It looks very convincing that the house will be demolished tomorrow morning between 8 and 9. At least that’s what they told us. We plan to be there (they said it would come down in about an hour) to Facebook Live it for those who are not local. So tune in there. I guess they will start with the garage and then push the house into the basement. There’s no real turning back now. We’ll probably have a post up…
Over the last week we’ve been clearing out the last of the items from the old house (really glad we made the garage a generous 2 car instead of a minimum 2 car) and getting the permit paperwork ready. This is all very not-glamorous stuff here. But it’s still moving us in the right direction. All the utilities were turned off as of today and once the demolition permit is paid for we are A-GO for a wrecking ball. Actually,…
Yes, it’s been over a month in the new rental house. Yes, we’re still moving stuff out of the old house. My mom said pretty aptly that we have a lot of stuff for people who think they are minimalists. We also lost two weekends to an out-of-town funeral and a year-in-the-making girls weekend. So that has slowed our roll. But we are making progress clearing out the house. Today we moved the last of the tools and the massive…
This will be a short post, but I wanted to come on and let you know why we’ve been so quiet. It’s been over a month- we’re so sorry to neglect you. We went on vacation last week and came home to immediately start the packing and moving tasks of getting into our rental so we can get out of this house. Then we can crush it to rubble and have it hauled away. Is anyone as excited as I…
Because we have to leave our house to build the new house, we were in need of finding a rental. It’s been so long since we rented anything we’re a little out of the loop. We’ve been homeowners for over 15 years, so we’re a bit unusual and not your typical renters. I’m hoping this translates to ‘better’. For awhile now, I had been keeping my eyes open for what the rental market looked like in our town. Most rentals…
How are we planning on involving the kids? Do they get to pick their rooms/paint/carpet/etc? What do the kids want from the house building experience? Those might be questions you’ve been asking yourself. Well, we have answers! We also have some general beliefs about how much exposure our kids have on this great big internet now that we have a blog. This is not something we have decided frivolously. In fact, Jim and I started from pretty opposite corners in…
One of the decisions we made to start the whole house project was to build the garage first. There were a couple of reasons why we wanted to tackle just a small part of building before going whole-hog on the house. It allowed us to test out some of the contractors we’d need for the house. It was as much a test for them as it was for us being the GC’s for this project. We had to make different…
A little update to keep our single subscriber (Hi Aubrie!) and maybe a few other readers up on news around here. Jim started calling contractors (but not even all of them) and that’s been consuming a large chunk of his time. It feels like we’re really beginning something. We’re getting some good leads and hope for bids to come in soon. This might lead to some questions about the time frame for all this work. We started by trying to…
We have many goals in building this new house and each of these could be a post unto themselves, but here’s a good summary of what we’re trying to accomplish. To build a well-appointed home custom designed for the way we live To build a flexible space that will grow and adapt with our family To build a green and efficient home (without any goals of living off the grid) To NOT increase suburban sprawl To create a legacy for…