Ready for the plumber

Tomorrow we'll spend some time with Harold, our contractor laying out the inside walls of the house to make sure all the plumbing pokes out of the floor exactly where it is supposed to. It is our last chance to make any changes to the floor plan. Wednesday the plumber and his helpers arrive to start digging ditches and setting pipe in the ground. Once they are done the sand will be carefully flattened out, graded and packed into place in preparation for the concrete floor.

Today. our crew went through the entire building site, sorting out lumber, cleaning up and emptying the ground floor in readiness. The house suddenly looked big again with all the piles of lumber gone.

It's sure fun to see it all come together!

-grampa dan

Lay of the land

I get many quiries about where the new house is in relation to the old one. The answer is the new house is directly in front of the old. The foundations are four feet apart. The roofs overlap. The old house will come down when the new one is complete. Here's the view from the driveway which goes along the west side of our proerpty from front to back.

The shop is towards the back of our property about 330 feet from our new house. From my studio windows I can see the old and new house to the north. The minature horse paddocks are on the east side of the property (right side of the picture)

The new house is much closer to the road than the old one. The only time we used the front yard was to mow the lawn. So we decided to build 29 feet from the property line. (local laws allowed us to be 25 feet) By using LOGIX ICF blocks as a construction material we won't hear any road noise. We've also oriented most of the living areas to the south away from the road. The view of Vedder Mountain is visible from that side as well, plus the 330 feet of green rolling lawn, not to mention the minature horses.

We live in the center of a small town on the main drag through town but the proeprties are large and we are surrounded on two sides by agricultural land whch is protected by law and cannot be subdivided. It's like living in the county with a small town only half a block away. I took a few pictures of the property from across the road in both directions.

The tower to the right of the picture is the electrical, telephone and water distribution center. All services come onto our property at this point and then go underground from this point to the shop, barn new house and old house. We call the building the train station as eventually the tracks for our giant scale railroad will go past this point as they circle the property.

The property suits us perfectly. It is in a small town which we love. A busy road goes by our front door with more than a million people travelling to the recreational area just up the road. It's a great place to live!

-grampa dan

Test driving a swing.

I slept on the idea of surprising Janis with the porch swing and this morning decided I was going to let Janis in on her birthday surprise early. Janis has never been fond of surprises. Something as front and center as a porch swing needed her input. There were many things to sort out including exact placement as well as how it woud hang. I told her of the present and invited her out for a test drive. Once we had tested it using some temporary supports and adjusted things to perfection I welded up a sturdy frame to bolt into the trusses.

We tested the swing one more time afer it was permanently mounted just to be sure everything was right. Then I wired on the lath in preparation for the sulpting epoxy that would be the final step. The porch swing looked great in it's new home. It sure felt right too!

Peter finished welding the corner tree (the last porch post) today. That only leaves two more posts in the carport area before all the welding on this end of the house is finished. It will only be a little while longer before the lath is all in place and the sculpting will begin. I can hardly wait!

-grampa dan