Another Adventure Begins - House Building!

Yes, it is official.  We're building a house!!!  Where?  In my parents backyard.  Literally...

It's great.  My first reaction to building a house of course is something like this:



So somewhere between really excited and really freaked out.

As with most of my blogs, this is going to be very much a photo journey.  So let the journey begin!

How about we start with an End-Result Visual?  Of course we've made a FEW changes (no stone, all brick except under the porch, no porch railing, different shutter/door color of course, bigger windows, no staggered wall on the left) but all in all the same. :)

This is what our house will look like (in theory)

For this first entry we'll get to the foundation.  Be warned it's a lot of pictures.  I guess the first question to start with is "Where are we putting said house?"

The husband and dad measuring and getting the layout figured.

Looks good to me? :)

Now that that's kinda figured out, time to clear out this brush...

Hard at it ;)

It was shortly after this that the severity of my husband's poison ivy allergy was revealed to me.... but the whelps finally "disappeared" and turned to scars after about a month at which point we (my mom) decided to call in the professionals (good call mom)...

"This is a fertile land and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land and we will call it... This Land."

A marvelous transformation... hopefully I'll have a road there someday. :)

SOME of us MAY have been getting impatient for progress at this point so "they" were given evidence of a ground breaking (even if it was just by my dad on the tractor)

Look!  Broken ground!

Oh my goodness.....

Stuff!

Things!!

People!!!

Here come the rapid fire pictures...

Digging the footings

Gotta get a mailbox for all them bills!  What what?!

Pouring the footings

Aerial view of the footings courtesy of my dad ;)

Mail at the new house!  :)

Let's get this thing filled in!

This is probably one of my favorite pictures.  It brings tears to my eyes.  You woulda had to been there.

It's ready for the plumbing!  (that's us)

Do you know how to "plumb"?  Yeah, me either.

Ella makes a good supervisor.

The plumbing crew!

Dat trench tho  O.O  I'm proud of us... even if I couldn't feel my feet or arms when we were done.

I was too tired to take pictures after this, but I can tell you where every pipe in my house is and what it goes to.

Yay!  Somebody else gets to work while I watch!  :)

Ready for the slab!  Almost......

 So a little background on this.  I have a cousin who builds a lot of homes and he has always put a Bible in the foundation before they pour.  It's such an awesome thought so we wanted to do it too.  You can't see it, but the Bible is under the visqueen where my dad is touching it.  We marked it off so we would know where it is after it's poured.

Dad and Drew praying over a firm foundation!

Aerial view of the fill in dirt right before the concrete

We had to get a pump truck brought in.  That thing is pretty awesome.

And then this happened.

He eventually got free

It was so hot this day that the concrete had already dried enough to walk on in just about 3 hours

We had to keep sprinklers on it so it wouldn't dry too fast and crack.  Hopefully when we're done watering it, it will grow into a real house.  ;)

Ready for the framers!!

And that's it!  The slab is done!  The next installment of this blog will be the black-in process... hopefully. :)  To leave this post off though (and all future house posts), I've decided to end with a "Derrr Moment" which will be dedicated to recognizing those who have been working too hard and ended up making an unforgettable mistake.  This round goes to my wonderful dad who has come to the realization that "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" is just a song and it definitely does not apply to clay gravel and a tractor....

1) Denial - "It's not that bad"

2) Anger/Depression - "This is stupid... How am I going to fix this"

3) Acceptance - "I'll get my son-in-law to help and we'll be able to.... Wait, are you taking pictures?!"