Wednesday, December 8, 2010

It begins for real




Bill has turned his steely-eyed attention to the farm with a vengeance!



Last week our little farm saw the excavator who prepared the new home site and trucked the soil to the new workshop area as well as trenching the driveway.



We also had an electrician remove our overhead lines and bury them in the driveway trench. New 220 service to the barn. New panel in the small house. The rural electric coop also came out to reconnect our service.



Additionally, a concrete truck with 4 yards of concrete. Got the footings poured, reinforced the culvert and the hoghouse. We did not get the buttresses done.



As we pulled out of the driveway on Friday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. - it started to snow. We finished with no time to spare.



We have a future home site!





Small house with cleared future home site on the right




New homesite tucks into the bluff - we hit stone




Excavating the driveway to bury the electrical lines





Concrete truck




Poured excess concrete on the high side of the culvert to control some erosion




Additional extra concrete was poured around the stone foundation of the hoghouse - this area occasionally has high water (isn't it funny that I have never noticed that bad paint job until I looked at this photo?)




Trenching the driveway




Trench for the electric




Scenic Rivers arrives (our electric co-op). They reconnected our electric service to our new box and panel




New service



No more overhead lines!


The next morning it looked like this -










13 comments:

Trout Caviar said...

Congrats, Angie! Very exciting. Do you have final plans for your new house? If so how'd you get 'em, did you use an architect? We would love to get building on our land next year, but find ourselves somewhat stymied. I'd appreciate any advice.

Brett

angie said...
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angie said...

Hi Brett,

Bill is doing our design (he has CADD) and 25 years of remodeling, construction and design experience (albeit not of this magnitude). We are finalizing our plans in the next few weeks. The drawing in the header of the blog is Bill's rendition of our future home. (The current building is the building on the left in the drawing.)

We are committed to building as green as possible. Bill attended a Green Building Construction Expo a few weeks ago and spoke to contractors and construction industry experts for an entire day about their products. We are considering going with SIPs. This company is from MI (http://www.portersips.com/)

Tony B. said...

Wow. Incredible amount of work - and great timing! That's a lot of snow, too ...

Mr. H. said...

How very exciting, I am really looking forward to watching as you build your dream house. I admire the header picture of your future home every time I visit the blog.

angie said...

Hi Tony B - I think I know who you are! Thanks for commenting! You got work gloves? Your girlfriend/my dear friend has put you on the worker list. :)

Hi Mr. H - Thanks. It is quite the challenge!

Tony B. said...

Yes you do - and yes I am on the work crew list! Just keep those crazy horses away from me ...

Wishful Acres Farm said...
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Wishful Acres Farm said...

Yes, that was beautiful snow! I'm working weekends in Wisconsin and couldn't make the drive up last Saturday morn.
Do you know what year your original farmhouse was built? Just looking at it I was thinking 1850s-1870s, am I somewhere in the ballpark??
(sorry had to repost this to request that your response be emailed to me, lol!) :-)

gribbey said...

Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on the ponies! And I've got gloves too! This is amazing work Ang. So exciting to see it taking shape. And man, you guys really do take it all the way down to the wire! (The snowfall that is...)

Judy T said...

Oo, how exciting. It will be fun to watch it all come together. Thanks for sharing!
Judy

angie said...

Hi Penny - not quite that old. More like 1900-1910. The church/weekend home (see my profile on blogger for the other blog that has some church photos) is 1854.

Hi Gribbey - I know, right down to the wire. We weren't expecting the snow (we didn't have our snowboots) so it was laughable afterwards how close we cut it!

Hi Judy - Yes, you can relate to all of this, can't you? :)

Barb said...

I'm so excited for you! Don't you wish it was spring already so you could keep going :-)?