May 29th

The blocks are done and it was fun to walk around inside and imagine where the rooms will be.

May 28th

Most of the blocks have been laid and as predicted (by my builder and lots of other people), I freaked out a little because it looked too little.

May 27th

The prep work for blocks is done. I'm not sure if you can see the strings attached to the boards in the pics, but they show how high the floor will be. It's a little farther off the ground at the back of the house than we originally thought it would be, but that's fine with me...better view! These pictures are taken from different angles. The top one is taken from the south and the bottom one is taken from the north. I couldn't back up far enough to get the whole house in one picture because I didn't want to walk in the weeds and chance getting poison ivy or bug-bites. Maybe after we spray and clear out some of the grown up stuff, I'll get a view from farther away.

May 22nd

We have footings!!!! AUGH! I didn't expect to have those until next week. Mr. Price wanted to get them dug and poured before Memorial Day weekend and all the rain that is coming this week. Sure enough...we had concrete trucks galore coming and going while we were there Friday afternoon. It looks fabulous! (Well...it really looks like a bunch of ditches with concrete poured in them with piles of dirt everywhere, but I think it looks great!)

May 21st

We went out after work to see what was done today and noticed that the big gravel was put down all the way to the top of our road and that we had stakes with orange string outlining the footers of the house. You can't really see the string or stakes in the picture, but I promise they're there.

May 20th

We knew our road was getting worked on today, so we went out to look at it and our builder (Mr. Price...he's wonderful!) told us to go up top and see what they did today. We drove up our new and improved road (which now has a base layer of gravel) and we have a cleared piece of land!!!!! We actually have a spot for our house... Yeah! In one of the pictures you can see a dump truck coming up our road and putting more gravel out. You can see what the land looked like before they cleared it by looking at where the dozer stopped.

May 15th...first day of work

We went out to the land today and saw that some work was done on our road. I don't think I've ever been so excited to see ditches and a culvert in my life! You can tell that the road splits, but our road goes off to the right. The road that goes off to the left is an old road that we won't use and we'll let the hay grow over it. We wanted the driveway to go along the boundary of our property instead of cutting straight through it.

May 2nd...Lot and lots of rain

We are ready to start building, but it decided to rain 10 inches in the last two weeks. Here's a picture of the low water bridge that we cross to get to our land. Obviously, we didn't cross it today. I figured there's no reason to have to call the rescue team out today.

First Post

For the past year, we (honestly, mostly me...) have been looking for a house plan that we both liked. I found one on the Internet that Doyle's friend, RaeLynn, was able to modify for us. She did a great job changing things around for us and made it just what we wanted.

We put our house up for sale and sold it in seven weeks. We moved into a little rent house (and I mean little....about 900 sq. ft.) and we are finally on our way to building!

Our land....we have 10 beautiful acres that are about half wooded and half pasture and we plan to put the house on the hillside across from the lake so that we can eventually have a bit of a lake view (there will be several trees that need to be cleared in order for the lake to be more visible). Don't get me wrong...I am a tree-hugger at heart, so I'll save as many trees as possible. Anyway, I plan to post pictures as things are done to improve the land. Then I'll post pictures as the house is being built.

By the way, it has taken us a year to get started because the whole process of finding a house plan, modifying it, finalizing it, getting it printed, getting bids from builders (after trying to get recommendations from people for good builders), selling our house, closing on the house, working with the bank, getting appraisals, and then making sure the builder we wanted is able to do it when our bank was ready is a LONG process. Then, when we were finally ready to start...the rain came and delayed us for a couple of weeks. Don't get me wrong...by no means am I bashing anyone here. I am very happy with everyone that we have worked with, and they have all been terrific. It's just that I am totally new to this and had no idea how long all of this beginning stuff would take. But now that the initial stuff is over....let's build this house!