So... what are we building?

Bill is still up on our hill, bulldozing away on the the pads and smoothing out the road. I *heard* that some truckloads of gravel will be coming later this week and that the foundation guys are scheduled to start next week. At this point, Ian handles most of the communication with our builder (fun!), and I'm the person usually talking to our banker (less fun, although we really like the guy). I'm hoping that'll change once we get inside the house...

So for now, here's a drawing of what the outside of the house will look like, roughly. Not every brick/rock/shingle was drawn, but you get the idea...

Also, a picture of the floor plan. The plans are so huge that I had to stand up on a chair and take pictures b/c it was too big to scan, so it looks a little wierd. Click on it for a bigger picture. Ian's office will be in the front left corner of the house, Viv is taking the back bedroom on the right, and just to the right of the front door is the room formerly known as a formal dining room. Instead of a cheesy dinette set, it's where the pool table/pinball game/other activities we can think of to lure people over to drink beer will be.

I'm most psyched about my giant laundry room... 13 x 13... I'll have a desk in there, a big round table in the middle of the room, space for my sewing machine, and lots of cabinets for art supplies. Right now I want it to have kind-of a high school science classroom vibe... I'm thinkin' red and grey checkerboard linoleum floors, black counters and at least one wall painted in chalkboard paint (but hopefully no dissected frogs in jars or toxic chemistry sets.)

Not shown is the bonus room above the garage. We're going to put in the stairs and have the drywall moved up there, but until Viv gets bigger and wants more space, we'll probably just use it for glorified Christmas tree storage.

Also, there's another freestanding garage not shown. It'll be located to the left of the house and at 40' x 60' it's Ian's equivalent of the world's coolest laundry room. :)

More Dirt... and a Fire!

Not much new news to report... Bill the Bulldozer Dude worked on the road and the pads for the house and garage all week, and hopefully will be done within a few days. Yesterday (Sunday), Dad was on shift at Station 5, which is the closest fire station to our house. He called at about 3 in the afternoon to tell us that someone had reported seeing smoke on the northeast corner of Westminister and Sorghum Mill (uhhh... that's our spot!) and to give us a heads up that there were fire trucks headed our way!

So Ian went up to the lot with Pop and Momma G in their truck, while Mom, Viv and I hopped in the car to go see what was going on. Our neighbor, who has the lot next to ours was burning some brush and it got a little bit out of hand and caught another pile of brush on fire. The pumper truck and engine were already there when we showed up, and the chief got there a few minutes later. I think they put it out in about five minutes, and I'm sure our new neighbor was a little embarassed because we all rushed up there to find out what happened (although Viv claims that the only reason SHE went was to see Papa, but he was driving the tanker truck yesterday and didn't get called out.) Ian discreetly took a picture (see above) and you can kinda see the fire trucks through all the smoke! :)

This is totally unrelated to the house, but check out Viv's smashing new haircut! Ian took a few pictures of her *driving* the four-wheeler yesterday. She looks so sporty!!

I'll try to get the house plans scanned and uploaded in a few days. Stay tuned...

Let me step back a little bit...

My friend Karen (Hi Karen!) pointed out to me last night that while the pictures were cool, to her they were just a bunch of dirt and rocks. So I wanted to step back a little bit to a few pictures taken in January of this year. The first picture is where the road is now, and the second picture (Ian and Pop gazing into the distance and probably philosophizing about something...) is on the spot where our house will be.

Everything was (and still is) pretty rugged. It's funny, but when Ian and I were trying to figure out where we wanted to build on the farm, we came across this spot and Ian just *knew* it was going to be home. It took a little longer for me to visualize things, but when I got it... I got it. I try to think back to when I was a kid, and I probably crossed this spot a million times in a jeep or truck or on a horse (okay, the horse thing probably only happened a few times!) and never would have thought I'd build a house there.