Bring the Rubber Boots

  Good news first!  We got the building permit and we have an address.  We haven't gotten much farther on our to do list this week.  We've been too busy with pre-school sing a longs, field trips, and ballet recitals.  We did however manage to meet with our builder, excavator, and the contractor who will be doing the plumbing, heating, and electrical. Our Amish builder suggested (with a good amount humor) that we would be better off finding someone else to to do those trades considering he doesn't have a lot of experience with electric and plumbing. 

   We went up to the property on Tuesday and it was a glorious day, hot and humid.  This is why I showed up in shorts and sandals.  It took about 1.5 seconds and my foot sinking into the mud as soon as I stepped out of the car to realize that I was not properly attired for this outing.   Dan's work boots are now my new favorite fashion accessory.

 

  Our purpose for heading out to the property was to mark the foot print of the house with hopes that the excavation could be done this Friday and the footer for the foundation could be started on Monday.   Now for the bad news.  It didn't take us long to realize the property was much to wet to start excavation.   Not only have we had copious amounts of rain this spring, but it also look liked someone purposely tried to get the water from the hill above to run  pretty much to the dead center of where we would like to put the house.  It was suggested that we wait at least another week for the water to dry and to dig a trench to divert the water as it enters the top of the property line.  I'm all for a water feature, but I don't want it going through the center of my basement.  I was a little disappointed at first, but it doesn't hurt to have an extra week to get our ducks and then hopefully have them in the same room.  I'm not thinking they're going to cooperate and get all in a row.  I'm just hoping they're in close proximity to one another.

  We were able to stake out the property line.  I thought we could just decide where we wanted to put it based on the view and the slope of the property.  Apparently there are rules for the whole house placement business.  We have to be 50 feet away from our neighbors and and the septic has to be a certain distance away from the house and the road.  We also had to consider what proportion of the yard we wanted designated to the front and back.  We loved the idea of being further back from the road, but we didn't want to loose too much of the back yard.

This is Dan standing at what we hope eventually becomes the north east corner of the house.

 

 

  The process consisted of looking at our survey and finding the pins that marked out our property lines.

We then took a super long measuring tape and measured approximately 115 feet back from the road and 60 feet away from our neighbors property line and put a stake to mark that as the corner.  Titus then came with surveying tools (I don't have any pictures of this part of the process because the Amish don't take pictures of themselves) and did precise measurements from our first corner to outline the rest of the house.  The excavators calculated how much of a grade they would have to make and how much dirt would have to be removed in order for the basement to be poured to code.  This was all very boring and completely beyond my comprehension.  I'm sure I could have figured it out if I tried, but I've never been much of an achiever.  I was to busy enjoying this view and trying not to loose my rubber boots in the mud.

After discussion about water diversion and asking everyone to pray for dry days filled with sun we decided that June 13 would be our next target date to start the foundation.  It's always good to have a goal to aim for right?  Goals are supposed to be set, and adjusted, and then they are reevaluated, and finally you realize it maybe isn't that goal that is the problem, but the person setting the goal.  That my friend, is a topic for another blog on another day.