Progress!

The table I refinished looks horrible, and I've given up trying to make it look better. After researching possible reasons why, I think that I damaged the wood when I removed the old finish, there's nothing I can do now and so I'm moving on. The next re-finish job is an old buffet I bought to use for the vanity in the master bathroom. This is the before picture.. there are nicks, lots of dirt,and even some mold...

Harley lays here because he can see out this window and watch all the construction vehicles/workers go by. He barks and barks at them, but as you can see here, he fell asleep while on duty!

                       

The foundation has been the focus of the crew the last few days.

                                                 Wednesday the 27th
After all the rain water was pumped out of the hole, there was a flurry of activity..digging, gravel deliveries, more digging, and then the concrete trucks started to arrive and the footer was poured.

                       I took the next pictures from the porch of the tree house.

  The concrete guy filled the shovel of the Rock Buster with concrete...

...then the Rock Buster transported the concrete to the hole...

....and dumped it.

Chris Fuller, our general contractor is the guy on the ground, the other two guys are his crew.

The guy watching is the driver of the concrete truck, "Jr" is in the Rock Buster. 

Thursday the 30th

The moisture barrier was laid, gravel spread over it and holes dug and filled with concrete. I know that the hole in the center is where a block column will be built that will support the roof, I don't know what the other concrete filled holes are for. 

Later in the afternoon the blocks are delivered.  The block layers will be here tomorrow October 1st.

Rain, rain, go away...

Wow..how things can change in just a few hours! Yesterday I left to run some errands and returned home four hours later, there were trucks, digging machines, and men everywhere it seemed...

Nothing much is going on today....it started to rain heavily during the night and we woke up to mud everywhere, the hole for the house has a lot of water in it!

In the last few hours "Jr." (the excavator's son) showed up and dug a drainage trench from the hole, Chris F. showed up with his sidekick Bill, and they set up a sump pump to drain the water out of the hole, and a port-a- pot was delivered ( I wondered where all these guys were going to go potty!).  Chris F. is sick, he has the plague that's been going around, so he went home to go to bed.  I told him I'd keep an eye on the water drainage and un-plug the pump when it was drained out.  I had the plague too, I know how he feels...

I hope tomorrow will be a better day...

The blueprints.

These are the original blueprints, we've made some changes, and will probably have to make some more before we're done. Recently, when deciding where to place the house in the yard, in the interest of seeing the sunset through our front windows the house got turned in such a way that we had to move the garage door to the right so that we could pull into it from our driveway, so the garage door won't be in the front of the house like it shows on the prints.

To the left of the garage you can just see the front door which is located in the breezeway which connects the garage to the house. Then there are three windows, a patio door,and three more windows.If you walked through the patio door you would walk through the living room and into the kitchen 

 This is the rear of the house, on the left is the garage.Then there's the breezeway, and you can see the little dog door there, Rod will fence off some space behind the garage so the dogs can come and go out the dog door. Next are the French Doors that will be in Chris's room. Then the French Doors to the master bedroom. Then there's a window that is in the studio, and the landing for the door that we'll use to carry wood into the house, that's near the wood stove.

This is the floor plan, not easy to see..We'll actually be placing our dining room table on the right nearer to the front foyer. Also the kitchen layout has changed a lot as I've had more time to think it over, but the basic shape is still the same.
Our objective was to build a home we could grow old in (especially since we're 2/3 of the way there!!), one story, wide doorways and hallways (in case one of us would ever be in a wheelchair),idea's along that line of thinking.

Slowly but surely..

No more excavating has happened, but tomorrow things are supposed to get going. Chris was here on Friday to put up his sign and let me know that he's tied up all his loose ends and he's ready to get started on our house. 

So, tomorrow Chris and a surveyor will be coming out to lay out the foundation.  The excavator will be coming tomorrow too I think to dig wherever is necessary as the surveying is done.

In the meantime, Harley continues to enjoy the big hole in the ground, and recently, much to my horror..the huge mound of dirt!

It has begun...

September 22nd, the digging begins! Tom the excavator and his sidekick Sadie Rose, his Boston Terrier, begin digging the crawl space for the house at 11:30 a.m. It pours down rain off and on all day.

Rod arrives home from work at 5:30 p.m., Tom and Sadie Rose finish digging at 7:15.

This is it! The hole for the foundation for the house and breezeway.  The attached garage will be built off the breezeway, sort of in the bottom right of this picture..

7:00 a.m September 23rd.

You can sort of see a corner where the breezeway will be and the orange paint marking the garage.

Harley is waiting for me to play.  He seems to think this is a playing arena! He runs full speed around the rim to the side that isn't quite so high, then down into the hole. Then he runs around and around in a circle inside the hole, Socks the cat joins him sometimes, but she just sits in the middle and watches Harley running pell mell..so funny!  Harley would make a great agility dog, he loves to run and jump..

10:00 p.m. September 23rd, Tom and Sadie Rose didn't come back today, I suppose they will tomorrow. Chris Fuller our contractor hopes to start laying the foundation on Monday or Tuesday.

Getting there..

Yesterday afternoon the excavating equipment arrived, so I guess the work actually will begin this week!  That means, despite the fact that I've been sick, I have to finish moving any plants/bulbs/shrubs that I want to save!  Those daffodil bulbs are hard to locate when there's nothing above ground indicating where they are...it's like digging for un-marked treasure! Because of feeling weak and dizzy, I'll have to be content with "starts", I can't move everything, but if I have a "start" from each plant to save then I can start over next year.. I've been using my vegetable garden to store everything in that I've dug up so far.  Rod cut two more trees down this week end, he has to get those cut up and out of the yard, then he has to move other stuff out of the way for construction - little things - like taking down the clothesline and poles...
It's hard to believe that we're almost at the beginning stage!

a delay..

