House is in progress!

The factory started building the house this week and are scheduled to be done with it next Thursday the 27th. They plan to deliver the first week of November assuming we dont start getting rains. The house is in two 15'x48' sections and will be connected together once it is set on the basement.  Will post some new pictures when we get them!  

                          

East side of house. Matt is Building on two bedrooms off this end.

Back of house looking in Kitchen Windows and back door.

West end of house, mast bedroom window and plumbing for bathroom.

Hall bathroom and living room. Short wall will be stairs to the basement. 

Back on Track

In August we found out that the factory that was going to build our house had actually been closed since May (2 weeks after we put down a deposit and ordered the house.) They kept saying they were getting a loan and would be back up an running in two weeks, but after 4 months it appeared they were not opening up at all. Luckily the dealer we have been working with found a new factory and worked out a deal with them to build the same house minus the deposit we lost, plus his company threw in some money of theirs to help.
He has been wonderful to work with and is also giving us some furniture, air conditioner and propane tank. The new house is scheduled to be delivered the last week in October. While we are excited we are still cautious until we actually see the house. We will post again after we get the house and have some new pictures.

Moving Slow....

Things have slowed down a bit on the house. The factory is about 5 weeks behind. We are now expecting the delivery around mid August.

Since we had some spare time we decided to take a 9 day road trip out to Virginia to see Adams Grandpa and Aunt. We may never fly again, the road trip was so great an we used the money that the airline tickets cost and went to the Biltmore in Ashville, North Carolina. HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS DESTINATION!!!

View from Balcony overlooking Vineyard, Farm & Shops

It was right in the middle of the smokey mountains with amazing views, food and service. It was the nicest hotel we have ever stayed at. The Hotel itself was 4 miles though the forest from the actual Biltmore. They have a shopping and dining village at the bottom of the hillside from the hotel with everything you need and a farm! We spent a lot of our time playing with the chickens and goats and Adam drooled over their farm set up, lots of ideas he has for our farm was implemented in theirs. (He kept stating that he was a GENIUS! ) :) Yea Yea. The Biltmore was HUGE, we only saw 1/8 of the house and could have spent 3 days going through it.

The Biltmore

We went kayaking down the river behind the Biltmore and ate dinner in their fabulous restaurant each night and for breakfast.

Adam doing all the work....

We went to the hot tub at 6 am and watch the sun come up over the mountains and snacked at their on site creamery each day. YUM.
We spent 2 days with Les in Virginia Beach, and fought the traffic getting in and out of the beach area. Took over an hour to get in or out of the parking areas.
Then we spent the night in Richmond with Aunt Trish and she fed us well and let us take a much needed nap. She took us to a seafood restaurant called Crab Louie's and it was the best seafood we had the entire trip. Nothing beats the fresh seafood on the coast.
On our way out of Virginia we went to Thomas Jefferson's Estate, Monticello, to see his farm and orchard. Adam is basing some of our farm layout on Jefferson's so he wanted to get an up close look at it.

Half of Jefferson's Vegetable Garden

Now its time to start working on the house again. We need a new electrician, ours skipped town on us and we have called 4 others that have not called us back. Frustrating but we may have one guy that will be good and are talking with him again Monday.
Hope everyone is well and had a great 4th of July!

Basement is in.

Basement went in a week ago and KCP&L is ready to put in the electrical in the next week or two.  

Moving along!

Breaking Ground!

This week we finally got started on the construction! Wednesday they put the driveway in and Thursday they got the basement dug.  Hopefully next week the footings will get poured and maybe the walls.

The gravel trucks made 7 trips and brought 300 tons of gravel for the driveway, we have 100 more tons we will use in a few months to top it off when construction is done.

Adam and I had planned on cutting down a hedge tree that was  to close to the house but the excavator offered a faster solution... We think he just wanted to play.

Time to build.... FINALLY!

We just got the construction loan approved and the house has been ordered from the factory.  We are building an Energy Star Modular home that is built in the factory and taken to the home site. We ran into a lot of new rules with the bank and getting a construction loan is extremely difficult these days.  They said the house we were building was to SMALL! Apparently homes on 40 acres are either mansions or trailers so they asked us to build it bigger so that it would appraise compared to larger homes instead of trailer homes.  So much for trying to build a responsibly sized house... :)
After adding 2 bedrooms and increasing the house to 1,832 square feet and several other tricky hoops to jump through, they gave us the go ahead. Our friend Matt is adding the additional bedrooms on for us.
The factory is about 5 weeks back ordered so we should have the house in about 8 weeks ready to set on the basement that should get poured in the next 3 weeks.  We should be in sometime in August.
Its actually a good thing we didn't get in last fall, we had a ton of snow this year and it is an hour drive into the city.

We went down this weekend and planted some trees along the road frontage to start blocking off the street. The trees are called Willow Hybrids and grow 6-10 ft per year and up to 30 ft tall to create a hedge. We planted 25 so far and got halfway across the front of the land. We will just make cuttings off these and finnish the rest later.
We also officially started the farm with a crop of 25 blueberry bushes. They are 2 year root stock so hopefully late summer this year or next summer we will have buckets of blueberries!
We set up a twine fence around it to keep the deer away. Hopefully they will do ok while we are gone till the weekends to check on them.

We really wont be able to start tilling until after the house is in. We cant buy a tractor till the construction loan is closed and with all the grading the excavators will have to do they may mess up whatever we start. 

The dogs are doing great and happy to play outside with the nice weather. Izzy has worn a rut in the armrest of our recliner that is strategically placed in front of the wall heater, one day she fell off she was so warm and cozy. 

And Rud insisted on tearing up his toys in protest of the cold weather this year. 

Happy 30th Birthday Adam!

A Beautiful Red velvet cake with 100% butter icing! 

I got it from a wedding cake decorator I work with in KC. 

YUMMY!

Keeping busy...

September is almost over already! We have been so busy we didnt realize how much time had past since our last post.
We have been cutting down trees to get firewood ready for winter. One of the trees had to come down because it is in the way of our power pole that will be installed soon. Adam is loving all of the "lumber-jacking"! He is actually very good at getting the trees cut down and getting them to fall just where he wants them. Today he cut a few trees, one of them was about 50 ft tall and perfect hedge for the wood burner.

We are going to have a factory home built and set on a basement we will have poured next month. The "modular" home is 213% stronger that a standard home and much more efficient. We wanted to start with our solar and wind but apparently you cant finance those "Non Conventional" items so we will have to start with KCP&L and maybe next year we can get the solar and wind installed.
First we will need to get the driveway in for the concrete trucks and that will require 300 tons of rock since we are about 600 ft from the road. The house is built in a factory where they can be out of the weather and have more control over the build with plumbing, wiring, drywall etc. The house its self will be built in 4 weeks then delivered and set on the foundation and then the final touches like, siding, roof and connections to water, electric and propane are finished. We hope to be in by Christmas! It is about 1,400 sq ft all one level with full walkout basement. We were able to make some customizations to it to make a more open floor plan and bigger kitchen.

We are excited to get moved out to the country, we love being out there working and seeing all the wildlife... Adam saved a baby turtle from the busy country road....

We also found time to be a part of a music video for one of our favorite rock bands Jackyl! They announced on the radio that they were taping a video in a warehouse downtown so we went down and got in line and made it in! There were about 1,000 people that showed up and they only let about 150 of us in! We might be on MTV soon! :)

More updates to come as the house gets started!