House Plans: Then & Now

Displayed below is the evolution of our house plans...I wish I had dated them. The first couple are from about 7 years ago.

The REAL McCoy!

Basement

Loft

Look what Ava found!!

I just remembered I am saving an old doorknob that my 8-year-old granddaughter (Ava) found back in April before construction began. Ava has always been VERY curious and adventurous. She loves to explore, and I hope she has many, many days and hours ahead of exploring on our farm to her heart's desire. But on this particular April day, Ava was poking around the house site with a stick. She started to dig with the stick...why? I do not know. But not too far down IN the dirt she poked something hard and dug up an old, porcelain doorknob. Poor thing...she wanted to keep it, and although I am usually a very giving person, I made her give it to me :-)  I was thrilled, to put it mildly! There was once an old farmhouse on our land. I have never seen it; it's been gone for decades. But now I have a part of it!!! I showed our builder, Brian, and he said he can easily put the doorknob wherever we want it. I think I want it on our kitchen walk-in pantry door, where I will use it every day!

The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock!

Last night before dark, Terry and I checked out our home site after a few days away. The foundation is moving right along. At least it looks better than it did. I'll put a "before" pic first!

BEFORE

AFTER

"THE Gate" Before & After...And the Land

Below are BEFORE, DURING, & CURRENT pics of our beloved gate. I hesitate to use the word "After" because we will eventually build a beautiful gate :-)

This is the gate that Terry and Ben built about 2 years ago.

And here I am jumping out of the truck to unlock and open it, as I did many, many times! Notice to the left is a mound of dirt and a lot of not-so-pretty trees and brush. Good-bye!

Not a great pic (from phone) but you can see the clearing is done and the little gate we used to drive through is still there. We (and builder) have decided to leave a pile of trees and brush there for the time being as a barricade to discourage the dishonest from driving on through. Unfortunately, it will probably only discourage the honest. The dishonest will find a way...

 The new gate is twice as wide. It separates the front 2 acres from the back 8+ acres and home site. By the way, Terry has lost a good bit of weight lately and is lookin' good!

This is the front acreage, taken before the driveway was put in. The gate would be to the far right, out of the picture. 

And, for the sake of posterity, this is the view looking on the back right of our property (before construction).

Again for posterity, this is back left--looking to the left of our home site.

And this is looking directly straight ahead to our future home site (before the mess of construction, of course).

They're building something!

OK, so I am actually a little nervous. I need to just not go out there for a couple more months. Actually, I didn't go out there for these pics -- Terry took them. I know they are building something, but I didn't picture the bottom part of my dream house looking like this! Oh dear. Let's see...my builder is VERY highly recommended and his references raved about him and this is not his first rodeo. He has built many log homes over the past 30 years. So all I need to do is trust. With all my heart. And lean not unto my own understanding (which, on a scale of 1-10, is a 1). Below are the photos that I trust will someday be a beautiful log home!

 

Beautiful logs...just waiting patiently

The floor trusses are here!

Yes, I even get excited about floor trusses -- especially when I just happened to be there to see them delivered. Terry and I drove out around 7:45 p.m. to view the sunset and the mud, and whatcha know but a tractor trailer truck came to visit with a load of floor trusses! We didn't have our good camera, but we took a few phone pics. The guy who delivered them lives in Hendersonville, NC, and he stood and talked to us about an hour after the delivery. It was well after dark and the mosquitoes were biting when he finally left. We really enjoyed talking to him--we talked about farming, hunting, animals, and Highlands, NC (where Terry grew up). I wish we had taken a picture of him, but the exciting floor truss delivery is below:

The logs are here! The logs are here!

Yep, it happened! Right on schedule! 5 tractor trailer loads! And Terry was there to direct things (well, take pictures). While I labored away at work. But I went back with him after work to see the damage, uh, building materials. The pictures tell the story!

Not thrilled about all the beautiful grass turning to mud, but I guess they gotta put the house somewhere ;-)

This is our basement, which is a 1/3 basement--a muddy one at that.

Yes, things are definitely happening on the Tritt farm! I thought this day would never come :-)

Now don't I look silly? Actually, this is all quite overwhelming to me...and a little scary as well. I really hope our builder knows what he is doing, LOL.