Just heard from the contractor...he and the excavator have a few loose ends to tie up, the start date has been moved to the 22nd.  The first day of Autumn...

Pictures? With a little luck...

July; This is where Rod started cutting trees.







Another view of the same area,you can see a little bit of the garage on the right, and the cut wood starting to pile up on the left.
.



Frank Tipping helped Rod out one Saturday morning.



Foreground; Motorized wagon that moved the wood and saved our backs.
Middle; Area where house will be built.
Background; Doomed trees.





Chris and Rod...lumberjacks...

My job..dragging and burning the branches.















Sept 15th;

 Barely visible n the grass is an outline of the house in orange paint that our contractor Chris Fuller did so the excavator knows where to dig.

Upper left and right are some trees and shrubs I'm moving and storing temporarily until next year when the house is finished and I'll use them in the landscape. 

Beyond that you can see the doomed trees are now gone, at that point the drainage swath will head off into the woods, taking water around the yard and house.

Middle left, burn area in photo above where I was burning branches.























Among my other jobs, I'm also re-finishing furniture for the new house.
I've set up the Family Reunion canopy, added tarps for walls, and that is my work area.
I sure hope the weather holds out until I get it all done!









The upside down table is Rod's grandparents kitchen table.

I had tried to strip it about 25 yrs. ago and gave up when

I got to the legs.I'm determined to use this table in our house!
The chairs I've bought from antique and thrift
stores in 3 different counties! I didn't want them to match, some
need a lot more work than others!

More chairs to re-finish,after removing the seats and trying to strip the finish on these 5 chairs I ended up taking them to an antique re finisher. He'll strip them and make new seats, I'll sand and finish them. There are 3 more chairs in storage to re-finish, as well as a buffet and a dresser that will be used in the bathrooms as vanities, Also a hutch to re-finish and will be used in the master bath for towels, etc.

I'll add more pics.and video's later that I took using my new camcorder...

as soon as I figure out where they're at on my computer!

Please excuse the positioning of these pics,I had an amazingly difficult time getting them in order, let alone spacing them nicely..













A little history..

For those who've never been here, we live on 52 acres on the top of Brown Hill in Cambridge Springs, PA. This property has been in Rod's family for...a long time...  I know that Rod's great grandparents moved here and lived in the "little farmhouse", but I don't know when the house was built.  I believe there were five children plus two adults, seven people crammed into that little house. As an adult,Rod's grandfather Sheridan received a back injury preparing to fight in WW1 that crippled him for the rest of his life.  He came home to work the family farm instead of going off to war, and married a local girl, Clara-who was 32 years younger than him!  Sheridan farmed enough to feed the livestock, but earned a living as a fur buyer. People would bring him dead animals that they had trapped, he would buy them from the hunter/trappers, skin them and prepare the hides for sale, usually shipping them to big cities like New York where they would be made into hats, etc. for the wealthier folks.

Sheridan and Clara had one child, Mary Ann, who gave birth to Rod in 1957.  Due to her age at the time of Rod's birth,and hard times, Sheridan and Clara raised Rod here on the farm.  Sheridan passed away when Rod was 9 yrs. old, and Clara immediately had some improvements done to the farmhouse, plumbing, etc.making the house a little bit more comfortable.  Rod continued to live with his grandmother, who he called "mom" here on the farm until he graduated from high school in 1975 when Clara moved into Mary Ann's house (who was widowed by then) to lend her a hand raising her 2nd son, Scott, and 3 foster boys.  The little farm was empty until 1979 when Rod and I were married and moved in.  Eventually the farm was deeded to Rod, and in the late '80's we bought the adjoining 35 acres and farmhouse. Within two years of that move, the 40 acre field directly across the road from our house was turned into 12 trailer lots by the owner. Chris was born in 1994, and we started planning to sell the house and acreage we had purchased and move back on to the original farm somewhere.That plan involved clearing land that used to be a pasture but had become overgrown with thorn apple trees, then building a two story garage that we would live in until we sold the house across from the trailers, and then building a new house here where the garage was built. It took 2 years to clear the land and put in a driveway,well, septic, and electricity, and almost another 2 to build the garage, but we eventually moved in Feb. 2002. We didn't plan to live here in the garage for 8 yrs.,that's for sure! But, due to circumstances beyond our control the house plans did not begin until this year. I've overheard Rod telling other men that the way to get your wife to let you build a big garage is to build it before you build a house, if she knows she has to live in it, she'll agree to a nice big garage... of course, that's not why it happened this way, but they always laugh and nod their heads like they understand that perfectly, and wish that was the way they had done it too... And, by the way..the little farmhouse still stands, as well as the barn.  We rented them for a very long time to a college professor who just loved living there, despite it's condition. He retired last year and moved to France and lives in a commune,maybe that explains why he loved the little farmhouse so much? We use the buildings for storage.

The new house plans involved more tree clearing, over 200 more trees, to make way for a drainage swath to be dug that will divert water around the yard where the house will be built. Rod has been working on that since July 1st, having only a few hrs. after work each day and the week ends to do that. Chris has been a huge help, and I've done what I could to help also. My job is the planning, I guess I'm the supervisor (boss), and hey, I really like that! :-) 

We have often speculated on what the ancestors would think of the farm now...

The start date on the house originally had been for late August, but keeps getting changed with the next expected date to begin on Monday the 2oth of Sept. I'm not upset about delays, and instead think of it as a blessing because it's given us more time to prepare the site. This has been an all consuming venture, there doesn't seem to be much time for anything else but planning for the house, there's just so much to think about.. It's obvious by now that we won't be in the new house by the holidays, so I'm planning on our 8th Christmas here in the garage...

You can never appreciate the better things in life as much as you can when you've done without....