Excavation – House of Hyperbole

That’s Like… a Really Big Hole

September 26, 2022April 10, 2023JessDellenLeave a comment

Woo, we’re cooking now! The entire footprint is completely dug out to the point that they took the backhoe already.

^{Me, for scale. I *think* I’m standing under where the front door will be.}

We got our house number already, which absolutely blows my mind because we literally just put the request in on Friday. So, by some miracle, that only took about half a business day to come back. Personally, I think the guy who came out to drop the GPS pins felt bad for us because I told him about all the hassles we’d gone through just to get the loan finalized. I wonder if he maybe pushed it through for us. And if he did? What a peach!

I attempted to make a lil rendering below with Microsoft Paint 3D. It’s… serviceable.

Is it to scale? Unlikely.

Does it accurately reflect our finishes? Nope.

Is it even in the right place? Maybe. I think. Look, all the dirt is the same color so it’s pretty hard at this distance to see where the foundation will go. lol

Anyway, it’s a fair estimation of how things will look for those of us who sometimes have a hard time envisioning things realistically. And by “those of us” I mean me. When I try to imagine how it will look, the house is either monstrously large or comically small.

Also pictured above: We got the beginnings of our driveway added today in the form of at least two dump truckfuls of crushed stone. It’s mostly to prevent deep(er) ruts from the even bigger equipment that will be rolling in, but it’ll serve as a base for gravel later. Selfishly, I like that it makes it easier to walk up and down the hill without sliding around in the mud.

Footprint Fings

September 23, 2022April 10, 2023JessDellenLeave a comment

It’s absolutely wild to me that we started here…

^{July 30, 2022: After the first round of timber cutting.}

…then went here…

^{September 14, 2022: Two rounds of logging and some light excavation.}

…and now we’re here…

^{September 23, 2022: All timber cleared with the footprint pinned out.}

Today was a pretty big day. We got the whole footprint mapped out and had the county rep come and drop GPS pins for our new address. I didn’t realize this, but your new addy has to jive with the standards set and adhered to by the folks responsible for 911. Makes sense, right? You definitely want them to be able to find you when you choke on a hot dog alone in your house and your dogs won’t stop play-fighting long enough to notice.

Anyway, there’s some grid-formula-thing that says every 10.56-ish feet is a new address number. No, not a house/lot every 10.56-ish feet, but the numbers go up that often, which is why our next-door neighbors’ house is 40 units up from ours even though there are no lots in between us. The county rep came out today with a fancy-ass GPS/satellite phone-looking thing and dropped a few different location pins into it. Allegedly in a few business days, it’ll tell us where our new house will fall on the invisible address grid. Once we get the address, we start applying for permits and getting the ball rolling for utilities. Woo!

^{Poorly drawn lines are my own because it’s really hard to see the stakes and spray paint.}

In the meantime, I’ve been stomping around inside the footprint trying to get my bearings and mentally arrange furniture. lol

It’s Finally Happening!

September 22, 2022September 23, 2022JessDellenLeave a comment

We were originally slated to break ground on August 15th. That didn’t happen because we were still in loan limbo.

Then we were supposed to break ground on September 6th, but we needed to have more trees cut down and moved out of the way.

On September 13th, the most glorious thing happened: A convoy of heavy equipment showed up and started mowing down everything in its path.

Since then it’s been nonstop sawing, digging, and dozing from dawn to dusk and I’m LIVING for it.

I do want to take a moment to mentally pour one out for all the vegetation we’re losing. The house is a rancher, so the footprint is pretty big. And we needed to clear enough area to 1) accommodate the house, 2) avoid having a tree fall on the house, and 3) allow enough ventilation and sunlight in to keep moisture issues at bay.

At one point while we were walking through a warzone of tree tops and stumps, Mike made a comment about feeling like the bad guy in FernGully and I agreed. As a pagan who has loved the woods since I could walk… this degree of slash-and-burn is devastating.

And I do mean slash-and-burn. We didn’t have the time to cut smaller trees and tops into firewood because we had to make up for lost time. So the excavator pushed all the tops, stumps, and other leftovers into a pile and burned it.

Buuut, we can’t live in the trees and if you wanna make an omelette, you gotta break a few eggs. Or that’s what I’m telling myself over and over. We plan on doing a massive tree-plant once construction is done in an attempt to replace some of what we decimated. And we’re going to install a wild yard, consisting of mostly hardscaping and native plants instead of grass. Hopefully, we’re not throwing the local ecosystem too far out of balance.