Still building!

Of course we are. It doesn't happen over night. It does however seem to be going very fast. We had a slight bump in the road when the rains came and a small tornado took out the local Walmart. Since then it's dried back up and the masons have completed their work. We were able to capture the basement walls about 2-3 days before completion.

The walls are now complete and the floor joists are set. The floor boards are being installed now and over the weekend the staircase should be placed and framed in.

Our exterior wall boards are due for delivery on either Wednesday or Thursday depending on weather and when we return in 2 weeks we will be able to see the walls partially finished and hopefully the roof started.

Best news of all? So far my little (OK not little) apple tree has survived! Just look at my little sweetie there standing tall near the corner of the foundation! :-) It still has to make it past the installation of the boards and the grading. That's the dangerous part. If the grading is too high it will suffocate the bark and it will get infected. The smaller tree that was transplanted went into shock (completely expected) but seems to be holding it's own. The unpredictable rains did help in that matter. I'll still need to find another fairly large apple to adorn the opposite side of the house for symmetry, of course. ;-) and good taste.

 The walls are 9' high. I had forgotten we requested the taller basement and by the looks of things the home will be MASSIVE> Now I'm glad we kept it to under 1200 ft. I can't imagine it being any taller or bigger and we still don't have the cabin walls up!

At the back of the house the basement walls will be approximately 18" above ground to allow for a small window for light. At the front of the house the basement walls will extend roughly 3'. We will one day come back to put a rock facade over the block but for now we'll seal it and paint it complimentary coloring to the stain...

Oh the stain. *GULP* That is what is scaring me right now. What a big decision. It's not like paint where you live with it for a year or two and simply repaint it to a color you like better. Stain is for better or worse. Once it's sealed it's pretty well done for 5-10 years.

So while I'm debating on putting the colors into a hat and drawing one, I'm also dealing with the back to school rush. The kids met their respective teachers this week and while my twins will have separate classrooms it seems like they each like their teachers. That's one relief. Next step - getting them to the bus stop Monday morning. LOL.

See you soon!

Barbie~

It's really happening!

Ok, so I suppose I tell you this is the point where there is no going back.

As I said this past weekend when we were packing up all our belongings and putting them into the cargo trailer that it just seemed like we were cleaning up and moving around, but the stuff just got real....

Going......

GONE!!!

Awww, just look at those pretty apple trees. I'm still not over their demise. Now I have a pit in my stomach as we wait for the heavy equipment to be moved and and they begin construction on the basement.




When we drove away to come home again the sky was dark and ominous. Seemed like I wasn't the only one worried about the situation.  Not that the weather can really tell how we feel, but it sure seemed that way. By the time we got home 7 hours later there were rainbows here and there and I felt a little more comfortable. Still though. If something were to fall through,  yikes.




Instead of focusing on that I'll try to look forward to seeing the construction progressing and knowing that our future is being secured. Yes. That is what I need to focus on. As soon as I know the work has began. Should be by this weekend so at least I won't have to wait long.  We'll be going back in 3 weeks to check on things and hopefully I'll be able to show you the gigantic basement then. The builder seems to think they'll have the walls in by then, and be working on pouring the footer. I'm more inclined to think that there will be a hole in the ground. But, either way progress should be made and then it will get exciting!

See you soon!

Barbie~

Moving forward

Remember the post about plans for retirement and what order i'm doing things in? You know the one in 2013 where I was working on extra income in retirement, or this one in January that said we would wait to build until after we saved enough to do it out of pocket? Well- you can throw all that out the window.

We had been worried about the possibility that somehow someway that property would not be available to us when we wanted it. So, we looked around at a few other properties and even put an offer on one that connected with the current property. That didn't pan out, but something else did. A decision was made, an agreement was drawn, we started making payments and  and now...GULP. Now we are in contract to build our retirement home...

WHA???  Yup. It seems kinda crazy to me after all the careful planning, but here's the deal. This secures the property for us. This means that we are paying $500 a month now to have it built and until we take over the property, but then again every time we pay now it's less that we will have to pay later. Home building costs are going up and not down- no matter how you look at it. Building supplies themselves are going up even though property values had lost so much value.

Does the $500 a month hurt - well DUH. Of course it does. Especially since we now have a driving teenager that is going to need a car next summer to get to his COLLEGE classes. Um - yeah this is tough. We are swallowing a lot of hard pills, but looking toward the future with this project  is just as awesome as looking at the past and seeing what a wonderful man my child is now becoming.

The hope here is that we will have the property already paid down by half or more before our (hopeful) retirement date looms close. Then, once we sell our home we'll use the proceeds from that to pay it off entirely and we should have enough to traverse the hunger gap between our retirement date and the time that we start taking payouts from Social Security. (God willing it's still around then.)

WOWSERS. How exciting this is. We've already sold the trailer, and in 2 weeks we will be moving out. Scary. I'll keep you posted on the progress. The crew is supposed to be out July 15th to start the basement! Basement and back porch are not shown on the drawing - sorry! You'll just have to imagine it there. ;-)

See you soon!

Barbie~