the stretch that crosses the back edge of all three lots.  

The power company arrived the next morning and overnight the trench had filled almost half way deep with water.  They called and said they would work on the dry areas on the other leg of the trench but unless we could get that water pumped out asap, they wouldn't be able to put the pipes in as planned wherever there was still water. 








Mike picked up a rental pump in town and met Pat out there and got things hooked up, but dang if they could get that pump to pump continuously.  Something about "holding a prime"...don't ask me.  I just hauled water up out of the ditch to put into the pump and took pictures. 
 I know, I'm "essential personnel", wink!


Pat to the rescue!






Then Pat had the great idea to use the track hoe and dig a little waterway over to a low spot near the ditch and hopefully divert some water in there.  

After about an hour, even the power company workers came over to try and help. 



Things were just not going fast enough so Mike decided the pump wasn't working and he would need to take the pump back to the rental place.  They took a look at it, and it worked fine for them.  Seems like we didn't have a connection screwed down tight enough.  So.. back to the property we went and sure enough, it worked like a champ!  

In the meantime, Pat had secured another pump and between the two of them, the water finally started emptying out of the trench.  


The power company was able to finish laying the pipe in and Pat used the track hoe to settle some dirt on top so that even if the water came back in the pipes would be secure under the layer of dirt.  Just to be clear...there wasn't any problem with water in the trenches near where the house be.  Whew!
 

Problem Solved!  

Power Box Stake Out

It's been a busy week and I'll try to catch up.  

Earlier this week, we went out and figured exactly where we'd like our power boxes to go at each house. The weather was so perfect, we didn't mind being out there one bit that evening.  The sunsets are going to be spectacular!



We are loving every moment we get to spend walking around the place and imagining what it will all look like six months, a year, five years from now.




It's important to get the measurements just right...and we just like to look at our plans a lot.


Almost out of daylight.  It's a good thing the days are getting longer.  Next step will be digging trenches for the power company to put their lines in.  

April 6, 2016

First Son's First Look




We've been so anxious to show the place to our kids and grandkids.  Last week, we finally wrangled our son, Patrick to bring his little family out to see where the new homestead will be.
We met at the old winery on the highway and then all jumped into our car, drove about fifteen minutes over the hill and went for a nice dinner at our new favorite Mexican place. Yum!

Afterwards, we drove over to the property.  When we got there, we drove right to the place where we will build the house and got out.  It was so windy, it wasn't very fun to just lollygag about looking at a bare piece of ground.  



We walked down to the river for a quick look, threw a couple of sticks in the water, walked back up to show Pat and Tasha exactly where the corners of the house would be. We tried to get them to see what it will hopefully look like.  Our decision to move thirty minutes away hasn't been easy and one of the reasons was that we'd be farther away from our family.  I hope they could see the vision just a little bit better by being there.  After Lucca used our country style bathroom, we all rushed our chilled bones and windblown hair back into the warm car and headed for home.