Wanted: Elbow grease

Fencing is certainly not for the weak, and I'm sure our backs will be killing us tomorrow. Nevertheless, we made progress! All we needed was a beautiful, sunny day...thank you Mother Nature!!! This morning we headed down to Lynchvegas with the intention of buying a gate (the first of two) for our fence. We had no intentions to start driving posts into the ground because we didn't have a lot of time to work with since Noel had to go into work at 3:00 and the 'rents had a concert to go to in Chattanooga. And the thought of me doing this mess by myself is just hilarious! Change of plans, though. I suppose Daddy was itching to play on the tractor, since it's been too stinkin' cold and wet to do anything for the past few months, and thought we could get this thing going. So we piled into the truck, stopped at the corner store to get me a Honey Bun (hey, I needed fuel for this strenuous task), and headed to our land to get started. Before we knew it, we had driven at least 20 T-posts into the ground, which turned out to be pretty easy...even I could do it. 

(Pics courtesy of Noel's phone. Will hopefully take some action shots next time.)

Now T-posts are one thing. Wooden posts (stretcher posts) are an entirely different story. Enter the tractor and auger. The auger saves so much time and effort if you can get the thing to dig a hole straight down, but, because we were working on a slope, the auger would slide and start digging the hole at an angle. Ahhh! Once we finally got the posts, which had to weigh every bit of 50 lbs, in the holes we had to tamp the dirt into the hole and around the posts.  Oh, wow! Shoot me! (Noel and I had toyed with the idea of putting up a high tinsel fence, which requires all wooden posts. Can definitely say that deciding on barb wire was the best decision we've ever made.) However, a tornado isn't taking those posts out of the ground!


After our morning of fencing, we noticed that some of the T-posts aren't in exactly in the straightest line so we'll have to redo a few, but all in all it was a very productive morning.


AND...remember the grass seeds we had sown a few weeks ago? Grass is beginning to peek through the dirt!!! Come on spring!!

Meet 'Pickle'

Since we have started this whole building...ehh...pre-building process, friends have been so generous with advice of all kinds from contractors to what material to use for the exterior of the house. We decided that the next step of this process should be interviewing contractors. Lucky us, our first blog entry lead a friend of mine to give me a call and give me the name of a local contractor he knows. After our phone call, however, his contractor buddy actually gave me a call. Now that is service! Contractor number one: we shall call him Pickle (actual names not used to protect the innocent).

We plan to interview about three to four contractors in the area. Yes, you have to do a little prep work to interview a contractor. First you need a heat lamp, a chair, and an empty metal table. A cigar and suspenders are optional for added effect. After composing a list of questions for the contractor (with help from the Dummies book), Noel and I made sure we were on the same page by going over the answers we would like to hear. We needed the intimidation factor on our side since this is contractor interview number one. However, I'm sure that whatever tiny bit of intimidation we brought totally fizzled when I whipped out the 'construction' notebook we created housing my list of interrogation questions. (Our 'construction' notebook contains all of our go-to information -- perk permit, electrical line diagrams, possible house plans, etc. -- and is a must.) Regardless, Pickle was a super nice guy and has been in the business fourteen years. He has experience with green building and energy-efficient design, itemizes charges on his construction sheet (awesome for the A-typer), carries the insurance policy, and provided us with references. Basically, we like him. (Note: the beaming sun proved to be a natural interrogation lamp. I actually saw a little sweat.)

We did discover during this meeting that we are going to need an architect -- a player we thought we might be able to do without. We currently have a couple of pre-fab house plans we like from the internet but nothing we love, and that can make the difference between a house and a home. We discovered that any major alteration we would like to do to either plan such as say...completely revamp the completely hideous exterior...would require an architect. Once we get a finalized house plan, we can begin to take bids from contractors. On to searching for an architect (another story for another blog).

Not all of this project is going to be contracted out. If the weather would cooperate, we could begin fencing. On guard! Dad in his retirement boredom decided to venture down to Tractor Supply and get our first load of fencing supplies. I'm still waiting on a labor bill from him. We are preparing ourselves for 1,200 feet of barb wire fencing to keep the cows and one over-zealous bull off our property. We plan to begin in the next week or so or whenever I can find enough ibuprofen to sustain me. Noel conveniently will be tied up with work during this time. Hummm....wonder how that happened?! So it'll be Mom, Dad, and I on the first leg of this project. (If they didn't know it before, they know now!)

The adventure begins

Noel, Soxy (tuxedo kitty extraordinaire), and I are embarking on the great adventure of building a home of our own! We (well, I) figured that documenting this process in a blog would be fun since I'm hearing that this whole house-building thing might make Noel and I want to kill each other. (Queue Aretha Franklin...) But we will survive, and we will have a damn good-looking house to show for it!

Thankfully, we have A LOT of experience by our sides, my parents, who amazingly also survived an even more involved process consisting of their own elbow grease. So we will continue to pick their brains and bug them until they want to disown us. Oh, this is going to be fun! But we couldn't possibly put all of our trust in them...enter Building Your Own Home for Dummies. That's right, break it down like we're kindergarteners.

We are not exactly at the very beginning of this process. After much deliberation, we decided to buy land back in my hometown from my grandmother. As of February, we are the proud owners of 12.19 acres on one mamma-jamma hill, plenty of trees, and a spring-fed creek. Buying land is quite an involved process in itself. We had a perker man, electrical engineers, water department dudes, surveyors, and lawyers, oh my! After all of these shenanigans, we can officially call it ours. Whew! And lucky for us, that didn't even involve realtors.

We have since had the land cleared by an Alternative Land Clearing service in Lynchburg. Here's my plug for him (because he did a fantastic job) www.alternativelandclearing.com. We chose this option over a bulldozer because we had LOTS of brush and tiny trees to be cleared. This machine mulches the brush and small trees so it can return to the earth and replenish the soil. We are so green.

Noel and I have since sown 100 lbs of grass seed and cleared some more land with our bare hands. Hear us roar!