25Elmn8r
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Great Monday morning to you all! After 16 months of planning, designing (winging it), dirt work, waiting on the county, and then waiting on our contractor, our house footings were finally poured this morning! To say we are excited is an understatement! We are doing as much of the process ourselves as we can. Photo dump of the process up to this point:
Momma said if we're doing this, it has to be new, big, and lots of slides. So in June 2021 we went out and found the new "house", '21 Avalanche 365MB, quad slides. Middle slide is a 2nd bedroom/office, which was a requirement because I work from home. We're feeling really good about our plan of 18 months from start to finish and just one winter in the 5th wheel....
And yes that's a 6.0, and no it hasn't left me stranded every time we go somewhere. And yes I know I need air bags. Did I cover all the bases for the truck critics/towing police?
July 2021 The day we closed on the property. 5 Acres in a hidden valley just outside of town.
Started clearing trees and mowing the field where the shop and house is going.
Looking back at the property from the creek.property line.
Timber!
Got the mini in to start cutting in the driveway.
Cutting the trench in from the road for power.
400Amp power panel. 200Amp for the house and 200Amp for the shop and barn.
My son works for one of the excavation companies here in town so we had access to a lot of equipment thruout this process. Time to bring in the big guns to make quick work of the rest of the driveway and bldg pads.
We really wanted to build the shop first so we had shelter for the winter, but watching the craziness of lumber prices I wasn't sure it was going to fit in our budget. OSB at one point was up to $90/sheet here, we timed it right when the price dropped to $14/sheet. Still stupid expensive, but fit the budget so we ordered it and started the pad for the shop.
There's no water onsite, and we've been on the list for a couple of the well drilling companies since May 2021, their estimate of when they could get out to us was 12 months. Had to come up with a plan. Picked up 2 1500 gallon tanks and a shallow well pump with pressure tank, run hoses from that setup to our 5th wheel.
Lumber delivery.
We had an issue with the county approving our shop plans. The engineer that drew them up put all the specs on the front page. All the other pages of plans were generic and didn't provide any details directly related to our shop. The hold up with the county was that page 1 spec'd the proper snow load, but page 2 said a lower spec unless specified otherwise. We couldn't wait while we got that straightened out, so we moved forward with the build and would deal with the permit issues after. 40 x 60 x 16 pole barn posts ready for concrete. At this point I started thinking I should have gone bigger!
My boy being a monkey setting trusses.
Main structure. 14x14 doors to make sure I can fit anything I want in there.
Getting the inside graded while finishing the sheeting.
We really started getting some weather at this point. Lots of rain turning the dirt into mud making it difficult to get up the driveway. We had to push the trucks up the driveway with the skidsteer... better get some rock down soon!
480 tons of 3" minus rock, and we've got a driveway. At some point after all the construction is done we want to put asphalt down.
We got the rock down just in time to get the 5th wheel moved in as the first snow dropped. The 14x14 doors started feeling a little small as I was backing the trailer in for the first time.
Finished spreading the rock in the shop and got both trailers moved in and set for the winter. Smaller trailer is my sons.
Construction was halted for the winter at this point, but we had a lot of scraps/tree limbs piled up. So we decided to have a bonfire for New Years! If I remember right, it was 1* out. But everyone was feeling fine!
We had some big visitors over winter.
Spring finally came and we got back to work, for a little bit anyways. First order of business was getting the septic system in. We had a pump truck come in every two weeks for our black tanks.
We had a REALLY wet and late spring so we were delayed getting other things moving. It wasn't until June when we were able to make any headway on the house pad. Got that wrapped up in a weekend.
Because we're building on a slope, when we got the house pad finished we had a 15 foot drop off down to the natural slope.
The original plan was to build a big covered deck off the back of the house overlooking the meadow, but momma wasn't happy with that. So option 2 was to build the deck with stairs down to a lower level that we would build up. That didn't work for momma either, so option 3 was to bring in dirt to build up to match the house pad. She wanted a big flat grass area for the grandkids. So we went to work trucking dirt in. A LOT of dirt! The company my son works for does mostly commercial work, where they have to strip most of the topsoil from their job sites. So we worked out a deal and had them dump the topsoil here instead of paying to dump it at the local pit. Win-Win for both of us. I figured a couple hundred super dumper loads was going to be more than enough, but that clearly wasn't the case. Approx. 500 loads at 25 tons each later and we had built it up enough.
We were finally able to get the permit issue on the shop straightened out and got the framing inspection signed off allowing us to finally get the metal up. Just a couple more pieces of trim to finish up the outside.
