Getting Started

Before I update you all on what’s going on right now I’m going to fill you in on all the hard work that we put in to prep the site for the house.

Our property was entirely wooded so before any building could start we had to clear a spot. I chose the house site very carefully based on a number of factors, one of them being that this area appeared to have been cleared before and there weren’t many mature trees. It also sat up on a hill on the North side of the existing driveway which meant we wouldn’t need to clear a very big area to get sunlight on the house.

Joe and I have always been ambitious but I am pretty proud of how much of the clearing work we were able to do ourselves. Joe already had a chainsaw that my mom had gotten him as a Christmas gift back when we bought the property. So we set out for our first weekend of work which resulted in a trip to the hardware store by lunchtime. Joe had lost one of the nuts that holds the bar on the chainsaw. I had spent all morning dragging around branches and logs by hand that he had cut. It was a great workout but I quickly realized that I would be much more helpful with a tool of my own! So along with the 75 cent bolt, we picked up a little electric chainsaw that turned out to be perfect for cutting down small trees and for cutting limbs from the large trees that Joe took down. Ironically he found the nut he had lost in some leaves shortly after we got back but it was too late, the trip already cost us an extra $300!

We make a pretty great team and felt accomplished at the end of that first weekend. We had taken down a lot of the small stuff but looking back at it now, we had barely made a dent in what needed to be done.

We hired a friend with much more expertise and experience to help us with the heavy clearing. It’s funny how things fall into place so perfectly sometimes. He was someone that Joe had gone to school with that we happened to find out had just helped another friend clear some land. He was not only a hard worker but he really made the whole thing an enjoyable learning experience. I could tell Joe was really having fun and embracing his inner lumberjack because he was out there by his side many evenings and weekends for the next few weeks. We also rented a mini excavator which not only helped increase their productivity but was a lot of fun for all of us.

After a few weekends, many weeknights, a couple close calls, a broken excavator windshield, a few giant fires, and a couple of bad cases of poison ivy, we had pretty well cleared a spot for the house. Ironically this coincided with the closing of our loan so we had not only saved money doing the work ourselves but had also saved some time!