More waiting for the contractor and they finally showed up last week to start the footings.
Momma said if we're doing this, it has to be new, big, and lots of slides. So in June 2021 we went out and found the new "house", '21 Avalanche 365MB, quad slides. Middle slide is a 2nd bedroom/office, which was a requirement because I work from home. We're feeling really good about our plan of 18 months from start to finish and just one winter in the 5th wheel....
And yes that's a 6.0, and no it hasn't left me stranded every time we go somewhere. And yes I know I need air bags. Did I cover all the bases for the truck critics/towing police?July 2021 The day we closed on the property. 5 Acres in a hidden valley just outside of town.
Started clearing trees and mowing the field where the shop and house is going.
Looking back at the property from the creek.property line.
Timber!
Got the mini in to start cutting in the driveway.
Cutting the trench in from the road for power.
400Amp power panel. 200Amp for the house and 200Amp for the shop and barn.
My son works for one of the excavation companies here in town so we had access to a lot of equipment thruout this process. Time to bring in the big guns to make quick work of the rest of the driveway and bldg pads.
We really wanted to build the shop first so we had shelter for the winter, but watching the craziness of lumber prices I wasn't sure it was going to fit in our budget. OSB at one point was up to $90/sheet here, we timed it right when the price dropped to $14/sheet. Still stupid expensive, but fit the budget so we ordered it and started the pad for the shop.
There's no water onsite, and we've been on the list for a couple of the well drilling companies since May 2021, their estimate of when they could get out to us was 12 months. Had to come up with a plan. Picked up 2 1500 gallon tanks and a shallow well pump with pressure tank, run hoses from that setup to our 5th wheel.
Lumber delivery.
We had an issue with the county approving our shop plans. The engineer that drew them up put all the specs on the front page. All the other pages of plans were generic and didn't provide any details directly related to our shop. The hold up with the county was that page 1 spec'd the proper snow load, but page 2 said a lower spec unless specified otherwise. We couldn't wait while we got that straightened out, so we moved forward with the build and would deal with the permit issues after. 40 x 60 x 16 pole barn posts ready for concrete. At this point I started thinking I should have gone bigger!
My boy being a monkey setting trusses.
Main structure. 14x14 doors to make sure I can fit anything I want in there.
Getting the inside graded while finishing the sheeting.
We really started getting some weather at this point. Lots of rain turning the dirt into mud making it difficult to get up the driveway. We had to push the trucks up the driveway with the skidsteer... better get some rock down soon!
480 tons of 3" minus rock, and we've got a driveway. At some point after all the construction is done we want to put asphalt down.
We got the rock down just in time to get the 5th wheel moved in as the first snow dropped. The 14x14 doors started feeling a little small as I was backing the trailer in for the first time.
Finished spreading the rock in the shop and got both trailers moved in and set for the winter. Smaller trailer is my sons.
Construction was halted for the winter at this point, but we had a lot of scraps/tree limbs piled up. So we decided to have a bonfire for New Years! If I remember right, it was 1* out. But everyone was feeling fine!
We had some big visitors over winter.
Spring finally came and we got back to work, for a little bit anyways. First order of business was getting the septic system in. We had a pump truck come in every two weeks for our black tanks.
We had a REALLY wet and late spring so we were delayed getting other things moving. It wasn't until June when we were able to make any headway on the house pad. Got that wrapped up in a weekend.
Because we're building on a slope, when we got the house pad finished we had a 15 foot drop off down to the natural slope.
The original plan was to build a big covered deck off the back of the house overlooking the meadow, but momma wasn't happy with that. So option 2 was to build the deck with stairs down to a lower level that we would build up. That didn't work for momma either, so option 3 was to bring in dirt to build up to match the house pad. She wanted a big flat grass area for the grandkids. So we went to work trucking dirt in. A LOT of dirt! The company my son works for does mostly commercial work, where they have to strip most of the topsoil from their job sites. So we worked out a deal and had them dump the topsoil here instead of paying to dump it at the local pit. Win-Win for both of us. I figured a couple hundred super dumper loads was going to be more than enough, but that clearly wasn't the case. Approx. 500 loads at 25 tons each later and we had built it up enough.
We were finally able to get the permit issue on the shop straightened out and got the framing inspection signed off allowing us to finally get the metal up. Just a couple more pieces of trim to finish up the outside.
More waiting for the contractor and they finally showed up last week to start the footings.
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Our neighbor is going to be pissed, they had to go 680' to get the same water flow.
